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Free Market Ideology and New Women’s Identities in Post-socialist Ukraine Tatiana Zhurzhenko V. KARAZIN KHARKIV NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, UKRAINE

ABSTRACT Transition to the market economy in post-socialist Ukraine, followed by the destruction of the ‘working mother’ gender contract, has led to the emergence of new forms of women’s identities. But the formation of new identities in the transformational period appeared to be mediated by free market ideology, linked to the development of consumer capitalism and dissemination of western consumer standards and lifestyles. The seeming diversity of the new identities promised by the ‘free market’ turned out to be reduced to two models: housewife and businesswoman. Imported along with western mass culture, they can easily be inscribed onto the Ukrainian cultural context. At the same time, the everyday practice of economic survival through informal business and the difficulties of adaptation to the market economy have a profound impact on women’s identity formation.

businesswoman identity ◆ consumer society ◆ free market gender contract ◆ housewife identity ◆ market transformations working mother identity KEY WORDS ideology ◆

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Ukraine is among the states that have emerged after the breakup of the USSR and that are moving along the path towards what are generally defined as the free market and democratic institutions. The breakdown of the Soviet system, along with the destruction of a unitary ‘Soviet identity’, as it first seemed, opened the floodgates for diverse social initiatives and movements organized around cultural, national, religious and other values, and thereby for the formation and representation of new forms of identity. The growth in the number of women’s organizations and their activities, as well as the emergence of the first, and thus far singular, figures of women thriving in business and in politics also bears evidence of the successes of democratization. At first glance, the dynamics of these processes in post-socialist countries comply entirely with the global The European Journal of Women’s Studies Copyright © 2001 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi), Vol. 8(1): 29–49 [1350-5068(200102)8:1;29–49;015615]


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The European Journal of Women’s Studies 8(1)

context of the growth of diversity, flexibility and plurality of social forms in the modern world. However, in western societies the appearance of ‘identity politics’ is first and foremost a continuation of the long-term tradition of resistance to capitalism, market globalization and consumer society (and also evidence of the current collapse, impasse or disorientation of this tradition embodied in labour movements and the socialist left). At the same time, in the former socialist countries emerging new identities are ‘domesticated’ by the authorities and used by political elites for their own interests in order to manipulate new social movements. In the former Soviet republics (especially in those as urbanized and industrialized as Ukraine), national, ethnic or religious traditions were so melted down in the boiler of ‘Soviet identity’ that their contemporary political actualization usually arises on the basis of artificial simulation. Practically any cultural initiative, social movement or protest immediately proves to be a part of the existing social order, and gains authorization on behalf of the dominating ideology. The women’s movement, revived in Ukraine with the onset of the reforms, regardless of all its accomplishments, shares this sad fate – partly because it inherits the old state socialist, conformist movement, but mostly because new mechanisms of political manipulation have emerged. It is far from simple to determine today to what degree the creation of new women’s identities is a result of the increased freedom of self-expression and possibilities of political participation, and to what degree it is the result of identification with models produced by mass media and new ideologies of the free market and democratization. I believe that the ideology of the free market plays a particular role in these processes. Although there are many reasons why, until now, a fullyfledged market economy has not formed in Ukraine, the myth of a ‘free market’ contributed to the delegitimization of the Soviet system and ideologically underpinned the beginning of the reform process. Legitimization of the new social order was based on a new understanding of justice and market motivations linked to the principle of private initiative. However, for women this new system of motivations turned out to be ambivalent. The universal right of private initiative, in effect, turned out to be gender specific for it reconstructed the traditional separation of the private and public spheres. The abandonment of state paternalism and the collapse of the system of social protection caused the end of the social contract between working women and the state and pushed them in search of new life strategies and identities. In response, mass culture offered an already existing set of western identification models, ranging from the thriving businesswoman to the ideal housewife. Significantly distinct at first glance by the degree of their ‘progressiveness’, these identities have in effect much in common, for they are ingrained in the consciousness by virtue of the mechanisms of the market and mass cultural


Zhurzhenko: Women’s Identities in Ukraine

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consumption. The emergence of these new identities, professedly or implicitly based on the essentialist understanding of women’s destiny, contributes to the integration of the newly forming market society, thus creating opportunities for the social inclusion of women. However, this inclusion is simultaneously a form of exclusion and the basis for the creation of new forms of inequality. The discourse of marketization represents this gender inequality as natural and justified by biological differences and as in no way connected with the universal institutions of the market society. The transformation of the mechanisms of women’s identity formation under the influence of free market ideology and the politics of market liberalization is the main problem posed in this article. For Ukrainian women extremely important and practical questions arise from this ‘theoretical’ problem: are new women’s identities which are not mediated by free market ideology and which would not be a return to traditional gender roles possible? Is it necessary (and possible) to create an opposition to the current political and economic course which would not be a return to the already experienced Communist ideology? Is there a future for the Ukrainian women’s movement and Ukrainian feminism?

