The young woman recalls:  ‘My aunts always worked on an equal footing with men, despite the patriarchy. This is strange to me. I believe that if a woman, along with her husband, provides for the family, then their rights should be equal. I rarely saw the women that I grew up with happy.’

A young girl looks at the camera from behind a traditional garment. The mixed media artwork tells the life story of this young woman and of her relatives in Turkmenistan. In April 2022, the country introduced new restrictions on women: women are prohibited from undergoing a number of cosmetic procedures, wearing tight-fitting trousers, and riding in the front seat of private cars. Although women enjoy equality with men at work, they do not have equal rights in the family..

The Global Gender Gap Index World Economic Forum 2021 report does not include data for Turkmenistan. This art project aims to draw attention to the issues of gender inequality in countries that remain invisible to the world.

Angelina Bogdanovais a visual artist based in Moscow. Born in 1981 in Ukraine (Pervomaisk, Lugansk region), in 2014, with the outbreak of war in eastern Ukraine, she emigrated to the Russian Federation.