Coping with chaos gender and politics in a fragmented state

Problems of Post-Communism

Volumn 52, Issue 5, 2005, Pages 69-81

  Hrycak, Alexandra ^a  

^a REED COLLEGE   (United States)

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EID: 27144520244     PISSN: 10758216     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10758216.2005.11052213     Document Type: Review

References (46)

1. See Alexandra Hrycak, "Post-Soviet Grassroots Women's Associations," in Women's Community Activism and Globalization: Linking the Local and Global for Social Change, ed. Nancy Naples and Manisha K. Desai (New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 64-82.
2. For a more detailed discussion of how the changing social and political context affected women's activism, see Alexandra Hrycak, "The Dilemmas of Civic Revival: Ukrainian Women Since Independence," Journal of Ukrainian Studies 26, nos. 1-2 (summer/winter 2001): 135-58.
3. In the following, I draw on scholarship by Susan Gal, Gail Kligman, and Katherine Verdery; in particular Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, The Politics of Gender After Socialism: A Comparative-Historical Essay (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000),
4. and Katherine Verdery, "From Parent-State to Family Patriarchs: Gender and Nation in Contemporary Eastern Europe," East European Politics and Societies 8, no. 2 (1994): 225-55.
5. See Alexandra Hrycak, "From Mother's Rights to Equal Rights," in Naples and Desai, Women's Community Activism and Globalization, pp. 64-67.
6. Women predominated in manufacturing, agriculture, education, food preparation, social services, and health. See Hrycak, "Dilemmas of Civic Revival."
7. For a further analysis of gender asymmetries in Soviet workplaces, see Gail Lapidus, Women in Soviet Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978)
8. and Michael Paul Sacks, "Women, Work, and the Family in the Soviet Union," in Understanding Soviet Society, ed. Michael Paul Sacks and Jerry G. Pankhurst (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988), pp. 71-96.
9. In 1988, women made up just under one-third of all Party members and about one-third of Party branch secretaries at the lower levels, but men occupied nearly every position in the Party and state structures that carried genuine authority. See David Lane, Soviet Society Under Perestroika (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990), p. 220.
10. 8; Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), p. 102.
11. Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak, Political Communities and Gendered Ideologies in Contemporary Ukraine (Cambridge: Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University, 1994), pp. 20-21. Pavlychko writes, "There are 57,000 zhensovety (zhinochi rady in Ukrainian) in the Ukraine. I remember quite clearly how they were formed. After Gorbachev's speech at the 27th Congress of the CPSU when he called on the country to strengthen the women's movement, the Institute of Literature of the Academy of Sciences (a research institution for literary scholarship where I work) received a command from the local raikom to form a Zhinocha rada, to elect its board, and to report immediately to the raikom about the results. It caused a certain animation in the Institute, men invented sexist jokes, women were embarrassed, but the board was elected and the raikom obtained the necessary information. From that time on, nobody in the Institute ever mentioned the existence of this body" (Solomea Pavlychko, "Between Feminism and Nationalism: New Women's Groups in the Ukraine,"
12. in Perestroika and Soviet Women, ed. Mary Buckley [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992], p. 90).
13. On more than one occasion during my research it was pointed out to me that women Party leaders in charge of child welfare in Ukraine lost what little legitimacy they possessed in 1986 when they failed to take an active public stance demanding that the state protect all children from the consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear power accident and instead helped to evacuate the children of the Party leadership. Such criticism was leveled in particular at Valentyna Shevchenko, who was the leading Party official in charge of children's welfare at the time of the Chernobyl nuclear power accident and continued to occupy high-level state posts well into the 1990s (author interview with Larysa F. of Common Action, Lviv, June 25, 2001).
14. Only three women were elected to central leadership positions at Rukh's founding congress. Only two women were elected to such positions at Rukh's second congress. See Pavlychko, "Between Feminism and Nationalism," p. 86.