IDEOLOGY AND IDENTITY: BETWEEN LEGITIMIZATION AND PROTEST One of the most interesting interpretations of the classical concepts of ideology, from the point of view of the relationship between ideology and identity formation, has been offered by Paul Ricoeur (1986). He deals with the functioning of ideology on several levels, from its distortive function to its legitimative function and then to its constitutive function. Ricoeur aims to show that ideology as a cultural system and as a symbolic structure of social life ultimately serves as the basis for the preservation of identity. The first, most evident level of the functioning of ideology was described by Marx as distortion, false consciousness, the perversion of reality in the products of ideal activity (religion, science, art) under the influence of the interests of the ruling class. On the second level of analysis, ideology is a means of legitimization of the social order (Ricoeur here refers to Weber’s legitimization theory): every social order seeks the acceptance of those it rules, and this acceptance of the governing power is what legitimizes its rule. The problem thus has two sides: a claim to legitimacy by the ruling authority and the belief in the order’s legitimacy granted by its subjects. Developing the ideas of Weber, Ricoeur points to the existence of a gap between belief and claim as a permanent feature of political life; thus the function of ideology is to fill this gap. Finally, the third level of the functioning of ideology is tied to the formation of social


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identity and the integration of society. Here Ricoeur refers to Clifford Geertz’s The Interpretation of Cultures and his concept of symbolic action, simultaneously returning to the young Marx’s concept of ‘praxis’, which includes representation. All social actions are already symbolically mediated, and it is ideology that plays this mediating role. At this level ideology is integrative since it preserves social identity. However, these three levels can be viewed in reverse sequence, since ideology is always about power. Using this three-level model of the functioning of ideology suggested by Ricoeur, one can attempt to trace the impact of free market ideology in post-socialist society on the processes of forming new identities. The concept of identity can also be considered in its relations with ideology. Sociologist Manuel Castells defines identity as ‘the process of construction of meaning on the basis of cultural attributes, or a related set of cultural attributes that is/are given priority over other sources of meaning’ (Castells, 1997: 6). Being internalized by actors, identities nevertheless are socially constructed, and the social construction of identity always takes place in a context of power relationships. From this standpoint Castells differentiates three forms of identity building: (1) legitimizing identity, introduced by the dominant institutions of society to extend and rationalize their domination vis-a-vis social actors; (2) resistance identity, generated by those actors that are in positions/conditions devalued and/or stigmatized by the logic of domination, thus building trenches of resistance and survival on the basis of principles different from, or opposed to, those permeating institutions of society; and, (3) project identity, which is constructed when social actors, on the basis of whichever cultural materials are available to them, build a new identity that redefines their position in society and, by so doing, seek the transformation of overall social structure (Castells, 1997: 8). The advantage of Castells’ model is that it reflects identities in their development. Identities which emerge on the basis of resistance to the dominating culture can be comprised of projects of social restructuring based on alternative values. However, since they are to some extent realized and entrenched in the institutions of society, with time they turn into legitimizing identities, thus rationalizing the authority of these institutions. At the same time, ideology, which on the superficial level appears as false consciousness, an instrument for manipulating the masses in the interests of the ruling social groups, also ensures, through a system of motivation, that most members of society are interested in following the ‘rules of the game’ set by the authorities. It performs the function of legitimization of the social order and on the deepest level provides an opportunity for social communication and the integration of society based on a common value system. It is exactly such a metamorphosis which occurred in Ukraine with the idea of the free market (coupled to some degree with the idea of the revival of independent statehood).



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However, the capability of the new ideology to fill the legitimization gap turns out to be restricted (especially when faced with radical social transformations), and this process produces groups which are excluded from the redistribution of property and power (for instance, women). On the basis of unequal access to the formally universal institutions of democracy and the market, new resistance identities emerge which conflict with the already established, new ideology. Their perspectives and possibilities for conversion into project identities (say, feminist identities), that is the possibility to influence the forming social order in transitional societies, are still uncertain.

FREE MARKET IDEOLOGY IN THE UKRAINIAN SOCIETY IN TRANSITION Although the ideologists of perestroika suggested that the decisive reasons for the transformations were the flaws in the economic system (ineffectiveness of economic mechanisms, the slowing down of economic growth rates), researchers today all the more frequently pay attention to the crucial role of deep-seated social factors. Thus, the sociologist V. Radaev notes that transformations in the former USSR were based on two pivotal factors: on the one hand, the discontent of the Soviet middle class with the existing regime and dissatisfaction with their professional, cultural and consumer expectations; and, on the other hand, the tendency to ‘bourgeoisification’ of the ruling Communist elite (Radaev, 1998: 322). It should be added that the actions associated with both these social factors were to a crucial extent founded on ideological mechanisms. We first consider from this standpoint the second factor. The growth in popularity of market ideas under conditions where the social and political foundations of the old regime remained virtually unchanged suited the interests of the new generation of bureaucracy, seeking to modernize its power mechanisms. Under the cover of ‘free market’ ideology in Ukraine, a model of transition was formed, the essence of which is the ‘privatization of the state’ in the absence of effective institutions of a market economy. Reforms turned out to be a series of contradictory and forced concessions to private interests in the state-run socialist economy, and free market ideology became an important means of legitimization of the redistribution of property and powers. The basis of free market ideology, in the beginning of the reform process, was that the market and the administrative-command system were incompatible and mutually exclusive models of economic organization. This idea was formulated by a well-known publicist and economist, Larisa Piyashevaya, – the economy cannot be half planned and half market, or, ‘it is impossible to be just a little pregnant’. Society, which up


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to this point had been more or less monolithic, for the first time became polarized around this painful question, thus dividing it into pro-market and anti-market camps. At this time both the market and administrativecommand systems were seen by both parties in an extremely abstract way and appeared predominantly as ideological symbols. The administrativecommand system (identified with the most rigid variant of Stalinist economics) was granted all the possible vices: inefficiency, absence of stimuli to labour and innovation, priority of distributive justice before economic efficiency and state paternalism. Naturally, the market (identified with the free market economies of the advanced countries of the West) was described as the opposite. The question was not raised about how economic practices inherited from the socialist past would affect the implementation of universal market models, or how various social groups (including women), through their interests and collective identities, would mediate the implementation of ideal market models in a real society. Thus, the myth about the stagnation and inefficiency of the administrative-command system and the ‘hero-entrepreneurs’ undermining it with their ‘market behaviour’, became an ideological screen for the legalization of shadow economic structures and the shadow capital of the bureaucracy. The second most important factor of the reforms in the former USSR was the professional and consumer dissatisfaction of the new middle class of Soviet society and their pro-western sentiments. For them the beginning of reforms was connected with expectations of freedom in all respects: freedom of self-expression and creative initiative, ensured by new opportunities for business activity as well as the freedoms of consumer choice which were previously inaccessible under the conditions of the deficit economy. The market economy was presented as an area of unlimited possibilities for creative and innovative activity and as a more equitable system, which rewarded initiative, effort and entrepreneurial spirit. With regard to motivation, free market ideology finally delegitimized the Communist regime by presenting the system of egalitarian distribution and state paternalism as inequitable and inefficient. The model of the ‘independent private entrepreneur’ became the basis of self-identification for those who were unsatisfied with their professional and social status, as well as their level of income provided by the state. Attained freedom of consumer choice became the main evidence of the success of reforms: scarcity of the most basic goods became a thing of the past and there appeared new consumer standards and lifestyles – first and foremost being the western consumer culture. However, faced with the economic crisis and unprecedented deterioration in the standard of living, the relative value of consumer choice significantly declined in Ukraine as problems of economic survival and physical security took priority. Access



