Foundation feminism and the articulation of hybrid feminisms in post-socialist Ukraine

East European Politics and Societies

Volumn 20, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 69-100

  Hrycak, Alexandra ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

Civil society; Feminism; Hybrid organizations; NGO; Post socialist; Ukraine

Indexed keywords

EID: 32044472869     PISSN: 08883254     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0888325405284249     Document Type: Article

References (70)

1. See Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992);
2. and Thomas Carothers, Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1999).
3. On the effects that Western programs to build civil society have had in a variety of locales, see Sarah Mendelson and John Glenn, eds., The Power and Limits of NGOs: A Critical Look at Building Democracy in Eastern Europe and Eurasia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002);
4. Sarah L. Henderson, Building Democracy in Contemporary Russia: Western Support for Grassroots Organizations (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003);
5. and Sarah L. Henderson, "Selling Civil Society: Western Aid and the Nongovernmental Sector in Russia," Comparative Political Studies 38 (March 2002): 139-67.
6. See Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, The Politics of Gender after Socialism: A Comparative-Historical Essay (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000);
7. and Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, eds., Reproducing Gender: Politics, Publics, and Everyday Life after Socialism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
8. Hybrid organizational forms are the focus of a large literature on "new institutionalism." Most hybrid forms this literature studies blur boundaries between opposed or conflicting types of formal organizations. They may for instance, combine aspects of public and private ownership and "look and act like" a combination of public agency and private firm. Many hybrids are run through a system of complex networks and alliances among a wide range of specialized departments that each operate semiautonomously. For a review of the theories that have emerged regarding such new organizational forms, see Neil Fligstein, "Fields, Power, and Social Skill: A Critical Analysis of the New " (Paper presented at Hamburg University, Hamburg, Germany, 9-11 October 1997).
9. See, for instance, Victor Nee, "Organizational Dynamics of Market Transition: Hybrid Forms, Property Rights, and Mixed Economy in China," Administrative Science Quarterly 37 (1992): 1-27,
10. and David Stark, "Recombinant Property in East European Capitalism," American Journal of Sociology 101:4(1996): 993-1027.
11. See Gal and Kligman, Politics of Gender, 32, 88, 101-4:
12. and Susan Gal, "Movements of Feminism: The Circulation of Discourses about Women," in Barbara Hobson, ed., Recognition Struggles and Social Movements: Contested Identities, Agency and Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 93-119.
13. I interviewed (or received information from) representatives of many different North American organizations. Representatives or members of the following organizations were particularly helpful: Alliance of Russian and American Women; Canada-Ukraine Parliamentary Program; Center for Safe Energy; Counterpart International; Friends of Rukh of Northern New Jersey; Human Rights Watch; ISAR: Initiative for Social Action and Renewal in Eurasia; the MacArthur Foundation; Magee Womancare International; NIS-US (New Independent States of the Former Soviet Union-United States) Women's Consortium; Peace Corps; Planned Parenthood of New England; Samuel Rubin Foundation; Ukrainian National Women's League of America; United States Agency for International Development; and US-Ukraine Relief Committee.
14. During my field research conducted in Ukraine, I regularly attended the meetings of two women's groups devoted to children's welfare and one feminist seminar devoted to gender equality. All of the groups and individuals included in my study were aware of the nature and purpose of my study.
15. The number of women's organization registered with the state doubled annually in recent years. See Oleksandr Sydorenko, "Zhinochi orhanizatsii Ukrainy: Tendentsii stanovlennia" (Kyiv, Ukraine: Center for Innovation and Development, n.d.). Available at http://portal.uwf.kiev.ua/.
