I finished my high school studies and trying to plan which college to go to. I wanted to study abroad and I had very good grades and one of the places I could have gone was America. I submitted all of my paperwork but I did not get a study position, although my friend Tanya did get a one of the positions.
There were only 20 places open so the odds of getting a spot was not very likely. The reason for this was that the Uzbekistan government doesn’t want people to go and study abroad and then stay there. The goal is for the student to come back with their education. The common line of thought was that a girl will find a man, get married have children and stay there, which is why most of the people selected for that program were men.
It sounds like the current mindset limits women in Uzbekistan, and that is true but only partially. If the company that you apply to is a Usbek company then they will probably hire Usbek women, and the common stereotype is that when they get pregnant they won’t be coming back to work. I am considered to be Russian and that actually helps. The Russians will work, so even if they do get married and have children they would be coming back to work.
In the end I ended up in Japan as they were trying to build up their international program and this included grants to a lot of their foreign students. The grants didn’t cover everything, especially for the first six months but as I was living with my sister and her husband I didn’t have much in the way of bills. I worked in a foreign language school as an English speaker to earn a little extra cash.
My friend Tanya did actually beat the odds and got one of the few open spots in the program to the USA. She was both a woman and from Azerbaijan but in the end she did at least prove the stereo type. She met someone there, got married, had children and never came back.