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to the new consumer and western lifestyles turned out to be rigidly restricted by income levels. Nonetheless, for certain new social groups with a relatively high level of income (and often uncertain professional and social status) consumerism is the principal sphere of identity formation, allowing them to imitate certain standards and join some imagined community of ‘new elites’. On the whole, freedom of consumer choice became a principal part of the ideology of market reforms as the masses were offered the universal system of motivation: the consumer paradise that awaited them in the near future. So, we can make some preliminary conclusions as to the role of free market ideology in transitional society. First, in the absence of a market infrastructure this ideology turns out to be an ideology in the Marxist sense of ‘false consciousness’ distorting reality. It is effectively used by the ruling elite to justify the new redistribution of property and power. Second, the ideology of the free market became a means of legitimization of the new social order based on the market economy by proposing the new notion of justice and motivation to work. Third, the problem of motivation is associated with the formation of a new collective identity on the basis of the value system shared to some extent by the entire society. However, in the transitional economy, the possibility of forming new collective identities based on free market values and private initiative is rather problematic. As in western societies, there are the problems of social exclusion, of unequal access to the benefits of the market system, thereby forming marginal groups and marginal identities. Yet, unlike in the advanced countries of the West, those who are socially excluded in countries with transitional economies turn out to be the overwhelming majority of the population. Marginalization of the position of women in the transitional economy is one of the most obvious consequences. Therefore, I shall proceed to an examination of the influence of free market ideology on the formation of women’s identities.

FREE MARKET IDEOLOGY AND THE CRISIS OF WOMEN’S IDENTITY It is my belief that the essence of the problem of women’s social and economic marginalization in transitional society is that free market ideology perfectly corresponds with the patriarchal gender ideology construction of women as marginal and the conviction that this socioeconomic marginality is due to a ‘natural’ division of labour between the sexes. The ‘transition to market’ project claims that the institutions of market society are universal, natural and fair, and thereby disguises their patriarchal character. This ‘transition to market’ is based on western


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economic science claiming scientific objectivity and ideological neutrality and regarding the market as the form of social organization which corresponds, to the highest degree, to universal ‘human nature’. The opposition between market and household (male and female) is embedded in the categorical apparatus of economic theory and reflects the historically existing sexual division of labour. The priority of the market in mainstream economics definitely corresponds with the actual hierarchy of market production and family reproduction in modern society. The ‘transition to market’ project may refer to the objectivity and scientific neutrality of mainstream economics, but, in reality, it perpetuates the political strategies of the Cold War by implying market ‘normalization’ of the post-socialist societies and overcoming the Communist legacy by means of cultivating universal market norms and institutions. In that way imposition of the ‘normal’ sexual division of labour becomes a part of these processes. At the same time, the concept of the ‘transitional economy’ implicitly justifies the disintegration of society and the unforeseen social costs accompanying market reforms. The transitional period is considered as a temporary, but inevitable, state of society when the market mechanism, allegedly providing social harmony, has not yet evolved. Thus, the ideology of ‘transition to market’ is itself a part of the mechanism of social disintegration and victimization of the least protected groups of society. By setting forth economic rationality and efficiency as the main social priorities, this ideology considers the worsening position of women in the sphere of employment and the sharp reduction in the level of their social protection as an inevitable consequence of progress towards creating a ‘market’. Thus, the women’s movement, which stands up for social priorities in the economy, is doomed to ‘economic romanticism’. One of the main consequences of the free market ideology has been the destruction of the ‘working mother’ gender contract (Zdravomyslova and Temkina, 1997: 85). This gender contract assumed, in particular, the combination of family and work functions by women for which the state provided the necessary support (health care, benefits for working mothers, childcare) and guaranteed the preservation of their jobs. The politics of paternalism, which provided full employment and social benefits for working mothers, was subject to criticism in the beginning of perestroika from the standpoint of economic efficiency and also because of the ‘lack of freedom of choice’ for women. At the same time, the economic reforms in Ukraine, as in most of the countries of Eastern Europe, necessitated a sharp decrease in the financing of social programmes and consequently in the level of social protection of most Ukrainian families. Under increasing economic hardship, the decline of socialist paternalism was not replaced by an alternative social policy (particularly in