15. See Solomea Pavlychko, "Progress on Hold: The Conservative Faces of Women in Ukraine," in Post-Soviet Women: From the Baltic to Central Asia, ed. Mary Buckley (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 220.
16. Similarly, women also facilitated the formation of local religious congregations as well as chapters of ecological and cultural associations that operated as crucial sources of support for Rukh.
17. Author interviews with the founder of the Dove Crisis Center for Soldiers (Kyiv, June 7, 2001) and the head of the Soldiers' Mothers Society, Kyiv City Organization (Kyiv, March 27, 2001, May 19, 2001).
18. Author interview with the head of the Mothers' Committee in Support of Sons in the Military (Lviv, June 21 2002).
19. Soiuz Ukrainok's activities at first focused on cultural revival and concerts (author interview, Oksana S., Common Action, Lviv, June 15, 2001; author interview, Iryna K., Common Action, Lviv, June 18, 2001; author interview, Atena Pashko, president, Soiuz Ukrainok, Kyiv, March 2001).
20. Membership figures for the mid-1990s are drawn from The Directory of Women's Organizations and Initiatives in Ukraine (Kyiv: Women's Information Consultative Center, 1996).
21. See Solomea Pavlychko, Letters from Kiev (Edmonton, AB: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1992), p. 17.
22. Author interview with Tamara M., former member of Rukh Women's Society Political Council (Kyiv, May 3, 2001).
23. In May 1993 the Rukh Women's Society organized a conference on "Women in the Creation of the State." It was attended by leading scholars and officials from across Ukraine who conducted one of the first critical examinations of women's status in Ukraine. Papers assessed women's representation in state and government structures as well as in other areas of society. At the conference's close, a resolution was passed that urged the president, parliament, and cabinet of ministers to introduce gender quotas to guarantee the equal representation of women in parliament and in the government. The Rukh Women's Society went on to organize further conferences on women's political and legal status and to coordinate legal campaigns on behalf of equal rights legislation and constitutional guarantees of equality. See Lyudmyla Smolyar, "Women's NGOs in the System of Civil Society of Ukraine" (paper presented at the Global Network for Women's Advocacy and Civil Society, www.philanthropy.org/GN/KEN/gntext/ fullview_politicalrights_women_advocacy_lyudmyla.htm, accessed September 5, 2001).
24. This point was made by several former leaders of Soiuz Ukrainok (author interviews, former member of Lviv Soiuz Ukrainok, Lviv, June 15, 2001; author interview, former head of Lviv Soiuz Ukrainok, Lviv, June 18, 2001).
25. Author interview, former head of Kyiv Soiuz Ukrainok (Kyiv, March 22, 2001).
26. When I asked women activists about the establishment of Rukh-affiliated women's organizations in western Ukraine and Kyiv during the late 1980s and early 1990s, they all stressed the importance at that time of strong support for women's organizations among the leaders of Rukh as well as affiliated political parties (author interview, Lviv, head of the Mothers' Committee in Support of Sons in the Military, June 21 2002; author interview, former member of Lviv Soiuz Ukrainok, Lviv, June 15, 2001; author interview, former head of Lviv Soiuz Ukrainok, Lviv, June 18, 2001; author interview, president, Soiuz Ukrainok, Kyiv, March 2001; author interview, Rukh Women's Society member and founder, Dove Crisis Center for Soldiers and Their Parents, Kyiv, June 7, 2001; author interview, head of Soldiers' Mothers Society, Kyiv City Organization, Kyiv, March 27, 2001, May 19, 2001).
27. In the words of one Lviv women's rights activist, state administrators did nothing but stall women reformers: "There are people [in the Lviv state administration] who are responsible for public relations. Their office is called 'Contacts with the Public' or something like that. But there are no contacts made there. They have no respect for anyone. For some reason, they have lost respect for others. When you go to see them, you get the feeling from them that you are taking up their time. They sit there looking busy, looking through papers or letters, and when you come into their office you are expected to apologize profusely for taking up their time 'I'm sorry for taking up your precious time.' He could reply, 'Come in, let's have a talk. Let's figure out a resolution,' but that's not how these things go. Not for us, not for anyone. That's the trouble, they need to be there for us. I don't go to consult them on what color pantyhose to buy, black or white. I go to them with constructive ideas. At first you hear 'Come by on Thursday,' then 'I'll call you,' then 'Come next week,' then The Pope is visiting this week' " (author interview, Larysa F.).
