Azerbaijani women, online mediatized activism and offline mass mobilization

Despite its post-Soviet history, Azerbaijan is an under-investigated country in academic research - compared with the other former constituencies, such as the Baltic countries or Russia, of the USSR-and gender questions of the contemporary Azerbaijani society are even less touched on. Within the current context of the post-"Arab Spring" era of mediatized connectivity and collective political engagement, this article looks into and analyzes how Azerbaijani women participate in different online and offline social and political movements, and if (and how) they are impeded by the increased state authoritarianism in Azerbaijan. Using data, obtained from online information resources, yearly reports of human rights organizations, focus group discussions, and interviews, the study detects four major activist constellations within the Azerbaijani field of gendered politics. Based on the analysis of conditions of detected groups, the article claims that flash mobs, a tactic employed mainly by liberal activists, emerge as the promising way in overcoming the normative nature of Azerbaijani patriarchal society, thus providing an opportunity for normalization and internalization of the feeling of being on the street and acting in concert with others-the practices which might lead towards an increasing participation of (especially young) women in the political processes of the country.