Traditional and Modern Trends of the Status of Women in Kazakh Society

Abstract

In different countries of the world, in different periods of history, the attitude towards women had its own characteristics. In general, the problems of a woman’s place and status in society and politics, morality and law, education and science, culture and art, life and family have not lost their relevance in any period, starting from the physiological state and nature of a woman. Underlying this issue, one can observe the dialectics of sacredness and secularism, religiosity and secularism, matriarchy and patriarchy. If in the «male» society in the ancient and medieval periods of human history, conservative trends prevailed, then in the following centuries, feminist movements appeared, and the gender issue began to be presented in a new light. There is no doubt that the general humanization and democratization processes in the world greatly contributed to the rise of the gender topic. And in the global information society in the current state of mass digitization, issues from the clothes a woman wears to her freedom are being considered from a new perspective.
Kazakh society cannot stay out of these global changes. The attitude towards the status of women fluctuates between traditional and Islamic interpretations, modern secular interpretations, nationally homogeneous and pluralistic heterogeneous interpretations. That is why the new social aspects of the gender issue are causing interest in research from the humanities, including religious studies and Islamic studies.