28. Women's NGOs in Kharkiv were deeply divided by bitter animosities that prevented the formation of inter-organizational coalitions even among similar groups that shared a common ideological orientation (author interview, Kharkiv City Department of Public Relations, Kharkiv, May 22, 2001; author interview, former member, Kharkiv City Women's Fund, Kharkiv, May 22, 2001). The most prominent organizations were clients of pro-presidential parties. Foreign-oriented feminist groups isolated themselves from Ukrainian civic affairs and forged closer ties to Russian scholars (author interview, Kharkiv Gender Studies Center, Kharkiv, May 29, 2001).
29. Members of the Poltava Soiuz Ukrainok chapter in eastern Ukraine indicated that local officials treated them with great hostility (Fourth Conference of Soiuz Ukrainok, Kyiv, March 31 2001).
30. Regional differences in support for independence further weakened the Rukh-affiliated organizations. Soiuz Ukrainok and the Women's Society of Rukh had established their strongest following in western Ukraine and in Kyiv, where independence mobilization had created enduring networks of women activists who were ready and available to engage in ongoing activist work. However, the local organizations in southern and eastern Ukraine were weak. The Kharkiv Soiuz Ukrainok and Zhinocha Hromada were tiny organizations that by 2001 consisted of little more than a single person who kept the organization together through sheer force of personality.
31. My interviews revealed that foreign funding (in particular, competition for foreign grants or travel opportunities and disagreements over how to distribute foreign funding) was the most frequently mentioned source of divisiveness within and between women's NGOs. According to a former member of Soiuz Ukrainok who left the group to work on foreign women's-empowerment programs funded by USAID-funded Winrock International and the International Renaissance Foundation, funding was the main source of divisiveness in both Rukh-based and foreign-oriented women's NGOs (author interview, Kyiv, April 13, 2001).
32. Dozens of former local leaders of Soiuz Ukrainok and the Rukh Women's Society left these maternalist organizations, and many founded feminist NGOs that better meet donors' expectations. One of the first women to do so told me she had become frustrated because "There were a lot of ideas, and a lot of talk about 'working for the good of Ukraine,' but nothing concrete was ever done. I realized I was created for something else, so I left the Soiuz Ukrainok" (author interview, Kyiv, March 22, 2001). She recruited numerous other disaffected former SU leaders to foreign-funded projects after she was hired by a series of U.S.-funded projects, including the USAID-funded U.S.-NIS Women's Consortium and, more recently, the Soros Foundation's Women in Society project.
33. In 1991, tens of thousands of women participated actively in the Rukh-led campaigns against military hazing, but ten years later my research found fractured publics to be more common; some of them included only a few individuals who came together periodically to discuss women's issues.
34. Leonid Kuchma consistently incorporated the notion of Ukrainian women as Berehyni, guardians of the family and the nation, into his public addresses on women's affairs. For instance, he invoked the Berehynia in his official 2003 address to participants of the Second Forum of Businesswomen of Ukraine and the Russian Federation, in which he gave special thanks to the women in the audience because, "in addition to their household chores and caring for their families and children, they found time for business." Similarly, in his March 8, 2004, International Women's Day greeting to the nation, he noted the particular qualities of the Berehynia: "The Ukrainian woman has a special mission of preserving our spirituality, traditions, and historical memory, of passing down our patriotism, profound respect for our forefathers, and their habits. It is not without reason that Mother, who personifies continuity of the human race and all the best in the world, has always been worshipped in Ukraine. So, being a source of the nation's vitality and peacefulness, society's wisdom and harmony, the brightest features of the Ukrainian womankind have been embodied in our today's activity."
