Book about fates of 13 Caucasian women presented in Moscow

The book, prepared with the support of the Heinrich Böll Fund, tells about lives of the women, whose example can inspire and destroy stereotypes about the hard situation of women in the society of Northern Caucasian. Irina Kosterina, the programme coordinator of the Fund, and Evgenia Volunkova, the author of the book entitled "Thirteen Amazing Women of Northern Caucasus", spoke about this at an online presentation of the book in Moscow.

It seemed to the above Fund that the cliché of Northern Caucasus as "the worst place to live" was not true, Ms Kosterina has noted.

The book tells about Karina Mezova, a mountain guide, the only girl from the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR) who has conquered the Everest. She had been told that storming mountain peaks was "not a woman's business."

The book also tells the story of Patimat Saigitmagomedova, who put off her pension for many years, and then spent all her savings on building a road and repairing a bridge in her native village of Sivukh.

Another heroine of the book is the first female goldsmith in the Caucasus, Manaba Magomedova. More than 200 of her works of art are kept in Russian and foreign museums. They didn't want to teach the girl in goldsmith skills in Kubachi; it was not a woman' business, but she managed to achieve everything thanks to her perseverance and labour.