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.

Исследование проблемы насилия в отношении женщин, живущих с ВИЧ, в Восточной Европе и Центральной Азии. Аналитический отчет 2019

Author:
Юлия Годунова, Светлана Мороз, Наталья Сидоренко, Алина Ярославская

В исследовании были проанализированы проблемы, с которыми сталкиваются ВИЧ-позитивные женщины, подвергшиеся насилию после того, как им был постав- лен диагноз «ВИЧ-инфекция». Уникальность исследования заключается в том, что оно было разработано, организовано и проведено сообществом женщин, живущих с ВИЧ и уязвимых для ВИЧ, в рамках региональной кампании против гендерного насилия «Насилию нет оправдания!». В этом исследовании приняли участие 464 ВИЧ-положительные женщины, пережившие насилие, и 120 женщин специалисток из 12 стран региона Восточной Европы Центральной Азии (ВЕЦА). Исследование подтверждает важность приоритезации вопросов насилия в отношении женщин, живущих с ВИЧ, в повестке дня, касающейся раз- вития стран региона ВЕЦА.

"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.

Отчет по осуществлению гендерного равенства и соблюдению прав женщин в Беларуси

Author:
Центр по продвижению прав женщин «Ее права» и Общественное объединение «Радислава»

Центр «Ее права» в коалиции с общественным объединением «Радислава» подготовил отчет по осуществлению гендерного равенства и соблюдению прав женщин в Беларуси в рамках Универсального периодического обзора (УПО).

Раз в 4,5 года каждая страна-член ООН проходит процедуру УПО, где она отчитывается о соблюдении прав человека, и в этом отчете есть пункты по осуществлению гендерного равенства. 

Кроме официального отчета от страны могут быть подготовлены альтернативные отчеты от неправительственных организаций. Это инструмент влияния на обеспечение и развитие прав человека в стране. Исходя из своей компетенции, Центр подготовил отчет по правам женщин.  

Также страна получает рекомендации от других государств по улучшению ситуации с правами человека.  

В отчете пишется, что правоохранительные и защитные меры, принимаемые государством – формальны и малоэффективны, а добиться реальной защиты своих прав женщинам очень сложно. 

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

Author:
Oksana Dutchak

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.​

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.

Национальный обзор реализации положений Пекинской декларации и Платформы действий 1995 года по вопросам гендерного равенства и расширения прав и возможностей женщин РБ

В докладе затрагиваются вопросы по положению женщин в оплачиваемой и неоплачиваемой занятости; сокращению или равному с мужчинами распределению домашней работы и ухода за близкими; сокращению уровня нищеты среди женщин.

Запрещенные женщинам профессии – гендерная дискриминация

Author:
Anti-Discrimination Centre

Отчет посвящен «спискам профессий, запрещенных для женщин», – дискриминационным подзаконным актам, унаследованным от советского законодательства и до сих пор действующих во многих странах бывшего СССР.
Отчет выпущен в рамках кампании АДЦ «Мемориал» #allJobs4allWomen.

Women, Business and the Law 2019: A Decade of Reform

Author:
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank
Source:

To develop a better understanding of how women’s employment and entrepreneurship are affected by legal discrimination, Women, Business and the Law 2019: A Decade of Reform examines ten years of data through an index structured around the economic decisions women make as they go through their working lives. From a 25-year-old getting her first job or a mother balancing work with caring for her children, to a woman on the brink of retirement, the index explores how the economic decisions women make are affected by the law.