This research paper attempts to describe the main issues related to labor and partici- pation in the labor market of women living in the mono-industrial coal-mining town of Tkibuli, Georgia. However, in addition to employment/unemployment, it seeks to observe the lives of women in Tkibuli in general, their main challenges and needs, which, on the one hand, address several social, economic, and political characteristics of the city, and, on the other, the broader global and national structural challenges and factors that in- evitably affect the lives and work of Tkibuli women.

With on-site fieldwork and quantitative or qualitative data obtained, the research paper seeks to depict the current labor market for women in Tkibuli, its demographic, sectoral distribution, and development prospects; Specificities of jobs, peculiarities of remunera- tion and working conditions; The main aspects and peculiarities of the social, economic, cultural and mental life of Tkibuli women, the general social crisis in the city, which is to some extent built on a specific type of women’s employment - labor migration; The im- portance and scale of labor of women emigrating from Tkibuli, as well as the direct and indirect consequences of this process.

According to the research, the assertion that Tkibuli depends solely on mines and min- ers’ salaries does not reflect the enormous chain of labor outside the formal or informal economy of the city - the scale of income earned by women emigrating to work abroad and the turning point in maintaining the social and economic life of the city. Attempting to shed light on this phenomenon, the research found that the vast majority of Tkibuli women participate in the labor market not locally but abroad; that with these peculiari- ties, found in the challenges of the daily life of local women, Tkbuli is a typical “shrinking city”, where hard physical work locally or hard physical and emotional labor of migrant women abroad again serves to deplete resources - to drain young people from the city.

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