Who Stays, Who Leaves: Transformation of Pastoral life in Mongolia and Gendered Rural Exodus

Abstract (English)

This paper examines the gendered dimensions of demographic transformation in rural Mongolia, where the traditional way of life is being restructured and being shaped by urban life amid increasing female exodus. In recent decades, a discernible trend has emerged wherein young women relocate to urban centers in pursuit of education, employment, and socio-economic autonomy. This rural exodus has resulted in the feminization of mobility and, conversely, the masculinization of immobility, whereby young men are disproportionately left behind to sustain livestock-based livelihoods under intensifying environmental and economic pressures in rural Mongolia.
Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork and semi-structured interviews conducted in herding communities in Mongolia, the study elucidates the ways in which the traditional knowledge of herding; how rural values and the outflow of women is reshaping domestic labor arrangements, kinship responsibilities, and the broader socio-cultural fabric of rural life. The absence of women within these communities destabilizes traditional gender roles and generates new vulnerabilities for male herders, who often confront increased workloads, psychosocial isolation, and limited access to alternative life trajectories.
This research challenges static anthropological representations of herding as a timeless and male-dominated vocation by situating it within broader processes of post-socialist transformation, market integration, and urban-centered development agendas. It contends that the emergent gendered configurations of mobility and stasis necessitate an epistemic redefinition of how rurality, gender, and tradition are conceptualized within world anthropologies. By foregrounding the lived experiences of those rendered socially and spatially immobile, this paper contributes to critical debates on the politics of presence and absence in anthropological knowledge production, and underscores the imperative of decentering normative narratives that obscure the complex interplay of gender, migration, and structural change in contemporary Mongolia.