Women in Georgia face gender inequality in many aspects of their lives. While academic studies often concentrate on structural oppressions, women’s experiences of everyday manifestations of gender inequality are absent from academic scholarship. Women have a space to discuss these topics only among friends and closed Facebook groups. This thesis is concerned with how women experience and respond to gender inequality in their everyday lives in urban Georgia, specifically in urban public spaces and at home. It critically engages with Western-dominated literature about space, place, and gender and explores how women are oppressed or liberated in and through these spaces.

In this research, I draw on the qualitative data that emerged from the interviews with 42 women and participant observations that I conducted in the three largest cities of Georgia – Tbilisi, Batumi, and Kutaisi. Using thematic data analysis, I explored how women experienced the gendering of home and urban public spaces and how contemporary gender ideologies in the country (namely, post-socialist and contemporary neotraditionalist) influenced this process. The thesis argues that both home and urban public spaces can be sites of, on the one hand, oppression and, on the other hand, contesting, challenging and negotiating gender hierarchies. It shows the variety of ways in which women in Georgia respond to everyday manifestations of gender inequality and how they often have the potential to destabilise gendered power relations.