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relation to women and families) in response to the needs of the transition economy. The increase of social problems is viewed in contemporary literature as an inevitable side-effect of market reforms and the decline in the living standards of the great proportion of the population tends to just attract the attention of experts interested in threats to political stability and democracy in transitional society. This approach is supported by international economic organizations, which give financial aid to market reforms in Ukraine (the World Bank, International Monetary Fund) under the pretence of reducing the expenditure of the state budget. The absence of a well thought out and specific policy at the level of official political discourse is accompanied by the notion of the ideology of individual entrepreneurship being the mainstay of self-support and survival under the new economic conditions. However, ‘in practice the unit of self-support is not the individual, but the family’ (Barrett and McIntosh, 1994: 40). The real gender policy places the main difficulties of the transition economy firmly on the backs of families. The destruction of the social welfare system, the increased cost of social services, the deterioration in the quality of medical care and the commercialization of education force women to accept the burden of additional social responsibilities which earlier had been managed by the state. The radical reorganization of social reproduction tied to the destruction of the working mother social contract and the privatization of most functions which were previously provided for by the government through the intermediation of state enterprises have today led to an increased burden on the family and, above all, on women. It is particularly female labour, both paid and unpaid, which was, and remains, the main economic support in Ukrainian society in the last years of reform, when male entrepreneurs were mainly preoccupied with the redistribution of state property. The end of the working mother contract has a direct influence upon the formation of women’s identities under the conditions of the transitional society. The gender contract for working mothers was the basis for the formation of the gender identity of Soviet women and assumed a dual orientation – on the one hand, around motherhood and the fulfilment of family obligations and, on the other hand, around activity in the public and professional spheres. Throughout Soviet history this combination of gender roles was versatile and always contradictory. As noted by Russian researchers Anna Temkina and Elena Zdravomyslova, the peculiarity of the Soviet gender system was the combination of egalitarian ideology regarding the woman question with quasi-egalitarian practice and traditional stereotypes (Zdravomyslova and Temkina, 1997: 87). Although, as the basis of ensuring equal rights, Soviet ideology viewed as compulsory the participation of women in manufacturing and even encouraged the leadership of women and activism (controlled by the party), in practice, women were sooner prescribed auxiliary roles. The result of


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combining several social roles was the lower efficiency and expertise of women’s labour and there was less investment in female human capital. However, the state, as the monopoly employer, with the help of a system of protectionist measures, supported the employment of women. It aimed to ease the economic and social burden of motherhood by providing a certain minimum of social benefits and guarantees protecting women as workers. Therefore, not only the traditional family role of mother, but also the social role of worker and member of a labour collective, affected the formation of their gender identity. In circumstances where Soviet enterprises were not only intermediaries in the distribution of goods, services and social benefits, but also an important source of collective identity, most women felt their belonging to their profession or labour collective as an important part of their self-identity. Since it was precisely through the enterprises that the disbursement of social subsidies and the distribution of privileges to working mothers was carried out, the working mother identity had quite stable social and economic foundations. At the same time, the darker side of the working mother gender contract was the ‘dual burden’ of duties which could not be alleviated by the social services or easily accessible consumer goods provided by the state. Inferior quality, queues and shortages in the undeveloped sphere of services required expenditure of time and energy, while inaccessibility to flexible forms of employment complicated the situation. Besides, in Soviet society, a particular type of female family leadership, combining at the same time patriarchal traits, was formed. It was based on the fact that women held responsibility not only for the main family duties, but also responsibility for the family itself, as well as essential intra-family authority. Under the gradual erosion of the working mother gender contract a division materialized: while some women faced barriers on their way to a professional career and creative self-expression due to patriarchal stereotypes, other women were forced to dedicate time to employment activities and could not devote themselves completely to family duties. In the process of weakening the ideological pressure of the Communist Party, there emerged some relatively diverse persuasions and values which became the basis for the new post-Soviet women’s identities: the remnants of the patriarchal values of the peasant culture, the legacy of Soviet egalitarian politics, pro-western sentiments and stereotypes and dissident protest. However, because of the logic of the democratization process, the resistance identity of those women who felt dissatisfaction with the existing social system, including the hidden gender inequality, was unable to find an opportunity for political representation. The Soviet ideology of women’s emancipation appeared to be compromised, and the adopted language of western feminism was not adequate for the purpose. If, in



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Russia, the energy of women’s resistance was expressed in the mass democratic movement, and later in the evolving feminist movement, then in Ukraine it found expression in the nationalist-democratic movement, which turned out to be the only viable opposition to the Communist regime. Consequently, even women’s groups were forced to accept nationalist ideology, though to varying degrees. The feelings of those women who were guided by traditional gender roles were reflected in the ideological upheavals of the mid-1980s. Academics and journalists actively discussed the possibility of granting women the choice and possibility of returning to family duties (in return for an increase in their husband’s salary). Simultaneously, the western standards of consumption and mass culture which penetrated Soviet society generated an ever-increasing inferiority complex in Soviet women. Bearers of ideal femininity – cinema images of pretty women – seemed an unattainable ideal for the typical woman, whom the asexual (and simultaneously patriarchal) Soviet culture considered only as ‘working mothers’. The lack of access to western styles of consumption accentuated the social exclusivity of those who did have access – the wives of nomenklatura officials and currency prostitutes (Lissyutkina, 1993). During the perestroika period, the emergence in the mass consciousness of an attractive image of prostitutes – the ‘pioneers of the free market economy’ – best characterizes the change not only in ideological priorities, but in the ideological mechanisms forming gender identities, from the direct ideological influence of the party and state on the socialization process to the mass production of cultural images imposed as models for imitation.

