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.

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.

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. 

Why Women Protest: Insights from Ukraine's EuroMaidan

Author:
Olena Nikolayenko and Maria DeCasper

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

Author:
Republic.ru
Source:

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

Author:
Maria Mayerchyk, Olga Plakhotnik
Source:

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.

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.

Feminism in Post-Soviet Belarus

Author:
Elena Gapova

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.