Birthday girls, Russian dolls, and others Internet bride as the emerging global identity

Living Gender after Communism

Volumn , Issue , 2007, Pages 105-127

  Taraban, Svitlana ^a  

^a YORK UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

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EID: 84860856226     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: None     Document Type: Chapter

References (74)

1. Donna Hughes, "The Role of Marriage Agencies in the Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking of Women from the Former Soviet Union", International Review of Victimology 11, no. 1(2004):49-71. Hughes focused on the Web sites of 219 marriage agencies that she saw were representative of the Web sites advertising Post-Soviet women. After the profiles of women were catalogued and entered into the database to exclude double counting, there were almost 120, 000 women counted on these sites, with the majority of Internet brides being from Russia (62, 605 women) and Ukraine (31, 837 women). Given that the number of agencies selected for the study represented only half of the total number of agencies featuring Post-Soviet brides, it can be concluded that there are at least 250, 000 Post-Soviet women advertised as Internet brides annually. Note also that while small Internet-based marriage agencies feature a limited selection of women, established agencies offer hundreds of women's profiles to choose from. The most popular Internet-based marriage agencies (i.e., Foreign Affair) advertise thousands of Post-Soviet women annually.
2. See the U. S. Immigration and Naturalization Service's report titled International Matchmaking Organizations: A Report to Congress (1999). According to the report, the majority of Internet brides are women from Philippines and the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union. The full report can be viewed at http://uscis.gov/graphics/aboutus/repsstudies/Mobrept-full.pdf (accessed August 12, 2003).
3. Donna Hughes and Tatiana Denisova, "Trafficking in Women from Ukraine" (study conducted as part of the U. S. Ukraine Research Partnership, 2002), http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/nij/grants/203275.pdf (accessed Feb. 23, 2006). This number includes women who married Western nationals, migrated for work, and were trafficked abroad.
4. The data for this research were collected from the following Web sites: http://www.women.kiev.ua;
5. http://www.ukrainian-women.com;
6. http://www.ukrainladies.com;
7. http://ua-dating.com;
8. http://www.fairylove.kiev.ua;
9. http://www.ukrdate.com;
10. http://eliteagency.net;
11. http://www.eleo.com.ua;
12. http://www.aukrainelady.com;
13. and http://www.charming-lady.net.
14. See Marian J. Rubchak, "Christian Virgin or Pagan Goddess: Feminism Versus the Eternally Feminine", in Women in Russia and Ukraine, ed. Rosalind Marsh (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 315-31;
15. Tatiana Zhurzhenko, "Ukrainian Feminism (s): Between Nationalist Myth and Anti-Nationalist Critique", IWM Working Paper No. 2 (Vienna: 2001), http://www.iwm.at/publ-wp/wp-01-04.pdf (accessed June 10, 2002).
16. In Turkey, for example, Russian-speaking women are known as "Natashas" and are commonly associated with prostitution, immoral behavior, and a threat to traditional values (Ildiko Bellér-Hann, "Prostitution and Its Effects in Northeast Turkey", European Journal of Women's Studies 2, no. 2(1995):219-35).
17. In the U. S., popular discourses associate Russian-speaking women with "sex, crime and murder" (Tatiana Osipovich, "Russian Mail-Order Brides in U. S. Public Discourse: Sex, Crime, and Cultural Stereotypes", in Sexuality and Gender in Postcommunist Eastern Europe and Russia, ed. Aleksandar Śtulhofer and Theo Sandfort (New York: Haworth Press, 2004).
18. In Israel, women with the Russian accent, most of whom arrived in the country as ethnic migrants or spouses of Post-Soviet Jews, experience sexual harassment, street harassment, and hostility not only from Israeli men but also women (Larissa Remennick", 'Women with a Russian Accent' in Israel: On the Gender Aspects of Immigration", European Journal of Women's Studies 6, no. 4(1999):441-61).
19. The Internet, which features a large number of pornographic images involving Post-Soviet women and Internet-based prostitution businesses offering photographs and videos of these women, sex shows, and erotic tour packages to Post-Soviet countries, aggressively promotes the image of Post-Soviet women as sexual commodities. For an excellent analysis of trafficking in images of sexual exploitation and the use of new technologies for the sexual exploitation of women, see publications by Donna Hughes available at http://www.uri.edu/artsci/ wms/hughes/pubtrf.htm.
