Gender and the Orange Revolution

Gender and the Orange Revolution ALEXANDRA HRYCAK A gendered perspective on politics is used for explaining why Ukraine’s Orange Revolution has so far not led to a dramatic increase in the political influence of civic associations or to a broader democratization of power relations within the political system. Women entered the post-communist political system in a marginal position. They were also never able to develop political bargaining power in the authoritarian political system that emerged after Ukraine’s independence. The prospect of inte- gration into the European Union has increased the salience of gender inequality, because states that seek to join the EU must enact extensive equal opportunity legis- lation. But elite divisions about Ukraine’s geopolitical orientation reduce the likelihood that gender equality measures that have been introduced will be implemented successfully. Accounts of the Orange Revolution view this event as a positive step forward for democratization. It has been widely interpreted as a signal that civil society in Ukraine has grown stronger and more vibrant and that citizens in that country feel more confident about rejecting the corruption and informal prac- tices of social control that undermine the fragile foundations of democrati- zation in post-Soviet countries.1 Yet its slogan, ‘Together we are many, we cannot be defeated!’ (Razom nas bahato! Nas ne podolaty!), contrasts quite ironically with the disappointing political outcomes of the Orange Revolution. Indeed, many questions remain about whether civil society is sufficiently strong and cohesive in Ukraine to force its elite to move the country closer towards becoming a consolidated democracy like its western neighbours, and further away from the majority of post-Soviet states that have already become authoritarian regimes.2 Alexandra Hrycak received her MA and PhD from the University of Chicago. She is an associate professor and former chair of the department of sociology at Reed College, and is also president of the American Association for Ukrainian Studies. Her current research analyses the development of civic associations and identity among women in Ukraine. This article benefited from helpful comments from David Mandell and Nicole Edgar Morford. The International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) and the Reed College Levine Fund generously provided funding that made possible the research upon which this article is based. Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Vol.23, No.1, March 2007, pp.152–179 ISSN 1352-3279 print=1743-9116 online DOI: 10.1080=13523270701194987 # 2007 Taylor & Francis GENDER AND THE ORANGE REVOLUTION 153 Like most scholarship on post-Soviet democratic transitions, assessments of the Orange Revolution remain focused mainly on charismatic political figures and on the role elites play in formal political institutions. A focus on gender relations provides a corrective to such ‘top-down’ analyses. A ‘bottom-up’ perspective that uses gender analysis can gain a better and more complete understanding of the opportunities such democratic break- throughs bring for citizens. This study examines the impact of the Orange Revolution from such a perspective. Its purpose is to stimulate further research that will go beyond analyses of democratization focusing mainly on the actions of political elites. It does not analyse the event itself in great depth, but rather uses it to explore the puzzling political weakness of the women’s movement in Ukraine. Gender is often overlooked in the literature on transitions because it is not considered a potential primary electoral cleavage akin to region, ethnicity or language.3 Examining the marginal role women play as civic and political actors, however, can help illuminate the practices and institutions that con- tinue to prevent organized groups of citizens from developing meaningful influence over the state and the power elite. Although women participated in many ways in the Orange Revolution and in popular movements such as Solidarity in Poland that helped bring about democratization, their partici- pation in post-communist politics after the transition is often obscured. In part, this is because women participate in politics on the basis of gendered social roles, as mothers and wives. They thus become associated with the home and private life. As a result, their participation in post-communist public life is covered mainly in scholarly analyses of Western aid and ‘non- political’ projects to build civil society.4 As I demonstrate below, women as an organized interest group have been unable to take advantage of the reorganization of politics surrounding the Orange Revolution. In particular, the women’s movement has benefited little from the rise to power of Yulia Tymoshenko, a woman who is arguably the first politician to command a mass following throughout the country. Within parliament, and also at nearly every level of society, there is still resist- ance in Ukraine to the argument of the women’s movement that women as a group suffer from gender inequality and should unite politically in defence of their common interests.5 On the contrary, rather than seeing Ukrainian women as too weak and in need of empowerment, popular accounts of women in Ukrainian politics often assume that at the heart of the country’s troubles lies a very different gender imbalance: that, owing to a history of colonization, Ukrainian women are now strong – perhaps too strong – and Ukrainian men are now too weak.6 Indeed, Ukrainian women are nearly always depicted through a myth of empowered womanhood and national redemption focused on the Berehynia, a figure invented by the ideologues of the 154 J OU RN AL OF C OM M UNIS T S T UDI ES AND TRANSITION POLITICS independence movement.7 According to this myth, Ukrainian women and men at one point enjoyed equal political and social status. But once colonialism robbed men of their traditional status, women became the main bearers of nationhood and national identity and eclipsed men as the ‘stronger sex’. Their assistance is vital to their nation’s recovery. They must continue to revive family traditions, and also help Ukrainian men to overcome the lingering inferiority complex that resulted from their superfluousness under colonial rule.8 Elements of this narrative are often present in discussions of a handful of ‘empowered’ women such as Yulia Tymoshenko who have entered the ‘male’ domain of politics. Through this myth, Tymoshenko’s rise to power is rendered as follows: a young Ukrainian women who is talented and energetic (not to mention beautiful) is born into relative poverty and obscurity, achieves questionable wealth within the murky world of business (winning her the title ‘Gas princess’), and then redeems herself by becoming nationally conscious and fighting as the ‘goddess of the revolution’ and ‘mother of her nation’ to bring Viktor Yushchenko, poisoned and near to death, to power.9 Furthermore, the series of fiascos that followed the Orange Revolution is retold as a story of epic gender imbalance, of a Ukrainian woman who is once again too strong (Tymoshenko) and a Ukrainian man who exhibits the pathological weaknesses found in all male Ukrainian politicians. This essay goes beyond the myths and cults regarding empowered Ukrainian women to explore a puzzle: why, despite their symbolic signifi- cance, do women in Ukraine in reality play such a marginal role as political actors? The Orange Revolution marks the culmination of a period of political experimentation. During this time, the national independence movement, political parties and the state in Ukraine developed a new repertoire of strat- egies for mobilizing and managing electoral support among women as well as other groups of citizens (for example youth and pensioners).10 Generous inter- national support from foreign programmes to raise women’s issues created further opportunities for improving political access for women and these other groups of citizens. However, so far women have remained unprepared to mobilize on behalf of their own interests as a group. Women’s organizations continue to be vulnerable to co-optation by the state. Government support for their demands for increased state attention to key issues such as maternal and children’s welfare, reproductive health and gender equality remains weak and ineffectual.11 This study surveys the central institutional and organizational dynamics that have prevented women from developing political power in the 15 years since Ukraine’s independence. Below, I review social scientific studies that put forward a set of causal factors to account for variations in the level of female representation in post-socialist legislatures, and then explain how GENDER AND THE ORANGE REVOLUTION 155 studies of informal mechanisms of social control offer a useful starting-point for understanding why, relative to other post-communist countries, women in Ukraine remain less politically influential. In the following section, I explore the role informal practices of gender domination play in confining women to a marginal position in the political system in post-Soviet Ukraine. I demonstrate that, during the formative period of the late 1980s and early 1990s, women were at a structural and ideological disadvantage within the workplace as well as within the parties and organizations that emerged from the Soviet political establishment and the independence movement. In the next two sections I analyse the consequences that their weak position in these three sites has had in the period of political opportunity surrounding the Orange Revolution. The third section explains why equal opportunity legislation that Viktor Yushchenko and Our Ukraine introduced to prepare the country for European Union membership has to date done little to strengthen the political position of the women’s movement. The following section examines why gender issues played little role in the parliamentary elections of 2006 and are unlikely to be salient in the new parliament. Gender and Democratization Social scientists broadly agree that women have been marginalized within post-Soviet politics, and more generally that throughout Central and Eastern Europe women found themselves pushed out of public life after the fall of communism.12 Yet even relative to most other post-communist countries, Ukraine