First female fighters in Karabakh depicted in Lena Mucha’s photos
The Washington Post has published photos of female militaries who have decided to challenge the traditional gender roles and pick up arms following the last year clashes around the Nagorno Karabakh
“They are groundbreakers, facing resistance from many conservatives because they decided to go to a career where women are still not accepted,” photographer Lena Mucha told the newspaper, after her trip to Armenia and Karabakh.
The photographer has told that in Armenia’s capital of Yerevan, 23 female recruits entered the military academy in 2014, the first year women were accepted. A year later in Nagorno-Karabakh, girls joined the military high school in Stepanakert for the first time,
Mucha visited both institutions last year and said that despite the fact that many had family members who served in the military, there was still much resistance to women joining. “Women should not be in the army, it’s not their place,” one of the physical instructors at the Yerevan Military Academy told Mucha, “They are just not like men.”
Photos are aveliable here.