NEW MODELS OF IDENTITY AND CONSUMER SOCIETY IN UKRAINE The working mother gender contract, which was supported by the Communist ideology as the basis of identification for the great majority of Soviet women, ceased to exist with the demise of the Communist regime and the introduction of reforms. The democratization of society created possibilities for the advent of new women’s identities, and, at first glance, there was a fairly broad spectrum. However, under the conditions of the transitional society, the formation of these new collective identities is mediated by market ideology and occurs around set models offered by mass culture. This is why their apparent diversity is in effect reduced to two models and two poles of this spectrum: businesswoman and housewife. The housewife identity is based on the essentialist ideology of women’s destiny and the traditionalist understanding of gender roles (mother,


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wife). The attraction of this type of identity is not merely a consequence of the ‘patriarchal renaissance’ (Posadskaia, 1994: 4) in post-Soviet society, and to consider it as purely negative would be wrong. The appearance of the housewife identity was an entirely understandable reaction to the limitations of traditional femininity under the conditions of state socialism, a protest against the imposed official ideology of ‘Soviet identity’ and the costs of Soviet egalitarianism. Its revival lay in the weakening of ideological pressures at the beginning of the 1980s and the increase in the autonomy and importance of the private sphere (above all families). At that time, the question of the ‘right to choose’ for women, between family and career, became a part of public discourse connected with attempts to raise the efficiency of the Soviet economy by reducing the demand for labour, as well as by changes in demographic policies. With the onset of economic reforms and the appearance of unemployment, the topic of returning women to their natural mission as custodians of the domestic hearth became persistently rooted into the mass consciousness. These processes occurred in practically all post-socialist countries, though they had characteristics peculiar to their own national and cultural traditions. In the case of Ukraine, the formation of the housewife identity reflects the revival of traditional values in Ukrainian culture and their mythologization in the interests of the rebirth of Ukrainian statehood. In nationalist discourse, the myth regarding Ukrainian matriarchy occupies a special place, according to which, in the past, women traditionally played socially recognized and valued economic and social roles and enjoyed ‘equality in difference’ (Rubchak, 1996: 315–16). This is why even some representatives of the women’s movement consider the return to the traditional gender roles in the family as empowerment of women and as a condition for the revival of the Ukrainian nation. In the context of this type of discourse, Ukrainian women’s identity is constructed around the ancient image of Berehynia (the pagan goddess/guardian of the home hearth) which is revived in its modern form as mother/protector of the nation. Thus, the housewife identity, adopted together with the western culture of consumption, receives additional support in the traditionalist values of Ukrainian culture. Furthermore, in the context of market ideology, the ‘return to true femininity’ became inseparable from the emergence of the mass consumption society with the penetration into Ukrainian society of western standards and lifestyles. The increase in the choice of goods and services, the new women’s magazines and the television commercials radically changed the situation in the consumption sphere. Through initiation to consumption as a particular art which requires skill, experience and talent (a mechanism described 40 years ago by Betty Friedan in respect to American society), Ukrainian women in the post-socialist age are learning to be ‘genuine’ women, ideal mothers, wives and hostesses.



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The difficulties and contradictions of housekeeping as a career and as an identity in the post-Soviet era are considered in Elena Zdravomyslova’s article ‘Problems of Becoming a Housewife’ (Zdravomyslova, 1996). She maintains that, ‘Soviet gender culture is the basis of the problems associated with becoming a housewife’ (Zdravomyslova, 1996: 34). One of the special features of this Soviet gender culture was that housework was not considered as work in terms of the time and energy it involved. Participation in social manufacturing was considered compulsory for women and had significant influence on the process of their socialization, while the development of a professional career was considered dispensable and even unnecessary; more important were maternal duties. For this reason, the adoption of the gender role of housewife and the formation of a corresponding identity essentially differs among representatives of various generations. Although women above the age of 35, with lengthy professional experience, encountered serious psychological difficulties and inner conflicts, young women with little or no work experience mastered the new role of housewife relatively easily (especially if this transition was the result of the free choice of the woman and increased wages of the husband). At the same time, the choice in favour of the housewife identity is due not simply to a change of lifestyle, but also to a new redistribution of gender roles in the family and by the appearance of a ‘patriarchal gender ideology’. Behind this ideology, justifying the new division of labour inside the family, ‘there are essential features (biological or “natural”) embedded in sex which predetermine gender roles in society, and which were violated during the socialist experiment’ (Zdravomyslova, 1996: 45). Today, in postsocialist societies, this new gender ideology finds support at the level of official political discourse since it contributes to the adaptation of women to the new socioeconomic situation and serves as one of the forms of their inclusion in the new market society. At the same time, it contributes to the emergence of new forms of gender inequality and social exclusion which are new to post-socialist societies. The second type of identity – the identity of the businesswoman – is a combination of contradictory elements in the conditions of contemporary Ukraine. As already noted, free market ideology, and the model of the independent entrepreneur associated with it, is essentially gendered. It is associated with the role of the ‘breadwinner’ and implicitly assumes a return to the ‘natural’ distribution of gender roles. That is why women entrepreneurs in Ukrainian society inevitably end up in a situation of dual resistance. They are forced to realize their initiatives under the conditions of risk, the absence of legal guarantees and during the political and economic instability of the transitional economy. It is necessary for them to resist not only the bureaucratic system which blocks their initiative as entrepreneurs, but also the patriarchal stereotypes and the practice of discrimination in the male business environment. In this sense, the


