Beautiful and attractive: confessions of a Russian guy about girls from Mongolia. Why are women in Mongolia free, wealthy and educated, yet suffering? women in mongolia

Today, a woman in Mongolia is more important than a man, although historically women here have been rather humiliated

Historically, the position of the Mongolian woman has always been normalized in two ways: in the family and outside it. Tribal life led to the complete enslavement of women in the family. Not only the daughter, but also the pupil was completely subject to the master of the house. True, educators have a certain responsibility. When someone gave a daughter to raise, and then wants to return her back, then one dozen cows pay for a well-bred girl, when the girl was brought up badly, the educators receive only half of the ransom.

Interesting norms of house punishments. If a mother-in-law beats her daughter-in-law for a cause, that's nothing, but if she beats innocently, then she must pay for the punishment: one dozen cows for a heavy beating, five cows for a medium beating, and one cow for a small beating. If the father-in-law beats the daughter-in-law, the punishment is twice as much. But the husband is quite free to dispose of his wife. Leaving her, he can kill her. The punishment for this ... again one dozen cows, that is, as much as for a murdered slave and half less than what a father-in-law pays for a beaten daughter-in-law.

A woman who has been abandoned by her husband can be bought for a small amount of cattle, from one horse and camel to ten (if she is of a noble family). Whoever kills a husband in battle gets a wife.

In Tsaadzhin-Bichik (the charter of the Oirat era), the position of a woman guarding the family hearth is emphasized. “A woman, when she sits in her usual place in the yurt, namely to the right of the entrance behind the hearth at the foot of the master's bed, no one dares to touch her. She can scold a stranger, or even throw a log or something from household things at him, whenever she wants to. But when she leaves her seat in an argument, or leaves the yurt, she loses her right and then she can be punished for insulting her.”

At the end of the 17th century, northern Mongolia finally fell under the rule of the khans, and they instituted khan laws there. From these three codes, Mongolian law - yas, Tsaadzhin-Bichik and the Mongol-Oirat charter, one can see the gradual elevation of a woman to the position of a slave. Yasa assigns a woman the role of a keeper of the hearth, an assistant and a representative of her husband. The presence of a woman in the war is assumed, and with certain duties in battle. Tsaadzhin-Bichik gives a woman certain rights only when she sits in her place by the fire, that is, when she protects the interests of the family. As soon as she leaves her seat, this is regarded as interference in other matters, and she immediately loses her rights. The orders of the Mongol-Oirat khans see in a woman a being of value only as the mother of future men.

Despite the fact that a serious execution threatened for insulting a woman, the husband was a complete master in the family. He could leave his wife and even kill her. If the wife left her husband and for someone else, the husband had the right to take back the wife, and besides, the cattle of the one to whom the wife left.

Of course, there are beautiful girls among representatives of any nationality, but the Mongolians especially struck him after a couple of years of living in this country. And it's not just about outer beauty.

For two whole years I lived in Mongolia. The fact that there is not only a steppe, but also high mountains, wide rivers, huge lakes and even the driest desert on the planet with dinosaurs - let guidebooks, Mongols and Google tell you.

I will tell you a little about the Mongols. Before entering the Land of the Eternally Blue Sky, there was no experience of communicating with Asian women at all (Kazakh classmates - well, these were their own girls), so there were a lot of impressions.

Mongolians are beautiful. Yes, yes, in the first two weeks it only seems to you that you cannot distinguish one from the other. Give yourself some time to get used to, take a closer look - and you will very clearly form the criteria “I would get acquainted” or “no-no, I am married and have a lot of children.”

Moreover, if you watch how all normal men are from behind, sooner or later a discovery will befall you - they all have long hair. Shoulder length is very short. Most likely, or to the waist, or even lower. And this looks pretty cool.

Mongolians are attractive. It turned out that femininity is not measured by the cut of the eyes or the width of the cheekbones. Moreover, chemistry works in such a way that you will soon stop paying attention to the fact that you are communicating with a representative of a haplogroup that is not at all yours.

Mongolians are educated. So, yes, in a country with a population that barely passed the 3 million mark in 2015 (sort of), higher education is the lot of almost all girls. The Mongols told me that the guy - he already has a head and muscles, somehow get out, and the girl is weak and should be smart.

Almost all young people speak not only Russian and English, but also Korean, Chinese, Japanese, many people spit German, even French. There are many tourists there all year round, so they have enough practice.

Mongolians sing amazingly. Song is an integral part of every Mongolian's life. Only you can’t sing in bed - it’s a bad omen. And so - karaoke, drinking, street chants, decent cafe-restaurants will definitely have decent performers. If you really get to Ulaanbaatar - visit our church, listen to the church choir.