has remained far behind. This is well illustrated by the disappoint- ingly low level of women’s representation in parliament. Studies have ident- ified several main sets of constraints that have hindered the development of greater political power among women in all post-socialist countries. These include the end of gender quotas, a resurgence of neo-traditional attitudes regarding gender roles, the weakness of local feminist movements, the tendency for women in post-socialist societies to subordinate their potential group interests to other issues, and widespread gender discrimination in the labour market that results in economic insecurity and resource problems.13 Before turning to examine the impact within Ukraine of the constraints common to all post-communist countries, I examine the formal and informal political structures that have provided strong disincentives for collective action for all citizens and narrowed political opportunities among women in Ukraine. Gender and Political Influence in Post-Socialist Parliaments Women fared poorly in nearly all post-communist countries in the first elections following the abandonment of gender quotas. However, significant 156 J OU RN AL OF C OM M UNIS T S T UDI ES AND TRANSITION POLITICS differences have emerged in their ability to enter and influence post- communist political systems. These differences have resulted in considerable variation across countries in the gender composition of subsequent post- socialist legislatures. Scholars who have examined these variations at first wondered whether they could be attributed to the structure of electoral systems. Theories drawn from West European cases suggest that women do better in proportional representation (PR) systems than in either single- member territorial district elections or mixed systems that include elements of both.14 This is because, in PR systems, parties are more likely to include women to balance party lists than they are to run women candidates in a single district. Yet PR helps account for some but not all cases in which there has been considerable growth in women’s representation since the collapse of communism. According to the largest comparative study, ‘countries with substantial representation of women where there has been a marked increase in representation since the first post-communist election [share] a number of traits in common . . . party list PR systems’, combined with ‘the desire to “join” Western Europe’ and high levels of mobilization of women both inside and outside political parties.15 In Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries that have remained ambivalent about adopting European institutions and models, women have experienced difficulty gaining political power and there has not been a strong upward trend in their representation in politics since the collapse of communism. Their political powerlessness remains even after the introduction of party lists. In Ukraine’s first two elections since the opening up of the electoral process to competition in 1990, the country adopted a ‘majoritarian’ single- member territorial district system. In 1998, it switched to a mixed system in which half the seats were decided through single-member territorial district elections and half through national party lists. It then switched in its fifth parliamentary election in 2006 to its present purely PR electoral system. Throughout this period, the proportion of female legislators elected has fluctuated, while lagging well behind nearly all other post-socialist countries in Eastern Europe.16 Women were elected in 1990 to 3 per cent of the seats in Ukraine’s Rada; in 1994, their share increased to 5 per cent. We would expect women’s parliamentary representation to increase in cases like Ukraine following the move to party lists. But perhaps because the ‘turn to the West’ and the rise of a strong women’s movement have not occurred, the rep- resentation of women in parliament has remained lower than in neighbouring countries. Under the mixed system in place in 1998, the overall proportion of women elected increased to 8 per cent, with women somewhat more likely to be elected through party lists under PR than in single-member territorial districts.17 It then dropped again in 2002 to 5 per cent (bringing Ukraine the distinction of being in last place in Central and Eastern Europe in terms of GENDER AND THE ORANGE REVOLUTION 157 women’s representation in Parliament). In 2006, after the Orange Revolution, it rose to its current level of 8.7 per cent. Thus today the gender gap in Ukraine is only slightly smaller than it was under the mixed system that existed before the move to pure PR. Neo-authoritarian Mechanisms of Social Control Ambivalence towards Europe and the formal structure of the electoral system are not the only aspects of the political system that differentiate Ukraine from other post-communist countries and that create disincentives to collective action among women. Authoritarian practices have also limited mobilization of women and other groups of citizens into politics and public life. Most significantly, elites in post-Soviet Ukraine have resurrected informal mechan- isms of social control that were widely used in the Soviet era to prevent women and other groups of citizens from developing political power. Much scholarship in recent years has explored the revival of authoritarian practices in post-Soviet countries.18 To indicate the mixed and contradictory outcomes of democratization in Ukraine, scholars have proposed categorizing the new political system as ‘competitive authoritarianism’,19 ‘delegative democracy’,20 or even ‘the blackmail state’.21 At the heart of these analyses lies a simple assumption: elite gatekeepers impede the consolidation and insti- tutionalization of democracy by exploiting their control over resources. Great attention has been paid in this literature to informal mechanisms of control, notably to the use of ‘administrative resources’ to rig the electoral system so as to win control of parliament and impose various substantive and procedural preferences on other political actors.22 But as the outcomes of both the Orange Revolution and the ‘clean’ parliamentary elections of 2006 show, control over parliament and its procedures can also be achieved through means other than employment of administrative resources to rig elections. A focus on elite control over resources – in particular, ‘administrative resources’ – is very useful for understanding the broader structural and insti- tutional reasons why power imbalances remain after the Orange Revolution and the advent of ‘cleaner’ national elections. Since independence, elite gate- keepers continue to use their structural advantage to prevent the mobilization of women as citizens. Patriarchal notions of how political leaders and citizens should ‘look and act’ further undergird or legitimize the endemic material dependencies and relationships of patronage that cripple, co-opt or subvert grass-roots challenges to corruption in Ukraine.23 As the studies of gender and proportional representation reviewed above suggest, embracing pro- European values and adopting models of gender equality are an important precondition not simply for the empowerment of women as civic and political 158 J OU RN AL OF C OM M UNIS T S T UDI ES AND TRANSITION POLITICS actors; they also assist the institutionalization of a set of norms and values that support formal democratic political institutions. Gender Inequality Prior to the Orange Revolution To enter politics, a group that has little political power must have completed considerable advance work generating the basic elements of a social movement: articulating a common collective identity, building effective organizations and developing stable alliances to political allies and support groups.24 The follow- ing section explores obstacles created by elite gatekeepers that deter women from accomplishing the work needed to develop into a social movement. It ana- lyses in detail the mechanisms of gender domination that operate to marginalize women and camouflage gender inequality. It explores the marginalizing effect these had in the workplace, the party system and the independence movement, and, more broadly, within the political system that emerged during the first years of independence. Gender Stratification in the Workplace: A Hidden Soviet Legacy Officially, discrimination against women is illegal in Ukraine, yet hidden forms of discrimination remain widespread, particularly in the workplace. Women occupy a position of structural disadvantage as employees, yet their grievances remain obscured. The invisibility of gender discrimination is an institutional legacy of the Soviet era. Soviet state policies to promote the employment of women and support the ‘working mother’ made it difficult for women to be seen as a disadvantaged group. Lengthy maternity leaves and other measures intended to encourage childbearing and employment among women reinforced perceptions that women were a privileged group that enjoyed an advantageous position under state socialism. This served to delegitimate women’s political activity under post-communism.25 A heavy burden of maternal duties reduced the time and energy women in Soviet Ukraine could devote to advancing their careers, and branded them unreliable workers. It was considerably more difficult for women than men to be promoted up the levels of authority in the workplace and in the party. Indeed, outside intellectual circles, to refer to a woman as ‘pursuing a career’ was to imply that she had loose morals and was sleeping with her boss to get favourable treatment. Powerful organizational positions in Soviet workplaces as a consequence remained almost entirely dominated by men. Even though, generally, women in Soviet Ukraine were better educated than men, they were rarely found in decision-making positions.26 Women were crowded into dead-end jobs where they performed ‘women’s work’. Many women were employed within low-wage economic sectors, such as catering, textile processing, childcare and agriculture. Professional women GENDER AND THE ORANGE REVOLUTION 159 also faced gender discrimination; like other women workers, they tended to work in ‘feminized’ jobs within education, health care and other professions where most employees were women and most managers were men. The transition from state socialism should have