20. Matthew Tabbi, "Russian Girls", Playboy, November 2000, 109, 154-55.
21. Barbara Brook, Feminist Perspectives on the Body (New York: Longman, 1999).
22. Simon J. Williams and Gillian Bendelow, The Lived Body: Sociological Themes, Embodied Issues (London: Routledge, 1998).
23. Anthony Synnott, The Body Social (London: Routledge, 1993).
24. Brook, Feminist Perspectives on the Body.
25. Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
26. Anne Balsamo, Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women (Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press, 1996);
27. Elizabeth Grosz, Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2001);
28. Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 2001);
29. and Gail Kirkup et al., eds., The Gendered Cyborg: A Reader (London: Routledge, 1999).
30. David Bell, "Bodies in Cyberculture", in An Introduction to Cyberculture, ed. David Bell (London: Routledge, 2001), 137-62.
31. Balsamo, Technologies of the Gendered Body, 140.
32. Bell, "Bodies in Cyberculture."
33. For an excellent compilation of resources on women and technology, refer to the database of the Center for Women and Information Technology, University of Maryland, http://www.umbc.edu/cwit/ (accessed Feb. 23, 2006).
34. Jodie O'Brien, "Changing the Subject", Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 9, issue 17, no. 1(2000), http://www.ucm.es/info/ rqtr/biblioteca/ciber espacio%20gltb/CHANGING%20THE%20SUBJECT.pdf (accessed Feb. 22, 2006).
35. Christine Sharpe, "Racialized Fantasies on the Internet", Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 24, no. 4(1999):1089-96.
36. Jennifer Light, "The Digital Landscape: New Space for Women?" Gender, Place and Culture 2, no. 2(1995):133-43.
37. See for example, Lenka Simerska and Laterina Fialova, Bridging the Gender Digital Divide: A Report on Gender and ICT in Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (Bratislava, Slovak Republic: UNDP/UNIFEM: 2004).
38. See also Kristina Mihalec and Nevenka Sudar, Women and Internet: Croatian Perspective (Zagreb, Croatia: B.a. B.e., 2004).
39. Donna Hughes, "The 'Natasha' Trade: The Transnational Shadow Market of Trafficking in Women", Journal of International Affairs 53, no. 2 (2000).
40. U. S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, International Matchmaking Organizations.
41. Lynn Thiesmeyer, "The West's 'Comfort Women' and the Discourse of Seduction", in Transnational Asia Pacific: Gender, Culture and the Public Sphere, ed. Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Larry E. Smith, and Wimal Dissanayake (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999).
42. Gina Marchetti, film review of Writing Desire by Ursula Biemann, Women Make Movies Catalog, 2003, http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c537.shtml.
43. Tatiana Zhurzhenko, "Free Market Ideology and New Women's Identities in Post-Socialist Ukraine", European Journal of Women's Studies, 8, no. 1(2001):24-49.
44. Hughes and Denisova, "Trafficking in Women from Ukraine."
45. National Institute of Strategic Studies, "Emigration of the Ukrainian Population: Socio-Economic Aspects and Potential Consequences" (National Institute of Strategic Studies, 1993), http://www.niss.gov. ua. As a result of scarce statistics on migration from Ukraine, it is also difficult to ascertain the number of Internet brides who left the country to join their husbands. The major receiving countries, such as the United States, Germany, and the countries of Western Europe, also appear to lack information as to the numbers and places of origin of mail-order brides who arrive on their territory. With reference to the U. S., Konstantin Palchikoff states: "Reliable statistics on the number of foreign-born mail-order brides are not available. The Immigration and Naturalization Service estimated in 1999 that there were 4, 000 to 5, 000 such women in the United States."
46. (Kim Palchikoff, "Unregulated Internet Matchmaking Trade Booms", Women's eNews, March 2, 2001, http://www.womensenews.com).
47. Olga Makhovskaya, interview, "Zamuzh za Ameriku" [To Marry America], Radio Svoboda, April 26, 2003, http://www.svoboda.org/programs/rt/ 2003/rt.042603.asp (accessed June 27, 2005).
48. See the edited volume by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild, Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003). Although the case studies in this volume do not include Post-Soviet women, analyses of the multitude of ways in which women from developing countries are implicated in the global economy (as mail-order brides, nannies, domestics, and sex workers) offer useful analytical tools to think about the less-researched experiences of Post-Soviet women in transnational spaces who increasingly find themselves in similar roles.