16. The designation "traditional" was widely used in this way by those I interviewed in Ukraine. It is also the main designation used by the primary local scholars of women's activism in Ukraine. It is used for instance in the only scholarly monograph that has examined the role of different forms of women's activism in Ukraine in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. See Liudmyla Smolyar, Zhinochi Studii v Ukraini: Zhinka v istorii ta siohodni (Odessa, Ukraine: Astroprint, 1999).
17. See Malgorzata Fuszara, "Women's Movements in Poland," in Joan Wallach Scott, Cora Kaplan, and Debra Keates, eds., Transitions, Environments, Translations: Feminism in International Politics (New York: Routledge, 1997), 139.
18. See also Gal and Kligman, Politics of Gender, who also make this point.
19. According to Anastasia Posadskaya, one of Russia's most prominent women's activists, Soviet state institutions assumed the right to speak on behalf of women, and official Soviet women's associations promoted the interests of the Communist Party above those of women. As a consequence, Soviet politicians and women came to believe that "an independent women's voice did not and could not exist in our country"; and since the Soviet Union's collapse, post-Soviet women "do not trust women's organizations" and have little interest in "working together in public campaigns and organizations." See Elizabeth Waters and Anastasia Posadskaya, "Democracy without Women Is No Democracy: Women's Struggles in Post-Communist Russia," in Amrita Basu, ed., The Challenge of Local Feminisms: Women's Movements in Global Perspective (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995), 365-57.
20. See Tatiana Zhurzhenko, Sotsial'noe vosproizvodstvo i gendernaia politika v Ukraine (Kharkiv, Ukraine: Folio, 2001);
21. and also Irina Zherebkina, Zhenskoe politicheskoe bessoznatelnoe: Problema gendera i zhenskoe dvizhenie v Ukraine (Kharkiv, Ukraine: Kharkiv Center for Gender Studies: F-Press, 1996).
22. On the emergence of the soldiers' mothers movement, see Solomea Pavlychko, "Between Feminism and Nationalism: New Women's Groups in the Ukraine," in Mary Buckley, ed., Perestroika and Soviet Women (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 82-96;
23. and Bohdan Pyskir, "Materi dlia Batkivshchyny," Suchasnist' 3 (new series), 6 (1994): 70-82.
24. Solomea Pavlychko, "Progress on Hold: The Conservative Faces of Women in Ukraine," in Mary Buckley, ed., Post-Soviet Women: From the Baltic to Central Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 219-34.
25. In 1996, the Women's Community had a membership of 15,000 and the Union of Ukrainian Women had 11,300 members. See Directory of Women's Organizations and Initiatives in Ukraine (Kiev, Ukraine: Women's Information Consultative Center, 1996). My research suggests that these figures probably include members who were no longer active by the midnineties.
26. In May 1993, the Women's Community organized the conference "Women in State Building" ("Zhinka v derzhavotvorenni"). 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 of Ukraine to introduce gender quotas to guarantee the equal representation of women in the Parliament and in the government. The Women's Community went on to organize further conferences on women's political and legal status. It coordinated legal campaigns on behalf of equal rights legislation and constitutional guarantees of equality, In addition, the Women's Community formed a bloc of ten women's organizations to support the candidacy of fifty women running for office in the 1994 parliamentary election campaigns. The following year, the head of the Women's Community spoke on the need for expanding women's influence in government and politics at the first parliamentary hearings on the realization in Ukraine of the UN Convention "On the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women." See Lyudmyla Smolyar, "Women's NGOs in the System of Civil Society of Ukraine" (Paper prepared for the Global Network for Women's Advocacy and Civil Society, n.d.). Available at http://www.philanthropy.org/GN/KEN/.
27. Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak, "Women's Organizations in Independent Ukraine: Prospects of Power" (Edmonton, Canada: University of Manitoba, the J.B. Rudnyckyj Distinguished Lecture Series, 1997). Available at http://www.umanitoba.ca/.
28. See Pavlychko, "Between Feminism and Nationalism," 90.
29. See Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak, "Political Communities and Gendered Ideologies in Contemporary Ukraine" (Harvard Papers in Ukrainian Studies, Harvard University Ukrainian Research Institute, Cambridge, MA, 1994), 20-21.