de-concentrated control over basic resources and increased opportunities for challenging or exiting this system of gender domination. But in the short run the transition instead increased the impact of these long-standing gender inequalities. Women have been hit far harder than men with unemployment and a host of problems associated with privatization.27 Examination shows that in the main sectors of the economy they receive roughly 25 –40 per cent less pay than men.28 Women are also considerably more likely to experience unemployment.29 The closure of manufacturing plants, day-care centres, scientific research units and many other organizations that employed a predominantly female labour force pushed women out of public sector jobs into private or informal economic activity more quickly than men. There are few economic opportu- nities for women workers in the private sector. Managers still consider women ‘mothers first’ and, hence, ‘unreliable’ workers. Many more women than men have difficulty finding new jobs that pay adequately. Women who have a higher level of education are more likely than men who are equally qua- lified to work in petty trade and within this sector to be engaged in less profit- able and less secure activities.30 Women entrepreneurs tend to operate smaller and more precarious businesses and are rarely found among executives in medium or large businesses.31 In summary, gender segregation in the workforce is an important if hidden legacy of the Soviet Union. State programmes on behalf of ‘working mothers’ reinforced stereotypes rooted in traditional gender roles. These place women at a significant structural and ideological disadvantage. Despite the actual pervasiveness of gender inequality, its nature and extent remain obscured by widespread beliefs that the Soviet state promoted women and their inter- ests. Strong associations with motherhood have been a significant liability for women in the workforce. Women in Ukraine consequently experience greater economic insecurity than men. Poor job opportunities leave women more vulnerable to a host of forms of exploitation and harassment, including abuses of administrative resources that rob them of their rights as voters and citizens.32 Gender and the Political Left: The Communist Party of Ukraine Soviet legacies of gender segregation continue to restrict women’s ability to play an active role in politics in the post-Soviet era. Men who formed a closed elite dominated the Soviet political system. There were no women in the Politburo and in the inner circle of the party leadership. Soviet Ukraine’s party elite also never accepted women. Party leaders prevented women as a 160 J OU RN AL OF C OM M UNIS T S T UDI ES AND TRANSITION POLITICS group from developing political influence and raising gender inequality as a political issue.33 They channelled token women into ‘feminized’ organiz- ational niches within the Communist Party and its post-Soviet successors. The promotion of token women within party channels contributes towards public perceptions that women are well represented in the political system and that their primary problems had been solved by the Soviet state. In the post-war era, women entered the world of party politics in large numbers. By the 1980s, they made up roughly a quarter of the membership of the Communist Party of Ukraine and 30 per cent of the membership of various elected party organizations and boards.34 Quotas ensured that women held about half of the seats in Ukraine’s local and oblast councils, and a third of the seats in the republic’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament). Yet the vast majority of women who were party members remained crowded at the bottom of the political system. Party leaders typically assigned a few token women to positions of secondary importance that were unofficially ‘reserved for women’.35 Usually this was the so-called ‘third’, or ideological, secretary in a local or regional party bureau. They also appointed women to another secondary and usually female position in politics: that of the deputy chairman of a municipality; this office usually dealt with issues of culture and education. Women who occupied such positions were confined to minor offices and, in fact, wielded little authority and experienced few opportunities for upward mobility. Women were singled out as a group and encouraged to mobilize during glasnost and perestroika. As party leader, Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledged that Soviet policies had provided inadequate levels of support to women. He pledged to alleviate the stresses women faced in the workplace and at home, and promised to promote more women to positions of authority. More impor- tantly still, Gorbachev created an organizational channel for increasing women’s political access. In 1987, he revived official organizations called Women’s Councils and placed them under the jurisdiction of a small group of women party leaders who constituted the Soviet Women’s Committee. This committee represented Soviet women internationally and thus had the potential to develop and expand ties to international women’s groups from which the country’s activists had been isolated for so long. Reform of official organizations – the Communist Party, the Communist Youth League and other organizations linked to the party – alongside the revival of the Women’s Council should have given a considerable number of women the opportunity to achieve new positions of visibility in local politics. These organizational shifts might have created opportunities for the emergence of a local women’s movement or a political bloc that could have helped women develop political leverage within the emerging Ukrainian state. Indeed, high positions in official structures and a history of success in GENDER AND THE ORANGE REVOLUTION 161 party work helped numerous men to enter post-Soviet politics. However, for women this was not the case. Women party workers did not benefit from their inclusion in niches defined by gender. Most women who had moved up through the ranks of the Communist Party in the Soviet era proved to have no political future in the post-Soviet system.36 A mere handful of women party workers managed to find positions within post-Soviet political structures, leftist parties in particular. Over half of women candidates and well over half of women elected to parliament were associated with leftist parties during the first post-Soviet elections.37 But, typically once again, women in parties of the left were assigned to subordinate positions and remained dependent on male gatekeepers who had no stake in advancing women’s interests within the political system. Gender and the Political Right: The Independence Movement The official channels of the Soviet era failed to provide a welcoming environment for promoting women or introducing gender issues into politics at the time Ukraine began its transition. But, at least at first, the alternative route into politics was also blocked: advancement of women’s interests within the independence movement and its successors on the political right. The independence movement expanded opportunities needed for women to mobilize for change. It facilitated the formulation of new grievances and the establishment of new organizations. It also invented a new collective iden- tity for women as ‘Berehyni’, or guardians of hearth and home and Ukrainian national traditions.38 Some local feminists see the Berehynia myth as a potential resource for the development of a localized feminism and for engaging women in public life. Zhurzhenko demonstrates that the myth of the Berehynia is ‘ambivalent’. She agrees that such rhetoric could be used to marginalize women by confining them to domestic roles, but notes that it has also been used to engage women in politics and public life and has spurred productive debates among local feminists. These have helped them to stop viewing feminism as an ‘imported, western-centred’ phenomenon and allowed them to begin con- structing a ‘Ukrainian feminism’ that has local relevance.39 Similarly, Kis’ finds that this way of framing women’s political and social roles resonates with the understandings of women’s roles held by politically active women.40 But it has also channelled women into types of civic activism defined by traditional gender roles and oriented towards a revival of national traditions. It has therefore further reinforced pre-existing patterns of exclusion of women from positions of authority in politics and public life. Understandings of women’s roles that derived from the Berehynia myth have had the effect of marginalizing women and women’s issues in public life. This is well illustrated by the pattern of activism that developed among 162 J OU RN AL OF C OM M UNIS T S T UDI ES AND TRANSITION POLITICS women active within the independence movement. Women – in particular educators and scholars who were alienated from the Soviet system – were vital to the growth of the independence movement. They were the ‘moving force’ that formed the grass-roots base of Rukh.41 Women became vital to Rukh because the movement recruited mainly through schools, churches and various other organizations in which women were often numerically dominant. Women also formed the primary base of grass-roots support for the ecological and cultural associations that, in turn, helped develop a follow- ing for the independence movement in western Ukraine and in Kyiv. But gatekeepers operating with traditional gender stereotypes channelled most women away from prominent leadership roles. They also blocked their efforts to raise the issue of gender equality within the movement. Conse- quently, just as happened in the Soviet workplace and within the post- Soviet political establishment, women and men on the political right generally became segregated into different organizational niches and issue domains: men dominated politics writ large; women typically assumed subordinate roles and embraced traditional ‘women’s issues’ associated with children, spirituality and national traditions.42 Indeed, somewhat in keeping with the dictates of the Berehynia myth, gatekeepers in Rukh tacitly discouraged women from entering the ‘dirty’, ‘male’ domain of politics and instead encouraged women to look to the past for organizational templates through which to revive Ukrainian traditions. This search led women in the movement to