35. A number of women's groups have lobbied to strengthen the legal protections against gender discrimination. Since the late 1990s, they have at best persuaded the government to officially acknowledge certain gender issues. For example, in 1999 the government approved the "National Action Plan on Improving the Status of Women in the Republic of Ukraine." Despite symbolic steps of this kind toward a formal guarantee of gender equality, the government failed to commit itself to provide funding and resources to improve women's status and resolve the economic problems they face.
36. In 1993, a Division of Women, Family, Motherhood, and Childhood was established within the Cabinet of Ministers. It took on the responsibility for improving women's status that the first Parliamentary Commission had outlined in the state program for "Long-Term Improvement of the Status of Women and the Protection of Family, Mothers, and Children" (July 28, 1992). Like its predecessor, the new agency treated women's issues, as in the Soviet era, as social welfare programs to promote children's welfare.
37. Tatiana Zadorozhna, member of parliament (Kyiv, Parliamentary Hearing on the Gender Equality Draft Law, January 17, 2001).
38. United Nations Development Programme, "Gender Issues in Ukraine: Challenges and Opportunities" (Kyiv, 2003), p. 13, available at www.un.kiev.ua/en/docs/get.php?id=54/, accessed November 15, 2004.
39. One review of political party leadership since the 1998 parliamentary elections identified only six women as belonging to Ukraine's party elite: Yulia Tymoshenko (Fatherland), Halyna Artiukh and Liudmyla Matiiko (Hromada), Nataliya Vitrenko (PSPU), and Olena Bondarenko (NRU) and Halyna Harmash (SPU). See Mykola Tomenko and Volodymyr Oliinyk, Partiina elita Ukrainy 2000 (The Leadership of Political Parties in Ukraine in the Year 2000) (Kyiv: Logos, 2000), pp. 10, 30-31, 50, 148-49, 184. Women are more often local-level heads of oblast or municipal party organizations (e.g., Lviv oblast Sobor).
40. Women felt most marginalized in Lviv. I was told by one candidate who had not been elected: "Here in Lviv oblast, we have very poor representation of women: there are no women in any legislative branch of government, we have six women in the city council, and the same number in the oblast council. Is this democracy? Six women in all, more than eighty men? We don't even have 10 percent" (author interview, Larysa F.).
41. "Gender Issues in Ukraine," pp. 13-15.
42. "Ukraine: Fourth Periodic Report of State Parties" (United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, New York, August 1999), p. 13, available at www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/cedaw27/ukr4- 5.pdf40/, accessed May 21, 2003.
43. Nitza Berkovitch, From Motherhood to Citizenship: Women's Rights and International Organizations (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), pp. 100-138.
44. See United Nations Development Programme Gender Unit, Gender Analysis of Ukrainian Society, ed. Tamara Melnyk (Kyiv: United Nations Development Programme, 1999).
45. The main objectives, conditions, and tasks of the ministry were to include collaboration with other central executive bodies to devise scientifically based state policies regarding the status of family, women, youth, and children, as well as demography, incentives for mothers, the protection of health, and the sound development of children and youth in terms of education and adoption of humanitarian principles; elaboration and execution of programs dealing with the improvement of conditions for family, women, youth, and children; the opening of special institutions to work with minors; and the establishment of preventative measures to deter crime and the abandonment of children by family members; passage of special laws and other legislation relating to the rights and interests of the family, women, youth, and children, and the adoption of propositions to see that they conform to international standards; cooperation with other central and local executive organs in bringing about improved conditions for family, women, youth, and children; coordination of actions by central and local executive organs regarding the protection of the rights and interests of the family, women, youth, and children; cooperation with the international community on issues of family, women, youth, and children.
46. Improvement of the status and treatment of women has also been entrusted to other state organs. Some, such as the Ministry of Health, are beginning to adopt gender policy as it is understood in the international community. The human rights ombudsperson, whose task it is to receive human rights complaints from individual citizens and protect human rights, has developed projects to fight human trafficking, specifically in women, and forced prostitution.