30. There are well over a dozen local women's groups named after the "Protectress" figure (Berehynia), a mythic figure the independence movement created (e.g., Protectress Women's Association of Kharkiv city, Protectress Women's Association in the village of Makariv, Kyiv oblast, and Protectress Women's Charitable Organization of Evpatoria, Crimea, and the Protectress of Ukraine National Federation). On the Berehynia phenomenon and women's activism, see Tatiana Zhurzhenko, Ukrainian Feminism(s): Between Nationalist Myth and Anti-nationalist Critique (Vienna, Austria: International World Bank Working Paper, 2001);
31. and also Oksana Kis', "Modeli Konstruiuvannia Gendernoi Identychnosti v Suchasnii Ukraini," Yi 27 (2003): 37-58.
32. Local sources of support for women's organizations have been inconsistent and meager. Political parties and politicians funded women's organizations, but only in conjunction with election campaigns.
33. I base this statement on my research and on the results of a 2001 survey of all registered women's organizations. See Oleksandr Sydorenko, "Zhinochi orhanizatsiii Ukrainy," table 8.
34. Eighty-five percent of overall foreign funding for civil society originates in the United States. See Kateryna Pishchikova, "What Happened after the 'End of History? Foreign Aid and Implementation of Civil Society Projects in Ukraine" (Uppsala, Sweden: European Consortium for Political Research, Joint Sessions of Workshops, 13-18 April 2004), 9.
35. See Arlene Lear, ed., A New Era for Development: Time for a Paradigm Shift. Ukraine and Russia. Report of the Volunteer Executive Service Team (VEST) Initiative (Washington, DC: United States Agency for International Development (USAID), 1992), ii-iii.
36. "From Transition to Partnership: A Strategic Framework for USAID Programs in Europe and Eurasia" (Washington, DC: USAID Bureau for Europe and Eurasia, December 1999), 3.
37. During the crucial first years after Ukrainian independence when foreign governments' assistance programs and field missions were being designed and implemented, women's rights were a low priority. In November 2001, I interviewed two U.S. ambassadors to Ukraine and the Ukraine program staff of the National Security Council, the National Democratic Institute, International Republican Institute, and the National Endowment for Democracy (the main democracy assistance providers in Ukraine). My interviewees revealed that U.S. programs were encouraged to place highest priority on conventional security issues, followed by broader economic and political development. Women's rights and other issues received much less institutional support and funding within foreign aid programs overall. They remained the jurisdiction of planning units such as USAID's Office of Women in Development. Such planning units are small, relatively weak, and under-staffed. Even more than most USAID divisions, women's programs were under great pressure to identify less expensive types of projects.
38. See NIS-US Women's Consortium Fact Sheet, wwrw.winrock.org/fact.
39. See "Civil Society," www.counterpart.org/DNN.
40. See www.usukraine.org/cpp/.
41. See www.irex.org/civilsociety/ngo.asp/.
42. "U.S. Assistance Strategy for Ukraine 1999-2002" (Washington, DC: USAID, 29 March 1999), 10.
43. "Women in Society Program" (Kyiv, Ukraine: International Renaissance Foundation, 2001). Available at www.irf.kiev.ua/.
44. See International Renaissance Foundation, "Special Issue Dedicated to the IRF Program Gender Integration," Open World (Kyiv) 4 (2002).
45. On the Winrock Women's Consortium, see Alexandra Hrycak, "From Mothers' Rights to Women's Rights: Post-Soviet Grassroots Women's Associations," in Nancy Naples and Manisha K. Desai, eds., Women's Community Activism and Globalization: Linking the Local and Global for Social Change (New York: Routledge, 2002), 75-82.
46. One former U.S. Coordinator of Winrock's Women's Consortium stressed that local women's rights NGOs she worked with in Russia and Ukraine were "very grassroots" (Phone Interview, 11 December 1998).
47. See David Abramson, "Engendering Citizenship in Postcommunist Uzbekistan," in Kathleen R. Kuehnast and Carol Nechemias, eds., Post-Soviet Women Encountering Transition: Nation Building, Economic Survival, and Civic Activism (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 65-84;
48. James Richter, Citizens or Professionals: Evaluating Western Assistance to Women 's Organizations (New York: Columbia University Project on Evaluation of Western NGO Strategies for Democratization and the Reduction of Ethnic Conflict in the Former Communist States, 1998);
