Gendering starvation: Women's experiences of the Kazakh famine, 1930–1933

Abstract Based on archival sources and previously underexplored famine testimonies, this article provides the first study of gender and women's experiences during the Kazakh famine. First, I provide a discussion of motherhood in this time of catastrophe. Traditional parental norms collapsed in a similar way to other catastrophes across the world. The second part of the article offers a discussion of who survived the famine. I argue that many parents preferred saving their sons at the expense of their daughters and consequently more boys survived the famine than girls. Son preference manifested itself strongly in the catastrophic years of famine as saving a man's lineage was deemed to be essential. The last part discusses sexual violence and sexual barter. I show that rape and prostitution were relatively less widespread in Kazakhstan, while sexual violence and barter frequently took a different form. Instead of directly raping women, abusers usually forced women to marry them as second wives. Unlike many examples in world history, sexual barter usually took place not between women and men, but between abuser men and male relatives of female victims. Son preference and the sale of women are reflections of how strongly patriarchal the nomadic society was.