devote energy to establishing women’s organizations such as the Zhinocha Hromada and Soiuz Ukrainok based on pre-Soviet models. These patterns of gender differentiation within the independence move- ment have hindered the ability of women to succeed in post-Soviet politics as an autonomous, non-partisan force. The women’s organizations that emerged from the independence movement for the most part tend to operate as extensions or satellites of political parties of the right and centre-right.43 Their public activities and political positions remain very dependent on the views of their respective party’s leadership. This inhibits the formation of coalitions with other women’s groups. Moreover, even though some of the organizations that emerged from the independence movement later initiated discussions of issues that expanded opportunities for involving women in public life and for raising issues of gender equality, at first these organizations participated mainly in cultural, educational and charitable activities that focused on the family, children and national traditions.44 Furthermore, while many men rose to political prominence through the independence movement and the parties that succeeded it, not a single woman entered formal national-level politics through a career in the move- ment. Just under half of the 13 women who entered the 1990 Rada were local Rukh activists; none was re-elected in 1994 or subsequently. Only a GENDER AND THE ORANGE REVOLUTION 163 few women were elected through, or attained positions of leadership within, the political parties of the centre-right and right. Although there was one woman among every 20 candidates associated with Rukh running in the elec- tions of 1994, none won a seat. In the 1998 elections, the ratio of women among Rukh candidates increased to one in ten, but only two women (4.4 per cent of the total) were elected through Rukh channels.45 The gender ratios within new political blocs of the centre-right, in particular Our Ukraine and the Tymoshenko Bloc, were at first similarly low, although they improved significantly in the 2006 parliamentary elections. Gender Empowerment: The Orange Revolution and the Turn towards Europe Elite control over resources lies at the heart of most accounts of post-Soviet political failures. It is also crucial to understanding why gender inequalities in politics persist following the Orange Revolution and the introduction of PR. The previous section traced the processes of gender stratification that placed women at a disadvantage in promotion opportunities within the work- force and within the two institutional sites that gave rise to the ‘left’ and ‘right’ of Ukraine’s political spectrum: the Communist Party of Ukraine and the inde- pendence movement. It explored in detail the emergence of gender disparities that hindered women’s empowerment and that continue to prevent women from exploiting the opportunities presented by the Orange Revolution and the new electoral system of party lists. Women were excluded from positions of authority and were also coded as a privileged group with no real grievances. This left them at a structural as well as an ideological disadvantage in the early post-Soviet years. Women’s marginalization at that time within both left and right political forces diminished women’s capacity as individuals to compete for political office and develop political careers. It also diminished their group capacity to develop a legitimate political discourse for articulating their grievances, fashioning a viable collective identity, building stable organiz- ations and developing political alliances to generate and sustain mobilization outside and inside formal political channels. The Orange Revolution and the 2004 presidential election galvanized Ukraine and created many new opportunities for women to become politically active. Viktor Yanukovych promised to ‘strengthen the family, guarantee the protection of women’s rights in all spheres of social life, support women as mothers, provide for health care and also secondary education for every child, provide support for women’s health consultations, for childbirth clinics, children’s clinics and kindergartens’.46 Furthermore, Yanukovych promised, ‘we will uncover new sources of popular energy by guaranteeing the participation of women in a leading role in state administration and by 164 J OU RN AL OF C OM M UNIS T S T UDI ES AND TRANSITION POLITICS giving youth a wide course for serving the people. This will strengthen the rule of the people and parliamentarianism’. By contrast, Viktor Yushchenko did not raise gender issues directly in his presidential campaign; instead he typically discussed measures to improve living conditions for all Ukrainians. At times, he seemed deeply patriarchal and evoked the myth of the Berehynia, praising women as guardians of the Ukrainian family and its national traditions (and not as active citizens and pol- itical agents). As the much-photographed beautiful young women who cooked meals on the Maidan and presented special forces units with bouquets of flowers suggest, his women supporters happily played a supportive role in the revolution: they represented the ‘Berehynia’ and acted as symbols of popular values associated with domesticity and the family. Although Yanukovych’s campaign devoted attention in its platform to women’s empowerment and Yushchenko and his supporters in Our Ukraine did not, the latter have done far more work to advance women’s equality. We now turn to examining an important yet often overlooked side of the relationship between Yushchenko, Our Ukraine, and the women’s movement: efforts to prepare Ukraine for European Union membership. The Women’s Movement and EU Integration Women’s movements have struggled to overcome the effects of the state socialist legacies that disempowered women and de-legitimated women’s pol- itical mobilization under post-communism. As indicated above, studies find that aspirations to join the European Union create a favourable political context for the emergence of a strong women’s movement and for increasing women’s political influence after the fall of communism. This is because states seeking to join the EU must enact extensive equal opportunity legislation in order to qualify for membership.47 The 2004 presidential election and the Orange Revolution focused centrally on integrating Ukraine into Europe. In his inaugural address Yushchenko stated with great hope that ‘we are no longer on the edge of Europe . . . We are situated in the centre of Europe’.48 Indeed, he has long supported EU membership and other measures intended to move Ukraine from Europe’s periphery and out of Russia’s orbit. Yushchenko’s advocacy of gender equality programmes illustrates the unexpected ways in which his pro-European orientation in policy questions differs from the rather patriarchal persona and positions he adopts as a leader in public life. Since his first term as prime minister, he and his allies have taken important symbolic steps towards transposing EU gender equality directives into national legislation. This high-level turn towards Europe has enhanced opportunities for advocates of women’s empowerment to raise new issues such as the need for gender quotas in the party system. GENDER AND THE ORANGE REVOLUTION 165 The prospect of integration into European structures first began to create leverage for advocates of gender equality in the late 1990s. In 1999 the government approved a National Action Plan on Improving the Status of Women in Ukraine that, unlike the previous Action Plan, incorporates gender equality as a key issue. The prospect of European integration has also increased the salience of gender equality among supporters of Our Ukraine as well as a number of parliamentary deputies who are women. This shift away from a discourse of motherhood and national revival towards gender equality is evident in parliamentary discussions of gender issues, and also in the second parliamentary hearings on women’s status held in 2005. Programmes and policies to prepare Ukraine to meet equal opportunity standards needed to qualify for EU membership have also resulted in the passage of legislation to combat domestic violence (2002) and to ensure equal rights and opportunities (2005). State projects oriented towards European models have also been developed to fight trafficking and assist its victims (2003). Yet despite these achievements, the women’s movement is still plagued by problems that have long blunted its political potential. Opinion polls consist- ently demonstrate that very few Ukrainian citizens know of the existence of women’s organizations, most do not trust them, and only an insignificant number have ever participated in their activities.49 These low levels of public trust, awareness and participation reflect the movement’s incapacity for coordinating political campaigns.50 There is still no structure through which to strengthen inter-organizational alliances: even organizations that work on the same issues and are located in the same town often fail to coordinate their activity.51 These low levels of public awareness of the women’s movement also occur because the government of Ukraine has yet to proceed towards develop- ing effective institutional mechanisms for implementing equal opportunity measures. The government has still not committed the resources or developed the political will necessary to establish the state structures for implementing equal opportunity legislation and bringing Ukraine closer to compliance with EU requirements.52 Instead, jurisdiction over equal opportunity legislation remains under the control of existing government structures focused on children and youth.53 Their programmes to address ‘women’s issues’ typically focus on children’s and maternal welfare, and lack the capacity to develop and implement institutional mechanisms that bolster women’s rights and opportunities outside the home.54 The women’s movement also remains vulnerable to coercive management and informal mechanisms of control formerly used to rig elections. Prior to the Orange Revolution, state officials allied with President Leonid Kuchma created ‘from above’ several women’s organizations and a women’s party that received considerable media exposure. They then used them during 166 J OU RN AL OF C OM M UNIS T S T UDI ES AND TRANSITION POLITICS elections to distribute administrative resources