The Pankisi Gorge is a remote mountainous enclave in the far northeast corner of the Republic of Georgia. Since December 1994, when war broke out between the Russian-backed central government in Grozny and a determined group of Chechen resistance fighters, Pankisi has witnessed an influx of refugees from Chechnya. Though not recognized or officially monitored by international agencies, Pankisi has become a refuge from state-sponsored terror for thousands of people who, ironically, are accused of waging terror at home. Chechens have a reputation for rugged individualism, even among the people of the Caucasus who – by any standards – are accustomed to rugged conditions and nurture a fierce sense of national pride and independence in the light of imperialist tendencies of surrounding nations. By most estimates, approximately 5,000 Chechens escaped the deadly war in Chechnya by fleeing to Georgia's Pankisi Region. 

Life in Pankisi is especially hard for women. In a Valley of tradition, women struggle To build independent lives. More than 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, women in many parts of Georgia have become more outspoken on gender issues. But in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge, a three-kilometer-wide, 30-kilometer-long valley that borders Russia, change is complicated. The lack of career and educational options has stymied the entire community, but it has proven particularly damaging for the Gorge’s women. Watched closely and judged severely by family members and neighbors, they live in an even more closely confined world than do Pankisi’s male inhabitants. They are judged mostly in terms of whether they act as upstanding wives and mothers. Little attention is paid to their own psychological needs. Little thought is given to self-fulfillment.