Girl Power

The way males regard woman is a positive legacy of nearly two centuries of Russian dominance. Men give up their seats on the bus, refuse to pay, and keep the doors open. Azerbaijan became one of the first countries in the Islamic world to grant women the right to vote in 1918. Women also hold high-level political posts and serve in the military. Despite the fact that the majority of Azerbaijani women work outside the home, women remain underrepresented in high-level roles, particularly top commercial positions. In 2017, women made up 78.1 percent of all teaching personnel (including 51.9 percent of all university lecturers), 64.9 percent of all medical professionals, and 40.2 percent of all athletes in Azerbaijan. During the same time period, however, women made up only 28.7 percent of city workers and 20.9 percent of registered business owners.

Leyla Mammadbeyova, born in Baku in 1931, was one of the first Soviet female aviators and paratroopers, as well as the first in the Caucasus and the Middle East. Around 600,000 Azerbaijanis participated in World War II as members of the Red Army, with 10,000 of them being women who willingly signed up and served both as military and medical personnel, the most notable of whom were sniper Ziba Ganiyeva and aviator Zuleykha Seyidmammadova. During the active phase of the first Nagorno-Karabakh War in the 1990s, Azerbaijan's 74,000 military troops included 2,000 women, 600 of whom directly participated in military actions. Women serve in the Azerbaijani army on a volunteer basis; there are now roughly 1,000 women serving in the Azerbaijani army.