to shift the electoral preferences of senior citizens, needy families and other vulnerable sectors.55 In the 2004 presidential election, the Yanukovych campaign employed such tactics widely. Directives and orders to drum up public support for Yanukovych were sent from the highest levels to a wide range of state agencies associated with women’s issues. These agencies pressured women’s organizations to create coalitions at national and local levels in support of his candidacy. Local tax authorities also pressured women’s organizations (and other enterprises) to make extra payments to fund the Yanukovych campaign. In the 2004 presidential election, the Party of Regions also forged a close relationship with women’s groups, and a new group called ‘Berehynia’ became the party’s women’s wing. Although it did not employ this group to dis- tribute administrative resources in the 2006 parliamentary elections, given the party’s history this remains a possibility in the future. A third obstacle to the development of the women’s movement into a unified political actor concerns fundamental disagreements within the move- ment on how to frame ‘women’s issues’. The Soviet establishment, the inde- pendence movement as well as the organizations and parties that they gave rise to have typically framed women’s issues around the family and children. Foreign advocates, by contrast, encourage a shift towards such goals as achieving gender equality and addressing issues of economic or legal dis- crimination outside the home. Foreign funding and international contact have helped encourage local advocates of women’s rights to establish new types of organizations such as gender studies centres, battered women shelters, and micro-credit projects that embrace Western understandings of women’s empowerment. External opportunities have made possible numerous seminars, conferences and publications that assess women’s status in Ukraine. But they have not resulted in strong political alliances between groups that uphold the populist discourse of motherhood and those that embrace foreign discourses based on feminism. Foreign funding is intended to foster networks and alliances among local women’s groups,56 yet dependencies on foreign funding continue to create nearly insurmountable obstacles to the development of the women’s move- ment into a stronger political actor.57 Foreign funding is the primary source of employment and resources among women’s organizations in Ukraine today.58 Competition for funding has increased considerably in recent years in response to frequent shifts in donor priorities and a decline in the availability of grants for women’s empowerment. These changes have fuelled intense rivalries within the women’s movement. They also have con- tributed to a decline in the capacity of most organizations to remain active. The women’s organizations that work most closely with foreign donors and trans-national advocacy networks are ‘women’s NGOs’: small, GENDER AND THE ORANGE REVOLUTION 167 professionalized and elite groups of experts modelled on the Western NGOs that work in international organizations. Foreign donors prefer to work with these professionalized organizations because they deem them the most effi- cient and effective intermediaries for transmitting crucial foreign resources aimed at empowering women at the grass-roots or community levels. Yet Ukrainian women’s NGOs have nearly all failed to generate sustainable forms of activism that can coalesce into a broader movement mobilizing ‘ordinary’ women.59 They also remain distant from local politics. Indeed, while elite women’s NGOs nearly all supported Yushchenko in 2004, they played no part in his campaign, nor did they work with the women’s organiz- ations that volunteered to support him. Similarly, they did not participate as an organized group in the Orange Revolution. This disconnect between NGOs’ missions of empowerment and their activities on the ground results in part because most self-styled women’s NGOs in Ukraine look down on locally oriented women’s organizations and on local understandings of women’s issues. They do little outreach work with the populations they ‘represent’; they are oriented more towards networking with foreign advocates and spend much of their time seeking funding from Western donors and participat- ing in training exchanges with Western countries. Their failure to forge alli- ances with local political groups that support Western integration and their inability to work with non-feminist women’s organizations has hampered the ability of the feminist wing of the women’s movement to raise key issues. Gender and the 2006 Election The previous section argued that women’s rights advocates now lack the bargaining power to promote gender issues. Social science studies indicate that they will have greater resource control and political opportunities when they have female allies in positions of power. We now examine potential alliances in the context of the 2006 election and the newly elected parliament. The analysis concludes that it is not likely that significant increases in high-level support for gender issues will arise within parliament in the immediate future. Women within Political Parties As noted above, women have been slow to develop power within the party system that has emerged since the shift to proportional representation began in 1997. Issues coded as ‘women’s concerns’ have been, and remain, a low priority in party politics.60 Despite the increasing salience of gender equality within the women’s movement and within government programmes oriented towards EU membership, most political parties continue to adopt traditional positions that highlight the centrality of women as Berehyni, nurturers of the family and children. Many do not mention gender issues at all; others 168 J OU RN AL OF C OM M UNIS T S T UDI ES AND TRANSITION POLITICS reiterate concerns that resemble Soviet approaches that (as argued above) have disempowered women. Typically, these parties promise to increase state benefits in order to ‘protect mothers and children’ (and they place ‘women and children’ alongside ‘invalids’, pensioners and other categories of the population deemed incapable of supporting themselves through work). In con- trast to the Soviet era, parties generally fail to discuss the issues women face in the workplace or in public life. Nor do parties raise issues of domestic violence or trafficking. Gender discrimination and gender inequality were not central issues in the 2006 election. They are not high priorities for the parties and blocs that won seats in the new parliament. While Yanukovych made mention of women’s rights issues in the 2004 presidential election and orchestrated shows of support among women’s organizations (see above), women’s equal rights did not figure in the Party of Regions’ platform in either 2002 or 2006. Instead, the party adopted a focus on the traditional family. This inattention to gender issues is not surprising bearing in mind the general hostility displayed by the Party of Regions to efforts to integrate Ukraine into the EU and these have provided the main opening for introducing gender initiat- ives into Ukrainian politics. None the less, it is a little surprising given that the Party of Regions has promoted several advocates of women’s rights to promi- nent positions. The present co-leader of the Party of Regions’ parliamentary faction is Raisa Bohatyriova, a physician and medical policy expert who has played a central role in formulating reproductive health policy. In her addresses assessing maternal and children’s health in Ukraine, she has blamed gender inequality for a host of pathologies. Furthermore, Nina Karpachova, the former parliamentary ombudsman for human rights and a women’s rights advocate, was ranked second on the Party of Regions’ national list in the 2006 parliamentary election. Similarly, another highly ranked woman deputy (Liudmyla Kyrychenko) who has been re-elected is also closely associated with the women’s movement. Gender issues connected with integration into the EU are likely to remain a low priority for the near future. The two parties of the left that are now allied in parliament with the Party of Regions did not mention gender issues in their platforms during the campaign and also share opposition to the country’s reorientation towards Europe. The Socialist Party’s programme states that it supports equality of opportunity and opposes gender discrimination.61 By contrast, the Communist Party supports ‘maternity’, but makes no mention of gender equality. In the short run, within the new parliamentary majority, the Socialists’ position is unlikely to sway the agenda of the parliamentary majority. Situated across the deep partisan divide from this new parliamentary majority is the renewed opposition. Unfortunately, the Tymoshenko bloc GENDER AND THE ORANGE REVOLUTION 169 also does not treat gender inequality as a high priority. The Fatherland Party includes in its party programme a blend of feminist and more traditional nationalist themes. It promises not only to guarantee equal rights for men and women and to end discrimination against women, but also to introduce measures ‘facilitating the birth rate and providing aid to mothers, children and to family-style children’s homes’. So far, however, Tymoshenko has devoted more energy and resources to pro-natalist objectives than to eliminating gender discrimination. Our Ukraine and its member parties are thus the only political faction within the new Rada to have supported equal opportunity issues and partici- pated actively in gender equality programmes. However, the Our Ukraine bloc’s 2006 electoral programme did not raise gender issues either. Among the bloc’s member parties, the Sobor Ukrainian Republican Party devotes the most attention to gender issues in its programme: The party promotes the traditionally high role of a woman in Ukrainian society, liquidating concealed and open forms of discrimination of women, creating conditions for increasing the role of women in social life, increasing representation of women in governmental bodies . . . Consolidating equality of women and men, the party promotes principles of gender justice . . . The party backs introducing quotas for women in party electoral lists.62 Thus Sobor is the one party with parliamentary representation that supports quotas. Quotas of 30 per cent were