Prof. Vira Aheyeva,
Ph.D., author of Zhinochy prostir (Female Space), published in 2003
The feminist movement has a long and rich history in Ukraine. It was not introduced to this country from the west, as it seems to some of our contemporaries. The feminist movement began to gain momentum at the end of the nineteenth century. It was a mild form of feminism, Ukrainian style. At the early stages of the feminist movement we find such prominent writers as Olha Kobylyanska and Lesya Ukrayinka; a little later, Milena Rudnytska and Natalya Kobrynska founded the feminist Union of Ukrainian Women. The Union was far more than a creation of intellectuals to promote their ideas — it was a force that found a response in popular support. In Western Ukraine, particularly in Halychyna, branches of the Union could be found in many villages. The Union did a lot of work and had a political influence as well.
Unfortunately, much of what was gained has been lost. Let’s have a look at the issue of equality, for example. From the formally legal point of view, the full equality of men and women is proclaimed. But in reality, the situation is quite different. Recently the Ukrainian president had the cheek to openly and blatantly declare in one of his public statements that Yuliya Tymoshenko, one of the opposition leaders in parliament, could never become president of the country simply because the Ukrainian people would never elect a woman for president! It hardly needs any further comment.
Gender studies conducted these days in Ukraine are the most noticeable and remarkable phenomenon in the Ukrainian literary criticism and the reverberations from these studies are felt far beyond the narrow boundaries of literature.
There is a popular opinion that it is women who have failed to find happiness in their personal lives, who become feminists. There is no grain of truth in it. Back in the mid-twentieth century, Simone de Beauvoir noted that when unemployment was on the rise, women were called upon to confine themselves to their traditional roles as wives, mothers and homemakers, allegation being that it was what Nature designed for them. Simone de Beauvoir once brilliantly said that “you are not born a woman, you become a woman.” Similar to other brilliant but ambiguous statements, it can be interpreted in different ways.
Starting from their young days, Ukrainian girls are brought up to be gentle, yielding, non-aggressive and placid. They are prepared for the role of homemakers, to be decorative elements of the interiors. And boys are brought up to function in a wide world. So in this sense, one does not become a woman. Once I showed our Ukrainian ABC books to foreigners and they begged me to give them these books as presents, so much were they impressed with some of the pictures they saw in them — Moms at home cooking and dusting and Dads at work. No one in Ukraine would be surprised — much less get indignant — to see a picture or a sequence in a film of a typical situation: father and son watching TV or building something with a do-it-yourself kit, and mother doing the dishes.
There also exists an opinion that the issues the women’s liberation movement addresses itself to are not urgent or topical for Ukrainian society, the argument being: there are many women who successfully work in all the spheres of social, scientific and political endevour. Some (or very few in certain spheres) would be a correct word. But even for those women who did get through into the once totally male domains, it became possible thanks to a long struggle that had lasted all through the twentieth century. The women of today are different from the women of yesterday; young girls have become cleverer, smarter and more ambitious; they have discarded many stereotypes. Luckily enough, young men had also become different; they have begun to unburden themselves of the traditional principles of what “a true man” should be. The women of today are no longer as placid and complacent as the old principles required them to be. Many of them are achievers on a par with men. Can a woman who is a manager of a big enterprise or chief doctor of a big clinic be gentle and complacent? Hardly. We should not require women to be “gentle and complacent”; neither should we ask provocative questions of the kind “Do women-feminists want to be loved and caressed?” I wonder what a macho man wants, at least once in a while?