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businesswoman identity can be considered as a form of resistance identity in modern Ukrainian society. Moreover, it does not usually imply a rejection of traditional gender roles, and frequently resists feminism and the feminist movement. Among women entrepreneurs (and in their organizations) ‘business interests’ take precedence over the ‘interests of women’, and business identity predominates over women’s identity. At the same time, under the formation of the market economy and capitalism in Ukraine, the businesswoman identity is a form of legitimizing identity. The image of the successful woman entrepreneur promulgated by the mass media fulfils the function of legitimization of the new market order, much like the image of the happy female Soviet worker in Communist propaganda was used in the past for legitimization of the Communist regime. In this case, women’s entrepreneurship in Ukraine turns out to be inserted into the ideology of ‘women’s destiny’, using traditionalist values and historical myths for the ‘revival of Ukrainian statehood’. The national archetype of the Berehynia determines to a great extent the woman’s place in modern Ukrainian political discourse. Thus, for example, in the speeches of the participants of the first all-Ukrainian conference on ‘Women and Entrepreneurship’, in the city of Donetsk in September 1997, ideas were expressed about the special mission of women in business and politics. It was argued that it was necessary to promote the ‘traditionally female role of nurturing the baby, whose name is the Ukrainian state’, to resolve the problem of the ‘reconstruction of moral values, of the spiritual potential of the nation, the rebuilding of motivation to labour, the introduction of ethical norms and values into the business sphere’. It was also stated that the ‘objective of women’s entrepreneurship is benevolence and revival of the intellectual and technological potential of the nation’. Therefore, it was suggested that women not be enticed into a business career, but remember the balance between family and professional functions, and their reproductive duties to the Ukrainian state. The imposition on women of their ‘natural’ mission at the family level, as well as on the level of national statehood, and the special role of Berehynia as guardian of the moral traditions of business and society, form the gendered foundations of the free market ideology and new market order. The mechanisms of discrimination, existing at the level of political discourse, which assign women entrepreneurs a special ‘moral’ function in fact thrust them into marginal, low-income niches. Encouragement of the active participation of women in business and ensuring equal access to the economic resources of society, is, as is well known, one of the strategies of western liberal feminism. Precisely through its influence on the Ukrainian women’s movement, a strategy towards the ‘adaptation of women to the conditions of the market’ was formulated and various programmes proposed of informational, educational and technical support for women entrepreneurs. However,



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adaptation presumes the uncritical acceptance of the course of market reforms with all their costs as ‘objective reality’ to which one can only ‘adapt’. Therefore, a marginal and dependent status for women under the conditions of the transitional economy is reproduced. The paradox is that despite the apparent differences between the two types of identity (businesswoman and housewife), they are both the product of free market ideology and are reproduced through mechanisms of mass cultural consumption. The choice of a new identity is thus built around western cultural models and at the same time wonderfully complies with the ideological system (the symbolic structure) of the new Ukrainian society. Market motivation, patriarchal stereotypes and elements of traditionalism and nationalism, variously complementing each other, form identification models of the businesswoman and housewife through the vehicles of the mass media and mass consumption. The consumer market, in addition to offering a variety of goods and a certain set of lifestyles and identities, acknowledges their social significance by providing relevant advertising. From this point of view, the identity of the housewife and businesswoman is distinguished only by a set of goods which assigns, with the help of corresponding advertising, one lifestyle or another, and one set of social characteristics or other (businesslike, professional, or feminine, sexual). In western feminist literature these devices are well known. However, in the transitional society such dependence on the formation of identity by consumer capitalism is far from obvious to people, since extending the freedom of consumer choice from the standpoint of free market ideology is considered one of the conditions for emancipation from the ‘totalitarian’ heritage. Furthermore, in Ukraine, unlike in the advanced countries of the West and even most of the other post-socialist countries, the formation of a society of mass consumption evolves against the near complete absence of a middle class and the impoverishment of a huge part of the population. Due to the serious economic crisis, the elements of a mass consumption society exist alongside primitive forms of ‘economic survival’ (through street markets and informal kinds of business, through exchange and cooperation, through more natural methods of housekeeping and increasing the scope of domestic labour). Western standards of mass consumption are easily accessible only to a small proportion of the elite, while the largest proportion of the population is left outside the consumer paradise. While in the West it is mainly middle-class women who are responsible for acquiring family goods and housekeeping and are the focus of consumer capitalism, in modern Ukraine this social group is practically non-existent. In most Ukrainian families living below the breadline, women, who usually still perform the traditional function of organizing family consumption, are at the same time forced on a daily basis to oppose the pressures of consumer capitalism. Their daily pursuit of


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economic survival in effect renders a much larger influence upon the formation of new women’s identities, thus transforming borrowed western images of the housewife and businesswoman.

THE PROBLEM OF ECONOMIC SURVIVAL AND IDENTITY FORMATION Thus, at the level of political discourse and to a significant extent determined by the ideology of the free market, Ukrainian women were offered two main identification models: housewife and businesswoman. However, these images, imposed by mass culture through consumerism and mass media, find practically no support at all in the everyday lives of women in modern Ukraine. The ‘housewife as a career’, as well as the career as businesswoman are only accessible to a small circle of Ukrainian women. The real economic situation, characterized by high levels of hidden unemployment, a sharp decline in living standards, delays in the payment of wages, the absence of welfare guarantees and, anyway, the absence of real possibilities for business initiative, make women search for strategies of economic survival usually connected with the informal economy. These are women who have carried the brunt of the social costs of market reforms and who have had to elaborate alternative economic strategies out of their limited possibilities. Indeed, some marginal forms of economic activity may be openly called ‘female’, as they represent spontaneously emergent ‘women’s niches’ in the transition economy. Various forms of marginal economic activity have become a supplementary and, more frequently, the primary source of family incomes (street trading, the chelnok business1, growing vegetables to sell in the market, and so on) and have, at the same time, remained socially unacknowledged and excluded from public and academic discourse. Risk, the instability of incomes, the absence of opportunities for professional and personal growth, directly impact on the formation of the identities of women involved in this sphere of activity.2 In Ukraine, it has traditionally been the woman’s responsibility to organize household provision and consumption. Thus, generally the main motivation for women to become involved in these marginal business activities is not only an abstract desire to ‘earn money’, it is inherent to their social role – improving the material conditions of the everyday life of their family and the protection of their children. The leading role of Ukrainian women in the family, their readiness to take upon themselves the responsibility for its physical survival and their apparently greater ability than men to adapt to change has historical precedence. The model of family and marriage relationships of strong mother/weak father was prevalent in the pre-revolutionary period