proposed in 2001 by women parliamentary deputies in an earlier draft of the equal opportunities legislation. However, quotas and other gender issues were not included in the Our Ukraine bloc’s electoral programme and are unlikely to be priorities in the new parliament. Women in the 2006 Parliamentary Elections The introduction of proportional representation was intended to strengthen parties, reduce the number of non-aligned independent deputies and consoli- date Ukraine’s party system. It may not have achieved all these objectives, but so far it has increased very considerably the importance of political parties as gatekeepers in the political process. This has had complex effects on women as political agents. While the new party system has created a set of niches for women in politics that did not previously exist, it has also meant that women who gain access to these spaces form a disparate group, which is divided in complicated ways that become apparent in the analysis below. Nomination procedures and women candidates In the past, a major reason for the low priority accorded to women’s issues and gender was the absence of opportunities for women’s advancement within the 170 J OU RN AL OF C OM M UNIS T S T UDI ES AND TRANSITION POLITICS party system. The system of party lists has resulted in increased opportunities for women to enter national politics. Compared with the parliamentary elec- tions held before the move to national party lists began in 1998, there are now significantly more women nominated to run for seats in the Rada. What is the logic behind nomination practices regarding women candidates? What achievements and characteristics differentiate those women selected for positions high in the party list from those lower down who may have been chosen primarily to suggest party commitment to women’s advance- ment, but who had no real chance of entering parliament? The literature suggests that gender disparities in political representation originate in large part at the nomination phase, when party lists are formed.63 In 2006, there were considerable differences between parties in the proportion of women nominated and in the occupational origins of these nominees, and so clearly there is no common formula. It seems that blocs and parties reserve the top five positions for nominees who will enhance their appeal to voters. They grant subsequent positions mainly by rank-ordering supporters and workers according to their importance to the party, and not by any desire to appeal to voters by balancing the party lists with women. Inter-party differences seem to emerge from overall patterns of gender stratification within a party’s primary institutional bases from which it nominates candidates to its lists. The gender gap exists mainly because parties and blocs draw from institutions outside politics within which women do not occupy places of power and influence. Women followed five main career pathways before political parties and blocs nominated them to top positions on their 2006 lists. The first and most important is the political party career path, in which a party rewards women it employs. Overall, some 7 per cent of all election candidates were employees of political parties or of parliamentary deputies; another 5 per cent were parliamentary deputies. Party activism is also the main path along which women candidates were nominated by the Communist and Socialist parties. A large share of the women nominated by Our Ukraine, the Tymoshenko Bloc and the Party of Regions are also party employees. Thus, today, we can conclude that political parties are the main channels through which women are entering national politics. A second primary career path is that of the civil servant. Roughly 7 per cent of all candidates in the election were employed in local, regional or state administration or in ministries and other national-level structures. Women constitute an absolute majority of civil servants in Ukraine, but occupy few of the executive positions from which most parties drew nomi- nees. The Party of Regions recruited heavily from among high-ranking civil servants in Donetsk and neighbouring regions, and a number of the women nominees placed in mid-level rankings on its list were employed in this GENDER AND THE ORANGE REVOLUTION 171 sector; Our Ukraine also recruited among women civil servants. Employment within the civil service thus seems to have become a second main channel through which women enter national politics, although here again gender dis- parities in promotion result in a lower relative proportion of women who enter politics through a career in the civil service. A third main career path into national politics originates in the business world. Nearly a third (29.82 per cent, or 2,265) of all candidates who ran for parliament in 2006 were entrepreneurs, and another 5 per cent were employees of businesses. Relatively few women nominated to run for parlia- ment are entrepreneurs or executives who have risen to top positions within the business world. Only the Tymoshenko Bloc recruited mainly through this channel, drawing roughly half of its top women candidates from the business world; Our Ukraine included only one (Ksenia Liapina). Although women do enter national politics via this route, they are still few and far between because, as discussed above, women have been marginalized within the business world in Ukraine. A fourth path is women’s rights activism. Overall, the organizational niche for women’s advocates within the party system is very small. Only a handful of women candidates on party lists were leading members of women’s organiz- ations. Two of the most prominent blocs gave relatively high positions on their list to women closely associated with women’s rights advocacy: Katerina Levchenko (number 35 on the Our Ukraine list) and Nina Karpachova (number 2 for Party of Regions). Both began their careers as heads of local women’s NGOs and later came to be seen as advocates of women’s issues nationally: Levchenko heads an international NGO that fights trafficking, and since 1998 Karpachova has been the Rada ombudsman for human rights; she was also the head of the organizational committee for the first parliamentary hearings to assess Ukraine’s progress towards meeting its obligations regarding the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), a treaty confirming the principle of unacceptability of discrimination against women and pro- moting the idea of gender equality in all spheres of economic, political and public life. The fifth and final path into national politics is reserved for the figurehead who has achieved success as a performer of the party’s gender ideology regarding the ‘ideal woman’. Figureheads were once ubiquitous in the rubber-stamp councils of the communist era. For the most part, since 1990, the Rada has included none of the token women who previously entered through quotas. The Second World War veterans, young milkmaids and factory workers who had broken production records, and the mother-heroines who had raised ten or more children shared the same fate as the handful of women who occupied positions of high visibility in the Communist Party 172 J OU RN AL OF C OM M UNIS T S T UDI ES AND TRANSITION POLITICS of Ukraine and appeared as symbols of state commitment to ‘women’s issues’. Similarly, in 2006, there were only a few figureheads among the nomi- nees, including the media celebrity Olha Herasymiuk and the pop star Ruslana, two prominent Ukrainian women who have not been active in formal politics but were chosen for the fourth and fifth positions on the Our Ukraine list. Several other parties also made similar choices for their top positions. Outcomes: New Women Deputies About a third of the new women deputies in the 2006 Rada are members of the Party of Regions bloc; that party won 186 seats, 14 of which (7.5 per cent of the total), went to women. Overall, 10.6 per cent of the party’s national list of candidates were women. This difference between the overall percentage of women in the party list and the percentage that won seats reflects the lower placement that was given to women candidates. There were five women in the first 100 on the list, three fewer than in the 2002 election. As noted above, a prominent advocate of women’s rights, Nina Karpachova, was number 2 on the Party of Regions list. Liudmyla Kyrychenko was number 46 on the same party’s list: she heads the ‘Berehynia’ Oblast Women’s Union, which acts as the women’s wing of the Party of Regions. Kyrychenko has been a frequent participant in programmes to provide equal opportunities to women. In the previous parliament Kyrychenko was a co-author of equal opportunity draft legislation associated with EU integration. The Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc came second in the 2006 elections, receiving 23 per cent of the vote and winning 129 seats. The bloc nominated 63 women to its national list (15.48 per cent), and women occupy 12 (9 per cent) of the seats won by the bloc. None of these new deputies has been active in women’s rights campaigns. Tymoshenko and the leaders of her party do not participate in programmes that promote gender equality. They have never made explicit legislative proposals in parliament regarding women’s economic rights, even though in private Tymoshenko has expressed support for increased attention to such questions.64 The Our Ukraine bloc came third. There were 42 women on its list, or 10.80 per cent of the nominees. Eight of the bloc’s 80 seats went to women – precisely 10 per cent of the total. Several of these are likely to con- tinue to promote gender equality initiatives, in particular Lilia Hryhorovych (number 10 on the list), Oksana Bilozir (number 19) and Katerina Levchenko (number 35). Indeed, in the previous parliament, Hryhorovych and Bilozir (along with several re-elected male members of Our Ukraine) were co-authors of equal opportunity draft legislation mentioned above. They have strongly advocated the introduction of gender quotas. GENDER AND THE ORANGE REVOLUTION 173 The Socialist and Communist parties came in fourth and fifth. There were 55 women (or 14.14 per cent) among the 389 on the SPU list; two (6 per cent) of the 33 seats the Socialists won went to women. The Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) had 84 women on its list of 364, or 18.75 per cent of nomi- nees – the highest gender ratio among