Discusses gender stereotypes in Georgian, Daghestani, and Chechen-Ingush cultures, with a particular focus on how these stereotypes pertain to the ideal of female virginity, and how gendered expectations affect women's' lives

Focusing particularly on rape in the context of the Chechen war, and as reflected in twentieth-century Georgian literature (K. Gamsaxurdia, M. Javaxishvili) this contribution discusses sexually-motivated violence against women in the Caucasus