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(Rubchak, 1996). In the 19th century, Ukrainian society was based on subsistence agriculture with the majority of the population living on the edge of poverty. As in other agricultural societies, Ukrainian women had very rigidly defined roles – to give birth, raise children and to be housekeepers. One of the characteristics typical of Ukraine, however, was that many male peasants worked as seasonal labourers far from home in order to pay their dues and taxes. By the beginning of the 20th century, the urban proletariat consisted mostly of newly arrived agricultural workers. The result was that in rural areas households were often effectively headed by women. This is why patriarchal relationships showed themselves to be different to the idealized western bourgeois family with its strong father. These peculiarities were strengthened by the economic and political emancipation of women following the revolution of 1917. As a result of the wars, repression and other social disasters that led to a decrease in the male population, women’s labour activity and growing economic independence became inevitable. As a rule, women took upon themselves the main burden of family responsibilities and functions while men possessed nominal authority in the family and fulfilled the function of external family representatives. Women more often became the heads of households regardless of the presence or absence of men. At the same time, in the economy and society as a whole, the status of women was marginal as women were practically deprived access to management and decision-making roles. This is why post-socialist market transformations have, on the one hand, pushed women out of the labour market and led to women losing their status in the social sphere, and, on the other hand, mobilized the historical potential for female family leadership. Women involved in marginal economic activities do not identify themselves as ‘entrepreneurs’ since their main motivation is to secure and organize their family’s needs. They are usually ‘ordinary women’ forced into making extraordinary efforts for the economic survival of their families. However, for many of them the acquisition of new knowledge and skills, the expansion of their level of communication and a reappraisal of their own capabilities have led to a change in their identities which has effected a change in the division of gender roles in the family. By developing the historical potential of their role as head of the family, these Ukrainian women are forced beyond the bounds of the gender roles assigned them by contemporary society. Formation of gender identity depends on their past social status, profession, length of work experience and age. Women without a postsecondary education, whose previous professional activity was tied to auxiliary or service functions, adapt to informal business more successfully. Not having the demands connected with professional growth and self-accomplishment and having work experience in interrelated spheres (retail and service industries), these women accept their new economic


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roles quite naturally. Age is also an essential factor influencing identity: young women, especially former houseworkers or the unemployed, do not suffer the internal conflict or crisis connected with a reappraisal of values which women in their thirties and forties might suffer. But, for the women who are forced to leave their main profession temporarily or permanently, thereby denying them the possibility for professional growth or self-accomplishment, the turn to informal business frequently becomes a personal tragedy, the disintegration of their professional and life plans. Generally, the identity formation of these women depends a great deal on whether the transition to informal business has been the result of a free choice and desire to try new opportunities and life chances or the forced abandonment of accustomed values and lifestyles dictated by economic necessity. Subsequently, the dynamic of identity depends a great deal on the level of business success. Business success, a feeling of self-confidence and achievement of a new standard of living can, if not fully then to a significant degree, change the self-identity of a woman and allow her to accept the loss of some of the advantages of her former social status and professional position. Even so, a complete abandonment of one’s former identity is impossible and the general instability of the situation diminishes any satisfaction in personal achievements. Generally, the participation of Ukrainian women in different forms of informal business is connected in one way or another with the identity crisis caused by attempts to combine several social roles, difficulties in renouncing the old value system and choosing new economic strategies, and problems of adaptation to the new economic situation.

POSSIBILITIES OF ‘RESISTANCE IDENTITY’ AND PERSPECTIVES FOR UKRAINIAN FEMINISM Some researchers of women’s issues have already paid attention to the ‘paradox of East European (anti) feminism’: despite the loss of social and employment rights which women had enjoyed under state socialism, a mass independent women’s movement did not appear (Watson, 1997). The Ukrainian women’s movement, which came into existence after the declaration of independence, remains politically dependent and has no support among the broad masses of women, regardless of the fact that it is presently undergoing quantitative growth. Under the conditions of severe economic crisis and the sharp decline of the socioeconomic status of women, their obvious political passivity is truly paradoxical. Returning to Castells’ definition, women’s new identities in Ukraine seem to be, above all, ‘legitimizing identities’ which support and justify the transition to a new political order. As correctly observed by Peggy Watson, behind the western feminist discourse there lies:



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. . . the assumption that political identities which, in fact, are historically specific, pre-exist democratization rather than being formed through it. It is precisely this universalizing assumption which underpins the view of democracy as offering ‘freedom’ for the expression of pre-existing political identities, including feminist and nationalist identity which, it is argued, communism has simply ‘suppressed’. (Watson, 1997: 145)

The women’s ‘resistance identity’, based on the visible or hidden rejection of traditional gender roles (which in the West became the basis for various forms of women’s and feminist movements), is virtually absent in contemporary Ukrainian society. As was shown earlier, new women’s identities connected with market liberalization and the spread of free market ideology are based on the traditional understanding of gender roles, transforming them according to the new situation. By using adopted western theoretical constructions (patriarchy, women’s rights and others) to analyse the gender situation in modern Ukraine, researchers do not usually take into account the peculiarities of the organization of social and political power, in which gender is included as one of the fundamental principles. Due to the state control of the private sphere, which was a characteristic of the socialist system, the structures of social power were constructed in such a way that the authoritarian state suppressed both men and women (only the mechanisms of this suppression functioned differently). In a sense, the socioeconomic situation of the transitional period emphasized this peculiarity of the post-Soviet Ukrainian family, which became the main social unit for economic survival during the crisis. The family as a social unit of resistance/survival in (post-)Soviet society and the western model of the patriarchal family are two quite different models of organizing social power. This, to a large extent, explains the hostility of the Ukrainian women’s movement to ideas of western feminism. It is no secret that at the level of mass women’s consciousness, feminist appeals for the protection of women’s rights are sometimes viewed as betrayal with respect to ‘their men’, who themselves also experience the severity of the transitional economy by being forced to accept the new role of breadwinner under ‘savage’ capitalist conditions. The interdependence and complementarity of the functions of all family members and the absence of their personal autonomy which distinguish the post-Soviet family from its western counterpart, is today supported by the historical myth of Ukrainian matriarchy. According to this myth, which is actively used in Ukrainian political discourse, Ukrainian women traditionally possessed a particular advantage in family leadership, and the maternal function enjoyed special respect and prestige. Thus, restoration of cultural traditions and historical values (and along with them a desired ‘equality in difference’) is considered (visibly or implicitly) by the authorities, and by a significant part of the Ukrainian


