"Childbirth Is Not A Car Rental": Mothers And Obstetricians Negotiating Choice And Relationships In Russian Commercial Maternity Care

This article explores how commercialization of maternity care in Russia offers new opportunities and imposes new limitations on both mothers-tobe and doctors. The research is based on 35 in-depth interviews with patients and 24 with professionals in paid maternity car in St. Petersburg (2015–2017). It is a significant and illustrative case within the broader trends in the Russian health care system of the 2000s–2010s. This article’s contribution is an understanding of maternity care’s post-socialism market development from the perspective of women: mothers-to-be and mostly female doctors. The ongoing reforms and organization of paid maternity care in Russia are analyzed. I explore the position of mothers-to-be as consumers with growing demands, and of professional women as they respond to such demands. I depict how doctors, though improving their economic and working conditions, resist the symbolic decline of their status and seek to restore their power, and how mothers-to-be accept doctors’
authoritative role in highly medicalized maternity care.

Crisis, War and Austerity: Devaluation of Female Labor and Retreating of the State

Following the Euromaidan, the outbreak of war and ensuing economic crisis, the Ukrainian government introduced wide-ranging reforms guided by the neoliberal idea that stability and economic growth can be generated by cutting social spending.

Despite the government’s proclaimed intent to support the poorest and weakest members of Ukrainian society, the opposite has occurred, and the negative effects of the new reforms have ended up targeting them most. Women in Ukraine are particularly harshly hit by these savings measures. Despite superficially pro-women legislation, women tend to have the opposite experience. Cuts to the civil service and social spending generally lead to lay-offs and thus to the firing of women, who overwhelmingly work in these sectors.

Further consequences of Ukrainian austerity policies are, among others, an ongoing devaluing of reproductive labour (care, education, etc.), the dismantling of social infrastructure and a neoliberal, profit-oriented restructuring of the education and health care systems.

The Ukrainian left is faced with the challenge of fundamentally criticizing these processes and articulating alternatives. Left-wing feminists must build a strong network of allies in order to lead the fightback.​

Why Women Protest: Insights from Ukraine's EuroMaidan

This article examines why Ukrainian women participated in the 2013–14 anti-government protests, widely known as the EuroMaidan. Based upon in-depth interviews with female protesters, the study uncovers a wide range of motivations for women's engagement in the revolution, including dissatisfaction with the government, solidarity with protesters, motherhood, civic duty, and professional service. Political discontent was the most cited reason for protesting. Solidarity with protesters was another major catalyst for political engagement. In addition, women who were mothers invoked the notion of mothering to provide a rationale for activism. The study contributes to the growing literature on women's participation in contentious politics in non-democracies.

«Если женщина больше не слабая, зачем ее беречь». Социолог Елена Гапова о «сильных женщинах», «безвольных мужчинах» и советском гендерном проекте

Женщины в СССР одними из первых получили права, о которых гражданки других стран могли только мечтать, но сегодня Россия заметно отстает от Запада в том, что касается гендерного равенства. Каково положение постсоветской женщины сегодня? С советским наследием, стереотипами из «Служебного романа», растущей популярностью курсов по ведической женственности и молодой рыночной экономикой. Republic поговорил с Еленой Гаповой, кандидатом филологических наук и доцентом кафедры социологии Университета Западного Мичигана о том, почему идеал буржуазной семьи доступен не всем, что такое эротический патриотизм и зачем обществу «публика» на утренниках в детском саду.

Ukrainian Feminism at the Crossroad of National, Postcolonial, and (Post)Soviet: Theorizing the Maidan Events 2013-2014

The study is an endeavour of critical feminist analysis of well-known Ukrainian events in the winter of 2013-2014, called #EuroMaidan protests (further we shall use the shorter title – “Maidan” or "Maidan protests"). Some reflections on the war in the Eastern part of Ukraine are also included. We would like to discuss how discourses of feminism, nationalism, postcolonialism and (post)Sovietness are intersected in the production of meanings within the Maidan protests and the war that followed.

Feminism in Post-Soviet Belarus

How does a society with a lengthy period of socialist experience in its recent past think of the oppression of women? Would it recognize the issue at all? How would it see the origin of this oppression? Finally, what needs to be done for the world to become a better place? The way these issues have been theorized in the former socialist region was quite different from how they were seen in the West.