49. For a detailed investigation into the factors contributing to trafficking in women from the former Soviet Union, the methods of trafficking, transit, and destination countries, see research reports on trafficking in women from Ukraine and Russia prepared by Donna Hughes. All reports are available on her website: http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/pubtrfrep.htm.
50. International Organization for Migration, "Information Campaign against Trafficking in Women from Ukraine-Research Report" (Geneva, Switzerland, 1999), http://www.iom.int/DOCUMENTS/PUBLICATION/EN/ukr-traf-wom- res-rep.pdf.
51. Hughes, "The 'Natasha' Trade."
52. See also Donna Hughes, The Impact of the Use of New Communications and Information Technologies on Trafficking in Human Beings for Sexual Exploitation: The Study of Users (Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 2001), http://www.uri.edu/ artsci/wms/hughes/study-of-users.pdf (accessed August 28, 2005).
53. U. S. Department of State, Trafficking in Persons Report (Washington, D. C.: 2005), http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2005.
54. Victor Malarek, The Natashas: The New Global Sex Trade (Toronto: Viking, 2003).
55. Michelle J. Anderson, "A License to Abuse: The Impact of Conditional Status on Female Immigrants", Yale Law Journal 102, no. 6(1993):1401-30;
56. Lewis Kamb and Robert L. Jamieson, "Mail-Order Bride's Dream of a Better Life Ends in Death", Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 2, 2001, http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/brid02.shtml (accessed Feb. 23, 2006).
57. Internet World Stats: Usage and Population Statistics (data as of March 2005), http://www.internetworldstats.com/europa2.htm# ua (accessed June 23, 2005).
58. United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women, "Women and the Information Revolution", Women 2000, no. 1 (October 1996), http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/public/w2cont.htm (accessed March 8, 2002).
59. Angela Me and Marie Sicat, "Statistics on Women and Men and ICT: The ECE Region" (paper presented at the Regional Symposium on Mainstreaming Gender into Economic Policies, Geneva, Switzerland, January 28-30, 2004), http://www.un ece.org/oes/gender/documents/ICT%20paper.pdf?OpenAgent&DS= ENERGY/GE.1/2001/1&Lang=E (accessed July 2, 2005).
60. Paul Hediger, "3% Increase in Internet Users in Austria in Last 3 Months", Europe Media, 2000, at http://www.civilrights.org/issues/ communication/details.cfm? id=9687 (accessed Feb. 23, 2006);
61. L. Sang-Chul, "Digital Divide Cannot Be Solved by One Nation", Korea Times, June 26, 2002, http://www.hankooki.com (accessed July 20, 2003).
62. Me and Sicat, "Statistics on Women and Men and ICT", 11.
63. In addition to many works by Donna Hughes mentioned above, see also Jeff Hearn and Wendy Parkin, Gender, Sexuality and Violence in Organizations (London: Sage, 2001).
64. See Sharpe, "Racialized Fantasies on the Internet."
65. Ursula Biemann, Been There and Back to Nowhere: Geschlecht in Transnationalen Orten [Gender in Transnational Spaces] (Berlin: B-books, 2001).
66. Haldis Haukanes, "Anthropological Debates on Gender and the Post-Communist Transformation", NORA-Nordic Journal of Women's Studies 9, no. 1(2001):5-20.
67. Zhurzhenko, "Free Market Ideology and New Women's Identities in Post-Socialist Ukraine", 4.
68. Donna Hughes, Prostitution Online, http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/ prostitution-online.pdf (accessed July 20, 2005).
69. Malcolm Waters, Globalization (London: Routledge, 1995).
70. Human Rights Watch. "Women's Work: Discrimination against Women in the Ukrainian Labor Force" (2003), http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/ ukraine0803 (accessed June 15, 2004).
71. United Nations Development Program, "Gender Issues in Ukraine: Challenges and Opportunities" (2003), http://www.undp.org.ua/?page= documents (accessed June 15, 2004).
72. Mariia Kotovskaia and Natal'ia Shalygina, "Love, Sex and Marriage-the Female Mirror: Value Orientation of Young Women in Russia", in Gender, Generation and Identity in Contemporary Russia, ed. Hilary Pilkington (London: Routledge, 1996).
73. Hilary Pilkington", 'Youth Culture' in Contemporary Russia: Gender, Consumption and Identity", in Gender, Generation and Identity in Contemporary Russia.
74. International Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, Women 2000: An Investigation into the Status of Women's Rights in Central and South-Eastern Europe and Newly Independent States (Helsinki, Finland: International Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, 2000).