49. and Patrice McMahon, What a Difference They Have Made: International Actors and Women's NGOs in Poland and Hungary (New York: Columbia University Project on Evaluation of Western NGO Strategies for Democratization and the Reduction of Ethnic Conflict in the Former Communist States, 1998).
50. See Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 167-75.
51. In the words of the former U.S. Consortium coordinator in Kyiv, "You couldn't use the word 'feminist' right away. And actually the word 'feminist' means different things to different people. I maintain to my Ukrainian friends that being a feminist means that a woman has choices. It doesn't mean that a woman has to be whatever you think all feminists want . . . I guess we had to be really careful with terminology, that was one of the big things I learned working with women" (Phone interview, 11 December 1998).
52. See David Abramson, "A Critical Look at NGOs and Civil Society as Means to an End in Uzbekistan" Human Organization 58:3(1999): 240.
53. This hostility was considered to be common knowledge among the women's organization leaders I interviewed. For a perceptive examination of this phenomenon and its impact on the Ukrainian women's movement, see Zhurzhenko, Ukrainian Feminism(s).
54. According to one of the former Consortium's former U.S. coordinators, "They all have these hang-ups, on who everybody once was, you know, under the Soviet period. Who are the new feminists, and who are the old feminists, who are the ones doing serious work and who are the ones chasing dollars" (Phone interview, 11 December 1998).
55. Indeed, La Strada's project statement stresses that the parent organization brings to Ukraine the superior models La Strada and its experts have designed abroad: "to transfer the La Strada model and good practices on support to victims of trafficking to other NGOs working on the issues, to successfully embed the international cooperation between La Strada countries and with organizations from other CEES, NIS and Western Europe and to stimulate mutual cooperation and harmonization of national campaigns." "2005-2007 La Strada Program" (Amersfoort, the Netherlands: International La Strada Association, 2005). Available at www.fo-stvkennisnet.nl/ .
56. The La Strada staff person I interviewed could only recall one recent case in which a real victim of trafficking turned to them for counseling and medical attention (Author's interview, La Strada staff, Kyiv, Ukraine, 4 April 2001).
57. Svetlana Kupryashkina, "Ukraine: End of the 'NGO Dream,' " Give and Take 3 (fall 2000). Available at www.isar.org/.
58. See Andrew Wilson, Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005);
59. and Alexandra Hrycak, "Coping with Chaos: Gender and Politics in a Fragmented State," Problems of Post-Communism (September-October 2005): 69-81).
60. In the words of a former U.S. coordinator of the Women's Consortium in Kyiv, "Unfortunately so many of our English words have been just adopted as cognates, and that's not very effective. They all say feministka, ' and fandreizing' and all that, and who knows if they really know what it means" (Phone interview, 11 December 1998).
61. Olena Suslova, ed., Empowering Education Manual, 2nd ed. (Kyiv, Ukraine: Women's Information Consultative Center, 2002).
62. See http://www.empedu.kiev.ua/english/.
63. Author's interview (Common Action member, Lviv, Ukraine, 18 June 2001).
64. For the program's Ukrainian language explanation of their choice of terminology, see http://www.empedu.kiev.ua/ukrainian/welcome6.htm/.
65. For the English translation, see http://www.empedu.kiev.ua/english/ welcome1.htm/.
66. According to the Empowering Education Program's (EEP's) "Recommendations for 2000," one of the few documents on the program's Web site that had not been translated into English, one of its trainers noted that more than 70 percent of university students who participated in the EEP could not understand its basic initial terms. See http://www.empedu.kiev.ua/ ukrainian/reports.htm/.
67. See David Abramson, "A Critical Look at NGOs and Civil Society."
68. Pishchikova also reaches this conclusion in her analysis of civil society programs in Ukraine. See Pishchikova, "What Happened after the 'End of History?" 11-13.
69. For an examination of this phenomenon in other countries, see Steven Sampson, "The Social Life of Projects: Importing Civil Society to Albania," in Chris Hann and Elizabeth Dunn, eds., Civil Society: Rethinking Western Models (London: Routledge, 1996), 120-38;
70. and also Laura Grunberg, "Women's NGOs in Romania," in Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, eds., Reproducing Gender: Politics, Publics, and Everyday Life after Socialism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 307-36.