the victorious blocs. Women won three (14 per cent) of the party’s 21 seats. The two women socialists were co-authors of equal opportunity legislation (although one has since resigned and is likely to join the Tymoshenko Bloc). However, women communist deputies have not expressed interest in such initiatives. Although the number of women within parliament and the party system has increased, the advancement of women and of women’s issues is likely to remain marginal to the concerns of leading politicians and their parties. Furthermore, it is very unlikely that those women who have been elected to the 2006 parliament will form a parliamentary women’s caucus. Given the extreme polarities that dominated the formation of coalitions after the election, it is unlikely that the women who have been elected will unite around a common agenda. Even though both men and women elected to parliament are enmeshed in patronage relations and to a great degree lack independent power to set agendas, women are still expected to assume a subordinate role helping to advance the careers of men who are political leaders.65 As Tymoshenko’s example suggests, individual women develop greater autonomy and agenda-setting power only when they control significant resources. However, in order to be accepted as a serious player in the male club of parliamentary politics, she and other powerful women avoid raising issues of gender discrimination and, as in the past, had to be careful to avoid public association with women’s rights or women’s issues.66 Yet it seems clear that gender discrimination affects Tymoshenko as much as the few other women who have entered policy domains as leaders in their own right and engage in issues coded as male (for example, regarding issues of big business, finance, energy or general political affairs). They are subjected to greater resentment and cri- ticism and higher expectations than comparable men. Their competence and professionalism are questioned constantly. And, like all women in parlia- ment, they are subjected symbolically to rituals of male domination through constant comments on their private life, outward appearance, and behaviour.67 Conclusion This essay has explored why women as an organized interest group have been little affected by two dramatic shifts in the political system in Ukraine: the changing structure of the electoral system associated with the move to a 174 J OU RN AL OF C OM M UNIS T S T UDI ES AND TRANSITION POLITICS system of national party lists, and the reorganization of politics surrounding the Orange Revolution. As the first major episode of protest in Ukraine since the collapse of Soviet rule, the Orange Revolution constituted a turning-point in the country’s democratization. The Orange Revolution suggested that beliefs fundamental to democratization are taking root in Ukraine: that citizens can resist coercion to participate meaningfully in politics and, in particular, that voters (not ruling elites) decide the results of elections. That event was followed by an election that for the first time employed a pure system of proportional representation, or national lists, which is believed to open up access to women and other groups that lack resources. The Orange Revolution and the election that followed should have enhanced opportunities for women as an interest group within politics and public life, but did not do so. Lack of competition within the electoral representative system – or oligarchy – is considered to be a principal institutional obstacle to democra- tization in post-Soviet countries. Observers, particularly architects of foreign democracy projects, typically assume that engaging women and other subordinated groups in elections and in other forms of politics is a crucial first step towards successful democratic consolidation of countries under- going the transition from Soviet rule. But post-Soviet states have tended to remain dominated by oligarchs and elites who reproduced a quasi- Soviet ‘managed democracy’. Ukraine seems to be developing civic and political organizations that increase electoral competition and act as a counterweight to oligarchy. The result is a political system deeply divided at present over several issues, chief among them Ukraine’s geopolitical orientation. Such deep divisions can sometimes present opportunities for new groups to emerge and raise fresh issues. Studies of social movements predict that success at exploiting such divisions depends on the mobilization of resources, notably the basic resources needed for collective action. However, women at present lack resources and are deficient in their ability to mobilize. They appear in public life mainly as important symbols of nationhood, as Berehyni or ‘mothers of the nation’. However, organizations that raise women’s issues remain underrepresented in national politics in Ukraine and are likely to remain on the sidelines until they manage to overcome obstacles that prevent them from mobilizing. Although women’s representation in parliament increased numerically following the 2006 elections, only a few new deputies are likely to become allies of organized groups of women working on key issues such as employment discrimination. Without alliances with supportive politicians, the women’s movement is likely to continue as a weak force in politics and public life. GENDER AND THE ORANGE REVOLUTION 175 NOTES 1. Adrian Karatnycky, ‘Ukraine’s Orange Revolution’, Foreign Affairs, Vol.84, No.2 (2005), pp.35–52. 2. See, for example, Valerie J. Bunce and Sharon L. Wolchik, ‘International Diffusion and Post- communist Electoral Revolutions’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Vol.39, No.3 (2006), pp.283–304. For a further discussion of whether Ukraine is likely to head down the path towards democratic consolidation, see also Paul D’Anieri, ‘Explaining the Success and Failure of Post-Communist Revolutions’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Vol.39, No.3 (2006), pp.331–50; and Henry E. Hale, ‘Democracy or Autocracy on the March? The Colored Revolutions as Normal Dynamics of Patronal Presidentialism’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Vol.39, No.3 (2006), pp.305– 29. 3. There are now many exceptions. For one of the earliest studies to incorporate gender into an analysis of political support, see Vicki Hesli and Arthur H. Miller, ‘The Gender Base of Insti- tutional Support in Lithuania, Ukraine and Russia’, Europe–Asia Studies, Vol.45, No.3 (1993), pp.505–32. 4. The assumption that Western aid to develop civil society was ‘non-political’ has persisted among social scientists even though, from the start, studies demonstrated that all forms of Western aid were dominated by state elites and were being used to shore up their position of advantage. For analyses of state involvement in programmes to build civil society, see Sarah L. Henderson, ‘Selling Civil Society: Western Aid and the Nongovernmental Sector in Russia’, Comparative Political Studies, Vol.35, No.2 (2002), pp.139–67; Alexandra Hrycak, ‘Foundation Feminism and the Articulation of Hybrid Feminisms in Post-Socialist Ukraine’, East European Politics and Societies, Vol.20, No.1 (2006), pp.69–100; and Janine R. Wedel, Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe, 1989–1998 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998). 5. See Tania Khoma, ‘Chy Buv Feminizm v Ukraini?’, Yi, No.17 (2000), pp.21–7; Oksana Kis’, ‘Modeli Konstruiuvannia Gendernoi Identychnosti v Suchasnii Ukraini’, Yi, No.27 (2003), pp.37–58; Solomea Pavlychko, ‘Feminism in Post-Communist Ukrainian Society’, in Rosalind Marsh (ed.), Women in Russia and Ukraine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp.305–14; Solomea Pavlychko, ‘Progress on Hold: The Conservative Faces of Women in Ukraine’, in Mary Buckley (ed.), Post-Soviet Women: From the Baltic to Central Asia (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp.219–34; Marian Rubchak, ‘In Search of a Model: Evolution of a Feminist Consciousness in Ukraine and Russia’, European Journal of Women’s Studies, Vol.8, No.2 (2001), pp.149-60; and Tatiana Zhurzhenko, Ukrainian Feminism(s): Between Nationalist Myth and Anti-Nationalist Critique, IWM Working Paper No.4/2001 (Vienna: Institut fu¨r die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, 2001), available at <http://www.univie.ac.at/iwm/p-iwmwp.htm#Zhurzhenko>, accessed 23 Nov. 2001. 6. On the ‘feminization’ of Ukrainian men, see Nila Zborovs’ka and Maria Il’nyts’ka, Feministychni Rozdumy na Karnavali Mertvykh Potsilunkakh (Lviv: Tsentr humanitarnykh doslidzhen’ L’vivs’koho natsional’noho universyteta, 1999), pp.80–89. On the ‘feminization’ of Ukrainian national character, see Elena Lutsenko, ‘“Zhinoche Nachalo” v Ukrains’kiy Mental’nosti’, in Liudmyla Smoliar (ed.), Zhinochi Studii v Ukraini: Zhinka v Istorii ta Siohodni (Odesa: Astroprint, 1999), pp.10–19. 7. For analyses of the Berehynia myth, see Kis’, ‘Modeli Konstruiuvannia Gendernoi Identychnosti’, pp.38– 45; Marian Rubchak, ‘Christian Virgin or Pagan Goddess’, in Marsh (ed.), Women in Russia and Ukraine, pp.315–30; Rubchak, ‘In Search of a Model’, pp.149–51; and Zhurzhenko, Ukrainian Feminism(s), pp.1–5. 8. Zhurzhenko, Ukrainian Feminism(s), p.8. 9. See Marian Rubchak, ‘Yulia Tymoshenko: Goddess of the Orange Revolution: Calling Tymoshenko the Goddess of the Orange Revolution Is More Than Glib Praise’, Maidan, available at <http://eng.maidanua.org>, accessed 14 May 2005; and Marian Rubchak, ‘Yulia Tymoshenko, Goddess of the Orange Revolution’, paper presented at the 37th National 176 J OU RN AL OF C OM M UNIS T S T UDI ES AND TRANSITION POLITICS Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Salt Lake City, Utah, 4 Nov. 2005. 10. On the crucial role of youth in the Orange Revolution and similar democratic protest movements, see Taras Kuzio, ‘Civil Society, Youth and Societal Mobilization in Democratic Revolutions’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Vol.39, No.3 (2006), pp.365–86. On the similar role youth played in initiating and sustaining the independence movement, see Alexandra Hrycak, ‘The Coming of “Chrysler Imperial”: Ukrainian Youth and Rituals of Resistance’, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, Vol.21, No.1/2 (1997), pp.63–91. 