A couple months ago, I met a girl from Kyrgyzstan.  When you’re in DC, you run into people like that, that make you realize you pretty much know nothing about the world.  When I got home to read up on Kyrgyzstan, I came upon the custom of bride kidnapping.

Well, I kind of already knew about it.  Except the only knowledge I had of bride kidnapping was from the classic Soviet comedy, Caucasian Prisoner (as in Prisoner in the Caucaus mountains, not some white guy. And it’s not even prisoner, because the word for prisoner in Russian is both masculine and feminine, so the translation of the title is more like Caucasian Prisonerette.  Never mind.  Just imagine it’s funny in your head.)

Anyway, the premise of the light-hearted comedy, which me and every other person growing up from 1965-present day have watched at least 100 times a year (required in your Russian passport) is that this guy Shurik (nickname for Alexander) is a bumbling recorder of folk tales and rituals and goes to the Caucus mountains, presumably in Georgia, where he witnesses a real kidnapping of a girl but is duped into thinking he is just performing it as a joke.  Hilarity ensues.  Here’s a scene with the famous song from the movie.

So, whenever bride kidnapping is brought up in Russia, people think of this movie and how funny, innocent, and sweet it was.  That’s what I first thought when I read about it.

Unfortunately, bride kidnapping is real and it is very, very horrible. Since the collapse of the rigid moral rules and enforcement in the Soviet Union, cases have gone way up.

A mixture of ceremonial bride theft and genuine kidnapping marks the practice in both countries, Werner notes. “Although most women feel pressured to accept the marriage, some women decide to return home. Many of the same people who told me that they believe it is wrong for a man to abduct a woman without her consent also believe that it is wrong for an abducted woman to reject the marriage,” says Werner in the study.

What happens is that the man looking for a bride rents a taxi (in the past it used to be horses) and goes looking for the girl he wants to make his wife. She is taken and brought into his house to be readied for the wedding that she, 99% of the time, does not want.  What is most surprising is that the women of the house pressure her to do it, and eventually, somehow, she ends up marrying the man. Sometimes her parents don’t even know where she is.  Sometimes they agree to the kidnapping. It’s ridiculous that this is looked at as a passage to manhood for many men, who sometimes kidnap girls as young as 17.  What was I doing at seventeen?  Packing for college.  These girls will be forced to milk cows, herd sheep, and yoked into manual labor essential to the survival of the man’s family.

I guess it’s not so surprising, because the same kind of thing happens in all cultures: the women usually perpetuate the negative stereotype  more than the men.  In religious Arab culture, it is often women who cluck at how uncovered another woman is, and in Western culture, other women judge us by our weight and appearance more than the men we often strive to catch the eye of.

There are some statistics on the practice, but they are three years old, and it is hard to collect data among Kyrgyz villages.  They are still scary.

• Some estimates of bride kidnapping rates in Kyrgyzstan put the figure at about 30 per cent of all marriages. Other studies suggest that, in some regions, up to 80 per cent of marriages take place through kidnapping.
• Bride kidnapping is widely perceived to be an ‘authentic Kyrgyz tradition’, believed to have developed over time in the remote regions of the Tien Shan mountain range.
• In one Kyrgyz village 63 percent of married women and girls ages 16 to 25 had been kidnapped without their consent.

The statistics are bad to imagine.  But the most startling evidence is this video. It is is over 18:00 minutes long, but it’s a must-watch.  It’s graphic and horrible because they actually film a kidnapping.   And most of all, it’s heartbreaking, that Kyrgyz women (particularly from villages, it seems) have no say in their destiny, and that this practice is so deeply engrained in Kyrgyz culture.  This is one case where cultural relativism does not apply. These girls really are prisoners in the Caucuses.

This week, I had lunch at the World Bank. It was AWESOME.

Since I love international politics, international economics, and pretty much international anything (international Nutella), me going to lunch at the World Bank is like a hypochondriac being invited to tour the Centers for Disease Control.

From the moment I set foot in the door, I instantly forgot about the concern and criticism surrounding the effectiveness of the Bank’s programs (found here, here, and here.)  I was in awe.  There was artwork from around the world.  You could go to different lectures, about Iraq or water security, or any other international development topic you could think of.  People walked around in both suits and kimonos.  (Well, ok, not kimonos, but they were dressed pretty awesome-ly.)