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women’s movement, as the main strategy to resolving the women’s question in modern times. Besides, this type of social system, where the state always dominated over personality and civil society, predetermines in some sense the dependent character of the women’s movement. If western feminists have been fighting to force a liberal democratic state to recognize their claims and make formal rights function, Ukrainian women’s groups still rely on state paternalism and subdue their interests to the nation-building process. In this situation, free market ideology along with the matriarchal myth influence the formation of new women’s identities in contemporary Ukraine and do not allow women to realize their own economic and political interests. At family level, the interests of women are subsumed to the preservation of the family and its economic survival, while at national level, to the task of building Ukrainian statehood and reviving Ukrainian culture. The ‘liberation’ of women from the ‘legacy of Communism’ through participation in the market economy, and their ‘emancipation’ through the return of the traditional matriarchal leadership role, in practice turns out to be an illusion. Ukrainian women, who are frequently forced to combine traditional women’s roles and the male role of breadwinner, usually sacrifice their individual interests and rights for the ‘benefit of the family’. New women’s identities, based upon the essentialist understanding of women’s destiny, do not permit the articulation of protest against the existing political situation, but instead direct their energy in search of strategies for individual and family survival. NOTES I would like to thank Peter Gowan and the anonymous reviewer of this article for extremely helpful comments and suggestions. 1.

2.

The Russian word chelnok means shuttle, and refers to the part of a tool that makes rapid regularly repeated motions to and fro. In recent years, the term chelnok has been applied to those people who make regularly repeated trips to other countries, especially Turkey and China, in order to buy and sell goods. Unlike smuggling, shuttle trading is a semi-legal activity. It is not prohibited by law, but Ukrainian legislation is contradictory and ambiguous with regard to it. The production cycle is as follows: having accumulated the necessary capital, a chelnok gets a tourist voucher from one of the tour companies specializing in the organization of shopping tours. This voucher allows the chelnok to cross international borders and provides transportation and hotel accommodation. Any additional expenses are covered by the chelnok. The formation of identities and women’s participation in the shuttle business are dealt with in more detail in my paper ‘Gender and Identity Formation in Post-Socialist Ukraine: The Case of Women in Shuttle Business’ (Zhurzhenko, 1999).



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REFERENCES Barrett, Michelle and Mary McIntosh (1994) Anti-Social Family. London: Verso. Castells, Manuel (1997) The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol. 2: The Power of Identity. Oxford: Blackwell. Lissyutkina, Larisa (1993) ‘Soviet Women at the Crossroads of Perestroika’, pp. 274–86 in Nanette Funk and Magda Mueller (eds) Gender Politics and PostCommunism. New York and London: Routledge. Posadskaia, Anastasia, ed. (1994) Women in Russia: A New Era in Russian Feminism. London: Verso. Radaev, Vadim (1998) Ekonomicheskaya sotsiologia. Moscow: Aspect Press. Ricoeur, Paul (1986) Lectures on Ideology and Utopia. New York: Columbia University Press. Rubchak, Marian (1996) ‘Christian Virgin or Pagan Goddess: Feminism Versus the Eternally Feminine in Ukraine’, pp. 315–30 in Rosalin Marsh (ed.) Women in Russia and Ukraine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Watson, Peggy (1997) ‘(Anti)Feminism after Communism’, pp. 144–61 in A. Oakley and J. Mitchell (eds) Who’s Afraid of Feminism? New York: The New Press. Zdravomyslova, Elena (1996) ‘Problems of Becoming a Housewife’, in A. Rotkirch and E. Haavio-Mannila (ed.) Women’s Voices in Russia Today. London: Dartmouth. Zdravomyslova, Elena and Anna Temkina (1997) ‘Sotsial’na konstruktsia gendera i gendernaya systema v Rossii’, pp. 84–9 in Materialy Pervoy Rossiyskoy letnoy shkoly po zhenskim i gendernym issledovaniyam ‘Valday-96’. Moscow: Moscow Center for Gender Studies. Zhurzhenko, Tatiana (1999) ‘Gender and Identity Formation in Post-Socialist Ukraine: The Case of Women in Shuttle Business’, pp. 243–63 in R. Anderson, S. Cole and H. Howard (eds) Feminist Fields: Ethnographic Insights. Peterborough, Canada: Broadview Press.

Tatiana Zhurzhenko is Associate Professor of Philosophy at V. Karazin Kharkiv National University. She graduated from Kharkiv University, Department of Economics and earned her PhD in social philosophy in 1993. In 1995–8 she worked in the Kharkiv Centre for Gender Studies. Her research interests lie primarily in the fields of gender theory, feminist economics and sociology and philosophy of economics. Apart from publications in Ukrainian and Russian, she contributed the chapter ‘Gender and Identity Formation in Post-Socialist Ukraine: The Case of Women in the Shuttle Business’ to Feminist Fields: Ethnographic Insights (Anderson et al., eds, Broadview Press, 1999). Her current research project, ‘Social Reproduction and Gender Politics in Contemporary Ukraine’, has been supported by J. and C. Macarthur Foundation. Address: Prospekt Lenina 67, apt. 26, Kharkiv 61164, Ukraine. [email: [email protected]]

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