Knowledge

Here you can find links on academic articles, books, research and analytics. They can be useful for journalists, researchers and activists digging into the topic.

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

Author:
Anna Temkina

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.

Materials of the V International Gender Workshop “Gender and (Military) Conflicts in Easter-European Countries through Feminist Lenses”

On March 8-10, 2017 in Lviv, the V International Gender Workshop took place organized by Heinrich Boell Office in Ukraine in cooperation with hbs offices in Eastern European countries and the Caucasus. Researchers and activists from Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Georgia, Armenia, Poland, Macedonia, Serbia, Czech Republic and Germany discussed military conflict situations in the region from the perspective of feminist critique. This publication collects texts created on the basis of some of the presentations from the event.

"Prostitutes" and "Defectors": How the Ukrainian State Constructs Women Emigrants to Italy and the USA

Author:
Cinzia Solari

Scholars of sending countries emphasise the role of economics in shaping state policies towards emigration. They argue sending states are converging around a set of discursive strategies that aim to facilitate the influx of remittances from emigrants. One such strategy uses discourses of cultural nationalism to celebrate emigrants as ‘heroes’ of the nation. Drawing on a state sponsored media campaign and ethnographic data, I found the Ukrainian state does the opposite. It stigmatises its emigrants to both Italy and the USA as ‘prostitutes’ and ‘defectors’ respectively. However emigrants are differentially stigmatised. Emigrants to the USA are simply dismissed, but the Ukrainian state constructs migration to Italy as a shameful social problem. It does this even though emigrants to Italy send back significantly more remittances. Economic interests cannot explain Ukrainian state practices towards emigration. Instead, in the context of post-Soviet transformation, I suggest the Ukrainian state has prioritised the construction of a national identity. The state then constructs policy with an eye to cultural rather than economic outcomes. I argue the Ukrainian state actively stigmatises the migration to Italy because it poses challenges to the nation-building process, whereas the migration to the USA is peripheral to this key state concern.

Gender and Choice After Socialism

Author:
Editors Attwood, L., Schimpfossl, E. and Yusupova, M.

The end of socialism in the Soviet Union and its satellite states ushered in a new era of choice. Yet the idea that people are really free to live as they choose turns out to be problematic.  Personal choice is limited by a range of factors such as a person’s economic situation, class, age, government policies and social expectations, especially regarding  gender roles. Furthermore, the notion of free choice is a crucial feature of capitalist ideology, and can be manipulated in the interests of the market. This edited collection explores the complexity of choice in Russia and Ukraine. The contributors explore how the new choices available to people after the collapse of the Soviet Union have interacted with and influenced gender identities and gender, and how choice has become one of the driving forces of class-formation in countries which were, in the Soviet era, supposedly classless.

Фразеологизмы о беременности и возможность репродуктивного выбора [On the Representation of Pregnancy and Reproductive Choices in Gender-Biased Idioms]

Статья рассматривает фразеологизмы, номинирующие репродуктивные процессы. Выделяются два основных способа такой номинации: ознáчивание репродуктивной «зрелости» и номинация различных стадий и «обстоятельств» беременности. Фразеологические единицы этой группы во многом представляют собой языковые «подсказки» направленые на сохранение существующего распределения властных и социальных ресурсов гетеросексисткого общества. 

The Gynaecologist’s Gaze: The Inconsistent Medicalisation of Contraception in Contemporary Russia

Author:
Anna Temkina

This essay discusses the medicalisation of contraception by gynaecologists in present-day Russia. I explore the disciplining discourse and tactics of gynaecologists as experts who aim to orient women towards properly planned and prepared pregnancy. Gynaecologists are important agents of reproductive control because they instruct women in detail about reproductive health and contraception. However, these disciplining medical discourses and professional practices are characterised by inconsistency. In accordance with the demographic priorities of the state, doctors are more oriented towards pregnancy treatment than consultation on contraception, and they are inconsistent in their regulation of contraceptive use. This biopolitical regime reflects the demographic priorities of the Russian state – to increase the population of Russia – and the role of women as the primary objects of this policy.