Near the courtyard in the middle is a fountain (but no Oompa Loompas)

Not only was the building gorgeous, but the thrill of being surrounded by so many people doing so many different things in the realm of international economics was very exciting, not only on a personal, but also on a professional level.  Even though D.C. is the best place to build your career if you are trying to be an international economic expert, I should admit I haven’t tried my hardest to network and join the community, the biggest reason being that it might be possible for me to move to Philadelphia in the (near?) future, reducing that opportunity and severing ties significantly.  A dilemma I always have is whether I should work on building my network here and now given that I might not be here to leverage it in the future.

Beautiful hallway with paintings along it

Although I couldn’t help thinking that the building and all of the artwork was paid for partly with American tax dollars, it was a real  treat. The sushi was delicious, too.

Blurry pictures don't do it justice

I’m going to have to come back to further investigate.  The sushi situation.

This sushi massacre clearly deserves the implementation of economic sanctions.

As you may recall, I was super-hyped to receive my SAS book to review from SAS Press.

The book is Learning SAS by Example: A Programmer’s Guide by Ron Cody, and you can pick it up here or here.

A little bit of background about how I came to SAS (aka, life history):

One of the reasons I was really excited to receive it is that, I was going to purchase it anyway.  As someone starting in SAS (my company has a lot of data housed in this language and plans to build additional models related to SAS), I started out from scratch. Although I’ve had previous program-oriented experience before (both with very light dabbling in C++ and HTML and with other software packages like STATA in college), I didn’t have much experience actually manipulating large amounts of data with anything other than Excel or Access.

Intuitively (and with a little cajoling from my programmer husband) , I realized that learning SAS would be important to my professional development, both as a consultant and an economic modeler, and a number of other roles besides.  While we do use statistical software packages such as eViews at our company, I’ve noticed that SAS is more broadly applicable outside the relatively narrow scope of economic modeling in industries such as pharmaceutical, transportation, and academia.  So, I decided to make it one of my priorities in my professional development to learn it.

Getting Started with SAS: Literature

While my job gave me some guidance through mentoring and sending me to SAS I:Programming Basics class, when I was given problems to solve, it was the case that I was sometimes on my own and didn’t understand SAS on the level that I needed to.  I did have The Little SAS Book (also known as the Little Blue Book) to start out with.

However, it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for.  While it did introduce me to SAS (and I recommend it as an addition to anyone’s library) it does so in a cursory way and is not as readily accessible to reference as Learning by Example is, so far.

Positives

Some of the things I like about Learning by Example from the standpoint of a beginner are:

• An attached CD with all the programs that are in the book (something Little Blue does not have) so you know you are doing the sample problems right (a feature of my SAS intro class that I also really appreciated)
• Right off the bat, a clear explanation of what SAS is (helps beginners who’ve never worked with statistical software packages a lot) that is more of a clear-cut overview than what Little Blue has
• A sample SAS program in the first couple of pages that I’ve already bookmarked and keep going back to every time I need to start a program from scratch that has the data, infile, and input commands (vital to me because I work with a lot of txt and xls files).

  An aside about Enterprise Guide, the version I use at work.  Using Enterprise Guide and this book together is slightly frustrating because, to me, EG is clumsier than regular, old base SAS and perhaps I should look into a special book on it, but everything is easier to do in base SAS.

  

  Yup, already all marked up.

Negatives

Two negatives I’ve thus far encountered:

• No bolding of terms or key definitions (maybe I’m just used to this from textbooks in college)
• No libname or proc print statements in the first program, which would also be useful as  a template when I’m starting from scratch
• From skimming, it looks like there’s a big focus on creating reports and data graphs, something all SAS books have focus on, and, as someone working with raw data, this isn’t very relevant to my needs, so there are whole chapters I might skip.

Thus far, though, the book has been great and clear, and I look forward to working my way through it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about women lately.  I’ve seen a couple articles floating around online about the role of women in the workplace, with children, and so on.  Penelope Trunk talks a lot about it in her blog (which you can Google because I’m still undecided whether I want to link to her).   While I’m convinced that she’s having a mental breakdown, in the meantime, she is running a company and taking care of two children, one of which is autistic.

There are studies about whether being married makes a woman happier.  There are articles about whether women can balance working, being a mother, etc.  And there are whole books about womens’ psychology and how we react to each other, why women are mean, and what we do to get ahead in our careers. What I’ve been thinking about most lately is work-life balance and how I see it reflected in my life, as well as the lives of the women I work with and interact with on a daily basis.