Mongolians are infinitely loyal. If I had watched the film "Mongol" by Bodrov before living there, I would not have understood half of it. But now I’m talking seriously - this, of course, is a joke, how the heroine pays off the Chinese there, but in reality they are the same, these red-cheeked grandmothers. For you, they are ready for a very, very much.

Just keep in mind: marry a mongolian - married the whole huge family. Respect for elders is boundless. At first, it will even be unusual for you: if you are at least six months older, you are necessarily “you”, not “you”. Even the drunk grandfather at the bus stop, who came up to you two and is not very fond of foreigners - he is older, and she will communicate with him like a father.

But they don’t know how to cook very well ... The set of Mongolian dishes is quite severe, and although they are tasty, don’t expect special talents from a woman. Such is it, nomadic life: eat what they give, and say thank you that there is food in general in a harsh land.

And finally Mongolians love their country, their language, their traditions very, very much. With a high degree of probability, you will speak Mongolian much faster than you yourself expected. Although it is unlikely that this will be useful to you somewhere outside of Mongolia (well, in Buryatia, maybe you will exchange a few words or in Kalmykia, although both pronunciation and vocabulary differ quite strongly).

In general, be friends, proletarians and coalitionists of all countries, and unite.

Yurts, nomads, arrows, koumiss - this is how Mongolia seems to many not too dedicated observers. The inhabitants of this country are really in no hurry to change the steppe for a stone jungle, and live horses for iron ones. However, with regard to one of the main modern indicators of the civilization of the people - the attitude towards women - Mongolia has stepped further than many. Even in a remote yurt without electricity and running water, sitting by the fire, the father of the family dreams of sending his daughters to study in the city, and not marrying them off as soon as possible. How some of the freest women in the world live and what they grieve about, Lenta.ru found out.

“I love to sing, but my dream is to become a flight attendant to travel the world, see developed countries and understand why they call Mongolia poor,” says 15-year-old Kaliyuna Evra, a resident of the Mongolian aimag (region) Khentii. She lives in a yurt with her herd parents. There is no water, electricity or gas in her dwelling, and in winter, when the temperature drops to minus 40 degrees Celsius, work can be especially hard.

Kaliyuna sings a traditional song for a BBC TV crew, standing in the middle of the steppe in front of her home. The wind blows her black hair and shakes her earrings. She smiles, and it does not seem that life seems to her as hard as foreigners imagine it to be. She is wearing a bright red degel, a traditional knee-length robe with a stand-up collar. The degal style is the same for men and women, which is symbolic. Despite the fact that the Mongols honor traditions and follow them, the place of a woman in society has long been not determined by the precepts of the elderly.

From yurt to big business

Almost a third of the working Mongols, like the Evra family, live in yurts and are engaged in cattle breeding. Animal meat is one of the country's main exports along with wool and leather. Until recently, girls like Kaliyuna could only follow in the family footsteps. However, the availability of education and the Internet has changed the typical image of a young Mongolian woman - now she is ambitious, well-educated, able to provide for herself and does not depend on her father or husband.

Buya Mandarch lives in Ulaanbaatar and owns a company with her husband that imports truck parts from China. “I don’t think it’s more difficult for a woman to do business. In my opinion, Mongolians are more industrious than men, and their contribution to the family budget is greater, ”she said.

According to the World Bank, in 2014, 40 percent of all companies in the country were owned or co-owned by women. While there is still a significant difference between men's and women's salaries, Bui said, studies show that both, especially those who come to the capital, face the same problems. It's not easy for men to get a job. A huge role for both men and women in getting a job is played by personal connections, place of birth and even the sign of the zodiac, and not at all by gender.

Mongolia, despite a relatively small population of three million people, half of whom live in the capital, is developing rapidly. Ulaanbaatar is a modern city with high-rise buildings and a diverse nightlife, and not a nomad camp, as many imagine it to be. The problems of women here, too, do not boil down to the need to have time to do housework, yard work and manage the children. Successful and educated young Mongolian women spend their leisure time in bars and discos in search of partners, who are critically lacking in the country.

Too good

In one of the capital's nightclubs, the vast majority of visitors are young girls. They are well dressed and educated. A stand-up comedian jokes from the stage: “Our women are beautiful! They're great friends, but they're nuts!" Several guys sitting in the front row laugh, but the “crazy” Mongolians are not impressed by the joke.

Over the past couple of decades, Mongolian families have invested much more in their daughters than in their sons. Someone sends girls to study in the capital with the hope that later they will take care of them. Others want girls to acquire skills that are more useful in the modern world, and consider caring for livestock to be a difficult and masculine task. This leads to the so-called gender inequality “in reverse”.

According to some reports, 62 percent of university graduates in the country are women. In addition, there are fewer unemployed women, and they live an average of 10 years longer.

