At what extent the Armenian society is conservative?

Recently, Pew Research Center has published a study according to which 76% of the Armenian population considers premarital sex as immoral, 69% – abortion, 96% – prostitution, 98% – homosexuality and according to the opinion of 56% divorce is also immoral.

The survey was conducted in 18 post-Soviet and former “socialist” countries and, accordingly, Armenia is in the first place with all indicators. In other words, our country’s society, according to researchers, is ultra-protective. However, it turned out that they do not agree with such an image in Armenia, and although the Armenian community continues to qualify as conservative, but with concrete reservations, the results of this research are closely related.

Gohar Shahnazaryan, co-founder of the Women’s Resource Center, Director of the Center for Gender Studies and Leadership at YSU, said that a Georgian organization was responsible for conducting a survey in Armenia, which refused to provide information on methodology or Interviewers in Armenia. Thus, Gohar Shahnazaryan even refuses to comment on the results of this survey because there is insufficient information on methodology. But the subject, according to her, has been touched not only in this international research, but also in others.

Cultural anthropologist, Candidate of Historical Sciences Aghasi Tadevosyan thinks that double standards in Armenia are an inseparable part of society. The expert does not doubt that they have given such answers to these questions, but that does not mean that the respondents really think so. And that is the biggest problem.

In any case, the participants of the discussion agreed that the Armenian society is still conservative. According to Gohar Shahnazaryan, the society is conservative because today survival strategy is dominant in Armenia and a number of other factors. In other words, it is more important not to state that the Armenian society is conservative, but rather to understand why it is so and by what it is conditioned.

Full text in Armenian