Do women necessarily need to foresake marriage and children to have a career? That’s the ever-present question in Washington, DC, and in all big cities, where the most single women always are.   When I moved here, I didn’t realize how many women in my age group were single.  But here is the map:

(from The Boston Globe)

Look at how many single ladies are waiting to put a ring on it on the East Coast, as well as in the South.   The women remain single, and they remain single for longer, into their early thirties.  I run across this all the time, both in personal and work life. In DC, women work.  They work for consultancies and non-profits, for intergovernmental bodies and Senators, and they work at amazing job opportunities for ridiculously long hours.  Then, they go to graduate school.  And they get PHDs.  In their free time, they go out to really cool clubs, meet cool people, and dance until the early morning.  And then, they dish about it on weekends with their girlfriends over mimosas.  Then, they go get a manicure.

I spend my days finishing my work and then brainstorming about whether I have enough energy to make dinner (because I usually don’t plan out a menu a week in advance because I am Lazy) and worrying whether we will have to go grocery shopping.  Then, I try to get home as early as I can because I want to spend more time with Mr. B since I don’t see him for eight hours and Life is Short and You Should Spend Time With Your Loved Ones (but, more likely,  I probably want him to give me a foot massage).  After that, we go to the gym, together, and maybe watch a movie.

Being married in DC at age 22 seems, well, kind of uncool.  It seems like a hassle, something that prevents people from doing what they really envision in life.  Obviously, I don’t see it that way, or I wouldn’t have spent 4 hours alternating between doing the hora, Russian techno dances, and desperately wanting to get at least a little bit drunk at my own wedding.  I think marriage is great, as well as important in the long scheme of things.  But there is always the perception that being a young(er) married woman pursuing a career is weird, because no one even starts thinking about marriage here until they are 25.  If you are married when you are young, you are either really religious, or in the military, but nothing in between.

I think the one place this is an exception is any community of young Russian professionals.  As I’ve said before, Russian Jewish (and Russian) immigrants are probably the most conservative immigrant group without being religious.  Early marriage is preferred, and as a result, was never unnatural to me.  I remember my mom telling me she got married last out of her group of friends, at 24.    Anytime I meet Russian people my age, for some reason, I always feel a little more comfortable telling them I’m married, as if they won’t judge me.

Anyway, this blog post isn’t going in any conclusive direction.  I just wanted to bring up some issues of age, marriage, and career that I’ve been thinking about lately.  It’s probably time for my foot massage, anyway.

I just finished watching Roman Holiday with Mr. B, who harbors a long-time crush on Audrey Hepburn, cause he’s classy like that.  It’s actually one of the reasons I admire him most.  I like to think that, not being able to marry Audrey, he saw me as the second-best choice. I also like to think that I will lose 5 lbs simply by switching to low-fat ice cream.  I live in delusion-land sometimes.  Come join me, it’s great over here (lots of vanilla and rocky road for all.)

Anyway, so I was completely taken by how charming and simple and elegant the movie was, as was Ms. Hepburn herself, and many movies from that era.   The main premise, for the unenlightened (which included me just a few short hours ago) is that A. is a princess of an unnamed European principality who is on a tour of Euorpe.  She’s already been to a great many countries, and by the time she reaches Italy, the last leg of her tour, she’s exhausted.   She must constantly courtsey and greet royal leaders, wear uncomfortable footwear, and be escorted around wearing big white dresses.  In a way, it’s like my wedding day, only I didn’t get to drink champagne with German dignitaries.  Only complimentary vodka in a container made of ice provided by the Russian restaurant where we had our wedding.  Hey, it was on the house.

By the time her handler reads her her schedule, she is exhausted and starts going into hysterics. She has her life all planned out and the stress of the day waits.  She decides to escape.  And during the 24 hours that she’s gone, she completely lets loose, meeting an American along the way.  She gets to do all these things she never planned on before.  She smokes her first cigarette, eats gelato, and rides a scooter, among other things you can no longer do in Italy because they have probably been subregulated by some government agency.

The day is completely carefree, but at the end, she has to go back to her royal duties.  I think we all need days like that sometimes, where we completely unplug.   I usually check my email at least once after work.  I’m on Twitter every weekend.  But this weekend, I didn’t do any of that.  I just spend time with my family.  Today, particularly, me, Mr. B, and my parents went to ride bikes.  At first I didn’t want to, but I really liked it.  I didn’t have my cell phone or laptop, it was just me and the bike.  Oh, and a bunch of cows on the side of the bike trail.   I call her Caramella.

It was quiet, I didn’t have to think about what I was going to blog next, or whether I needed to check my email.  It was just me and my family.  And today, where we spend about 80 bajillion hours of our lives at the computer, that’s especially important.

I think especially in this world of Twitter, Blackberries, constant streaming something or other, Friendfeeds, and 1000+ articles in my Google Reader since I got back, it’s just sometimes important to let loose like Princess Ana and eat a gelato, if only to go back to the grind.  Make mine fat-free.