Such a favorable picture at first glance actually gives the Mongols a lot of trouble. Girls, unlike their parents, cannot find a worthy partner. In the capital, where one and a half million people live, there are 60,000 more women than men. In addition, in cities, about 40 percent of boys over 15 are married, while for girls this figure does not exceed 32 percent.

An overseas master's degree former economist who preferred to keep her name secret shared that she has been looking for a partner for a serious relationship for many years. She is 39, and now she no longer makes any special demands on men. “I would take care and accept it as it is, I don’t ask for more,” she says.

If in neighboring China the unrealistic requirements for girls look something like this: study, be the best, find a well-paid job, and then instead of a career, find a man with whom you will live like a princess, then in Mongolia, after a woman has become successful, there is no suitable men. They just can't compete, says the foreign-educated owner of a Japanese restaurant in the capital. “I feel it,” says Mandukhai Tsogtbal. “A lot of my girlfriends and friends tell me to just shut up, look dumb and ask more questions.”

The words of the girls are confirmed by research, which notes that Mongolian men consider women to be more ambitious. According to them, it is not very attractive. Many even wonder why Mongolians invest so much in self-development, if this only increases the risk of being left without a husband?

There are good reasons for this attitude. Thousands of men lost their jobs when privatization began in the 1990s. Entrepreneurial people became millionaires, and ordinary hard workers, for the most part, became alcoholics and unemployed. “Women now look down on men because men have lagged behind them,” complains the head of the Men's Association of Gov-Sumber aimag. “No woman wants to live with a half-educated and ignorant one. On the other hand, men are sure that girls are looking for those who are richer and smarter than themselves.

Feminism on horseback

The World Economic Forum report on the gender gap states that in 2017 Mongolia was ranked 53rd in the world in this indicator. For comparison, the United States is four positions ahead of the country, and Russia is almost 20 behind. True, one must make a reservation that the population in these two countries is many times larger than the Mongolian one.

There is nothing surprising in the fact that Mongolians are strong and independent. The country throughout history was one of the few Asian societies in which a woman had both rights and duties.

In the family and in the household, women played an important role. The hard life of the steppe means that they must work on an equal footing with men. However, herding cows and horses was traditionally considered too hard work - and it was mostly husbands and sons who did it. The same was true for horse racing. However, now the best riders are selected for the competition, and gender does not matter much.

13-year-old Michidma Gombosuren dreams of taking part in the traditional Mongolian naadam competition, also called the "three men's games". They compete in wrestling, horse racing and archery. Previously, women were not allowed to participate, but now representatives of both sexes can participate in the last two disciplines.

“I love riding, especially fast horses. I can ride as fast as any guy, the teenager shares. - Some girls are afraid of fast horses, they do not hold well in the saddle and fall. That is why they are not always selected for naadam. The last selection Michidma also did not pass, she lost to the boy. However, this did not embarrass or upset her at all, she plans to train further.

Unlike many other women in the Middle East, Central and East Asia, the duties of the Mongols were not limited to housework. While the men went to graze, war or hunt, the women were left with the entire household. Such an important role in the economy also affected the status of women in ruling circles. Historians note that the mother of Khubilai - the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire and the founder of the Mongolian Yuan dynasty in China - Sorkhakhtani-beki was a very intelligent and influential woman. This, of course, had a lesser effect on ordinary Mongolians. However, it is noteworthy that after the death of their husbands in the war, widows did not necessarily marry the relatives of the deceased or go to live in their house, as was customary in other Asian states. On the contrary, they could take over his duties.

In addition, the Mongols cared more about a woman's ability to have children than about her innocence, so sex before marriage was not and is not now a hard taboo.

Nevertheless, Mongolia cannot be called a paradise of feminism. Be that as it may, this is not Iceland or Norway. The great freedom of the Mongols has always been limited to the confines of patriarchy.

Women also face low wages, harassment and condescending attitudes from men. The authorities are unable to provide them with decent medical care, support for mothers with many children, single mothers and women in difficult life situations. Many accomplished Mongolians create non-governmental organizations and provide all possible assistance, because not everyone has the opportunity to go to study abroad or even to a metropolitan educational institution.

There is no law in Mongolia condemning domestic violence. It is rather difficult to punish a husband who has raised his hand against his wife; at most, he faces administrative responsibility. The situation is aggravated by the fact that it is impossible to report the violence anonymously, so many victims prefer to remain silent.

The country has a law prohibiting discrimination based on gender. Even though half of the country's workforce is made up of women, they are still unable to work in industries that are physically demanding or life-threatening. They receive, according to some data, an average of 16 percent less than men. In addition, questions about real equality arise because only 17 percent of deputies in the Khural (parliament) of the country are women.

Mongolians are beautiful, educated and passionate about work. All doors are open before them, and no one imposes their will on them. They are free, strong and independent. They have fulfilled the dream of thousands of women around the world, becoming better than men in many ways. However, contrary to expectations, this became their main headache.