Click here to access Gulnara Karakulova's Oral History audio files.

Additionally, you can click here to access the accompanying time-coded summary of the interview. Full transcripts and other oral history materials are available at the British Library Sound Archive, London, United Kingdom, and at the WLP office in Bethesda, MD. For more information, please consult our Oral History Archive of the Global Women’s Movement Terms of Use. 

About the Interviewee* 

Gulnara Karakulova (Kazakhstan) is founder and Director of the Shymkent Women's Resource Centre Kazakhstan, which has successfully implemented 27 social projects since its inception in 1998. The organization's activity is focused on the development of leadership skills, the promotion of freedom of speech and the right of personal security, the prohibition of discrimination, and the promotion of women’s role in society.

Karakulova works with marginalized groups for greater inclusion in decision-making processes and to improve their social status and social participation. In 1999 she implemented a project on women's leadership, which is still ongoing. From 2002 to 2008, she ran shelters for women who were victims of domestic violence and trafficking. In 2007, she opened a social beauty salon that provided vocational training and certification to promote the economic independence of girls and women. In 2003 the Women’s Resource Center was nominated “The best organization headed by a woman.”

In 2005 Karakulova earned a diploma from the Minister of Environment for her participation in the National Women's Fair of ideas and goods, “Inspired woman-2.” She has higher pedagogical education, with a major in philology, and she has taught Russian, Kazakh and World literature in the South Kazakhstan State University named after Mukhtar Auezov. Karakulova is a member of the National Commission for Women, Family and Demographic Policy at the mayor’s office of Shymkent, and a patron of the orphanage № 4 in the village Sairam, South Kazakhstan region.

*This brief biography was recorded concurrently with the subject’s interview for the WLP Oral History Archive of the Global Women’s Movement.

About the WLP Oral History Project

The WLP Oral History Archive of the Global Women’s Movement preserves stories and lessons of women’s rights activists from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and South America who have left their mark on the struggle for women’s advancement. We have collected dozens of oral histories from 25 countries, and the project is ongoing. Since 2014, WLP has collaborated with the Sound Archive of the British Library to host the repository.

Read more ABOUT OUR ORAL HISTORY PROJECT.

Read our Oral History Archive of the Global Women’s Movement Terms of Use.