This book examines Ukrainian state gender politics and investigates how gendered subject positions and policy discourses are constructed within and through social policies. Set against the backdrop of the post-Soviet transformations, nation-building, neoliberalization, and post-Maidan political transformations, policy and discursive changes reflect and reproduce the gender norms that not only derive from these ideological processes but also actively legitimize and enable them. This book considers how the relations between the state and woman-citizen are changing: from socialist paternalism to nationalist affective bond and neoliberal sacrificial citizenship, which conceals women within families but also deeply relies on their unpaid work. The book brings the Ukrainian case into the European debate on conservative neoliberal transformations and anti-gender political sentiment, and by doing that, advances the feminist theorization on neoliberalism. This book will be of particular interest to scholars in gender politics, sociology of policy, and post-socialist or Eastern European studies.
Author(s): Oleksandra Tarkhanova
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 299
City: Cham
Acknowledgments
Contents
Chapter 1: Studying Ukrainian State: Gender Policy and Politics Under Changing Conditions
Gender Policy and Gender Politics: Setting the Research Framework
Traditionalization, Liberalization, or More? Soviet, Post-Soviet, and Post-Maidan Gender Transformations
State: A Feminist Take
Rethinking Policy Discourse Analysis
Analyzing Change
A Note on Policymaking in Ukraine
Structure of the Book
Bibliography
Chapter 2: Compulsory Motherhood
New Welfare System: Preserving Foundations, Changing Tools
Changes and Continuities in State Family Support
The ‘Demographic Crisis’ as Depopulation and Poverty
Biologized Motherhood of Victimized Woman
Ukrainian Pronatalism and Familialism: ‘Upbringing’ in the Name of the Nation
‘Upbringing’ in the Name of the Nation
The ‘Demographic Crisis’ as Degradation and ‘Family Values’ as a Solution
Ambiguity of Fatherhood
The ‘Traditional Ukrainian Family’: From Ideal to Average
Welfare Cuts and the New Normal
The ‘Demographic Crisis’ Under Neoliberalism
Bibliography
Chapter 3: Working and Mothering
Is the Free Market ‘Bad’ for Women, and Are Women ‘Bad’ for the Free Market?
Ukrainian Labor Code: Mothers First
Women as a Special Category of Workers
Attempted Labor Law Reform in 2003
Deregulation of the Protective Labor Legislation
The Working Mother: Reconciling Working and Caring
Protecting Female Workers and Rewarding Reproduction in Pension Law
Women’s Retirement Age
Childcare and Retirement
Bibliography
Chapter 4: Ukrainian Woman and Equality
The Debt That Cannot Be Paid
Ukrainian Woman: Between National Reproduction, Democratic Rights, and Poverty
Women’s Position in the National Past
‘The Cult of Motherhood’: Indebted to Ukrainian Women
Equality in Difference
“Real Equal-Rights”: The Discourse on ‘Improving Women’s Position’
Women’s Special Contribution: The Discourse on Gender Difference
Anti-genderism
The Conundrum of the Anti-discrimination Legislation
Ratification of the Istanbul Convention
Bibliography
Chapter 5: Conclusion: Gender Politics and Conservative Neoliberal Transformations in Ukraine
The Regime of ‘Compulsory’ Motherhood
Conservative Neoliberalism and Gender
Ukrainian Gender and Anti-gender Discourses in the European Context
Theoretical Prospects
Bibliography
Index
