“I have great respect for our family values, and I myself follow them. In a sense, I am a supporter of the Armenian ‘Domostroy,’ as my wife says, but we must understand the attitudes towards women in Armenian society and their place and role is a serious challenge,” entrepreneur, philanthropist, founding partner of Futures Studio, and co-author of The Roadside Manuscript, Ruben Vardanyan, announced during an online discussion as part of the “Let’s Talk About the Future” series co-sponsored by Futures Studio journalist and author Mark Grigoryan.
According to him, this not only has to do with domestic violence and sex-selective abortions, but also the opportunities for self-realization.
Ruben Vardanyan also spoke about fake machoism and fake Christianity and he used an example. “Speaking Armenian is a good example. All schools are Armenian, but the knowledge of Armenian is very poor. We say Turkey, but they have Orham Pamuk, what can we do to have them? We have Narek Hakhnazaryan and Sergey Khachatryan. We need to talk about them, and we need to fight against fake machoism and fake Christianity. Nothing can be done without fighting this.”
Ruben Vardanyan ties economic progress with choosing the right model, economic and educational progress, and building good universities.
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Regarding political and security issues, the philanthropist said, “We are living in a country that is preparing for peace with Turkey and Azerbaijan. But we must understand all the risks. Let’s say that the border with Turkey opens tomorrow. Are we prepared for that? Or will it be like Tbilisi and Batumi? We also know about Turkish tomatoes and our women who work as prostitutes in Istanbul, but we are ashamed of it. We should not be ashamed. We should understand what we need to do in order to prevent that.”
Tatev Harutyunyan