11. See Wsewolod Isajiw, ‘Civil Society in Ukraine’, paper presented at the Chair of Ukrainian Studies Workshop ‘Understanding the Transformation of Ukraine’, University of Ottawa, 15–16 Oct. 2004, p.3; see also Alexandra Hrycak, ‘Coping with Chaos: Gender and Politics in a Fragmented State’, Problems of Post-Communism, Vol.52, No.5 (2005), pp.69–81, esp. pp.76–9. 12. Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, The Politics of Gender after Socialism: A Comparative- Historical Essay (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); and Susan Gal and Gail Kligman (eds.), Reproducing Gender: Politics, Publics, and Everyday Life after Socialism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). 13. See Steven Saxonberg, ‘Women in East European Parliaments’, Journal of Democracy, Vol.11, No.2 (2000), pp.145–58; and Richard E. Matland and Kathleen A. Montgomery (eds.), Women’s Access to Political Power in Post-Communist Europe (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). 14. For a discussion of the applicability of theories drawn from Western Europe to post- communist cases, see Saxonberg, ‘Women in East European Parliaments’, pp.147–55; see also Richard E. Matland, ‘Women’s Representation in Post-Communist Europe’, in Matland and Montgomery (eds.), Women’s Access to Political Power, pp.321–42. 15. Matland, ‘Women’s Representation in Post-Communist Europe’, pp.322– 3. 16. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the percentage of women in national legislatures in Eastern Europe is at present: Belarus 29.1% lower house and 31.0% upper house (2004); Bulgaria 22.1% (2005); Lithuania 22.0% (2004); Republic of Moldova 21.8% (2005); Croatia 21.7% (2003); Latvia 21% (2002); Poland 20.4% lower house and 13.0% upper house (2005); Estonia 18.8% (2003); Bosnia and Herzegovina 16.7% lower house and 0.0% upper house (2002); Slovakia 16.0% (2006); Czech Republic 15.5% lower house and 12.3% upper house (2006); Montenegro 12.5% (2002); Slovenia 12.2% lower house and 7.5% upper house (2004); Serbia 12.0% (2003); Romania 11.2% lower house and 9.5% upper house (2004); Hungary 10.4% (2006); the Russian Federation 9.8% lower house and 3.4 upper house (2003); and Albania 7.1% (2005): see <http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/ classif.htm>, accessed 23 Aug. 2006. 17. Researchers have debated how the move to a mixed majoritarian–proportional system affected the gender gap in Ukraine. One approach argues that women in Ukraine’s 1998 par- liamentary elections were no more likely to be elected in proportional than in majoritarian districts: see, for example, Anna V. Andreenkova, ‘Women’s Representation in the Parliaments of Russia and Ukraine: An Essay in Sociological Analysis’, Sociological Research, Vol.41, No.2 (2002), pp.5–25. However, a different method of analysis leads to the conclusion that they were more likely to be elected through party lists: see Sarah Birch, ‘Women and Political Representation in Contemporary Ukraine’, in Matland and Montgomery (eds.), Women’s Access to Political Power, pp.130–52. 18. For a comprehensive review, see Andrew Wilson, Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005). 19. Lucan A. Way, ‘The Sources and Dynamics of Competitive Authoritarianism in Ukraine’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Vol.20, No.1 (2004), pp.143–61. 20. Paul Kubicek, ‘The Limits of Electoral Democracy in Ukraine’, Democratization, Vol.8, No.2 (2001), pp.117–39. 21. Keith Darden, ‘Blackmail as a Tool of State Domination: Ukraine Under Kuchma’, East European Constitutional Review, Vol.10, No.2/3 (2001), pp.67–71. GENDER AND THE ORANGE REVOLUTION 177 22. Jessica Allina-Pisano, ‘Informal Institutional Challenges to Democracy: Administrative Resource in Kuchma’s Ukraine’, paper presented at the First Annual Danyliw Research Seminar in Contemporary Ukrainian Studies, Chair of Ukrainian Studies, University of Ottawa, 29 Sept.–1 Oct. 2005. 23. Organized groups of citizens have emerged. They have begun to articulate their demands and have even been able to engage in effective acts of protest, most visibly the Orange Revolution. But they have so far proved unable to use Western-style advocacy techniques to achieve the changes they have sought in their relationship with the state. For a discussion of the negative impact of adopting Western funding and advocacy techniques on women’s engagement in local politics and public life, see Hrycak, ‘Foundation Feminism’, pp.89–100; and Alexandra Hrycak, ‘From Global to Local Feminisms: Transnationalism, Foreign Aid and the Women’s Movement in Ukraine’, Advances in Gender Research, Vol.11 (2007), in press. 24. Sidney G. Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 25. Gal and Kligman, The Politics of Gender after Socialism, p.8. 26. Solomea Pavlychko, ‘Between Feminism and Nationalism: New Women’s Groups in the Ukraine’, in Mary Buckley (ed.), Perestroika and Soviet Women (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp.82– 96, esp. pp.82–4. 27. For in-depth examinations of gender issues in the economy, see Tatiana Zhurzhenko, ‘Zhenskaia zaniatost’ v usloviakh perekhodnoi ekonomiki: Adaptatsiia k rynku ili margynalizatsiia?’, in Irina Zherebkina (ed.), Femina Postsovietica: Ukrainskaya zhensh- china v perekhodnyi period: Ot sotsial’nykh dvizhenii k politike (Kharkiv: Kharkiv Gender Studies Centre, 1999), pp.231–80; and Tatiana Zhurzhenko, Sotsial’noe vosproizvodstvo i gendernaya politika v Ukraine (Kharkov: Folio, 2001). 28. Alexandra Hrycak, ‘The Dilemmas of Civic Revival: Ukrainian Women since Independence’, Journal of Ukrainian Studies, Vol.26, Nos.1–2 (2001), pp.135–58, esp. p.149. 29. According to the United Nations, the proportion of women among those who registered with the state reached a peak of over 80% in 1992. It later decreased slowly: in 1995, 73% of those registered as unemployed were women; since 1998 the proportion of women among the unemployed has remained stable at about 62%: see United Nations Development Programme, Gender Issues in Ukraine: Challenges and Opportunities (Kyiv: UNDP, 2003). 30. Allan M. Williams and Vladimir Balaz, ‘International Petty Trading: Changing Practices in Trans-Carpathian Ukraine’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol.26, No.2 (2002), pp.323–43. 31. United Nations Development Programme, Gender Issues in Ukraine, pp.35–7. 32. Human Rights Watch, Women’s Work: Discrimination Against Women in the Ukrainian Labor Force (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2003). 33. Pavlychko, ‘Between Feminism and Nationalism’, p.83. 34. Hrycak, ‘The Dilemmas of Civic Revival’, p.153. 35. For a discussion of the organizational niches women occupied in the Communist Party of Ukraine, see Solomea Pavlychko, ‘The Role of Women in Rukh and Ukraine’s Society in the 1990s’, The Ukrainian Weekly, 8 and 15 April 1990, pp.5, 13. 36. For a thorough analysis of this issue, see Olha Kulachek, Rol’ Zhinky v Derzhavnomu Uprav- linni: Stari Obrazy, Novi Obrii (Kyiv: Vydavnytstvo Solomii Pavlychko ‘Osnovy’, 2005). 37. Birch, ‘Women and Political Representation’, pp.135, 147; Vladimir Fesenko, ‘Dinamika politicheskogo uchastiya zhenshchin: Samoorganizatsiya, politicheskoe dvizhenie, vkhodzhe- nie vo vlast’ (1989–1998)’, in Zherebkina (ed.), Femina Postsovietica, pp.83–151, and Solomea Pavlychko, ‘Women’s Discordant Voices in the Context of the 1998 Parliamentary Elections in Ukraine’, in Anna Cento Bull, Hanna Diamond and Rosalind J. Marsh (eds.), Feminisms and Women’s Movements in Contemporary Europe (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000), pp.244–62. 38. Kis’, ‘Modeli Konstruiuvannia Gendernoi Identychnosti’, pp.38–45; Solomea Pavlychko, ‘Feminism in Post-Communist Ukrainian Society’, in Vera Aheyeva (ed.), Feminizm (Kyiv: Osnova, 2002), pp.67–78; and Rubchak, ‘In Search of a Model’, pp.149–51. 39. Zhurzhenko, Ukrainian Feminism(s), p.1. 178 J OU RN AL OF C OM M UNIS T S T UDI ES AND TRANSITION POLITICS 40. Kis’, ‘Modeli Konstruiuvannia Gendernoi Identychnosti’, pp.42– 5. 41. Pavlychko, ‘Progress on Hold’, pp.220–22. 42. Pavlychko, ‘Between Feminism and Nationalism’, pp.220– 21, 229; and Pavlychko, ‘The Role of Women’, p.5. 43. For discussions of the factors and conditions that influence the role women play in political parties of the right and centre-right, see Fesenko, ‘Dinamika politicheskogo uchastiya zhensh- chin’, pp.108–14; Hrycak, ‘The Dilemmas of Civic Revival’, pp.153–5; Hrycak, ‘Coping with Chaos’, pp.75– 6; and Pavlychko, ‘Women’s Discordant Voices’, pp.191, 198 –204. 44. For a further discussion, see Pavlychko, ‘Between Feminism and Nationalism’, pp.90–95; and Pavlychko, ‘Progress on Hold’, pp.229–32. 45. Birch ‘Women and Political Representation’, pp.143, 147. 46. At <http://www1.deputat.org.ua>, accessed 10 Aug. 2006. 47. Studies find that increasing integration into regional and international structures enhances opportunities to raise gender inequality as a political issue; on the EU, see Leah Seppanen Anderson, ‘European Union Gender Regulations in the East: The Czech and Polish Accession Process’, East European Politics and Societies, Vol.20, No.1 (2006), pp.101–25; on the UN, see Mark M. Gray, Miki Caul Kittilson and Wayne Sandholtz, ‘Women and Globalization: A Study of 180 Countries, 1975–2000’, International Organization, Vol.60, No.2 (2006), pp.293–333. 48. At <http://www.yuschenko.com.ua>, accessed 10 Aug. 2006. 49. Liudmyla Smolyar, ‘The Women’s Movement as a Factor of Gender Equality and Democracy in Ukrainian Society’, in Oleksandr Sydorenko (ed.), Zhinochi Orhanizatsii Ukrainy. Ukrai- nian Women’s Non-Profit Organizations (Kyiv: Innovation and Development Centre, 2001), pp.27–44, esp. pp.38–9, 43. 50. Nora Dudwick, Radhika Srinivasan and Jeanine Braithwaite, Ukraine Gender Review (Washington, DC: ECSSD, 2002), p.61; Alexandra Hrycak, ‘From Mothers’ Rights to Equal Rights: Post-Soviet Grassroots Women’s Associations’, in Nancy Naples and Manisha K. Desai (eds.), Women’s Community Activism and Globalization: Linking the Local and Global for Social Change (New York: Routledge, 2002), pp.64– 82; Hrycak, ‘Coping with Chaos’, pp.72– 3, 79; Hrycak, ‘From Global to Local Feminisms’, pp.23–5. 51. Hrycak, ‘From Global to Local Feminisms’, pp.22–3. 52. Oksana Kyseliova, ‘Instytutsiini Mekhanizmy Zabezpechennia Hendernoi Rivnosti v Ukraini v Kontektsi Ievropeiskoi Intehratsii’, in Jana Sverdljuk and Svitlana Oksamytna (eds.), Zhinka v Politytsi: Mizhnarodnyi Dosvid dlia Ukrainy (Kyiv: Atika, 2006), pp.144–55, esp. pp.152–3. 53. Hrycak, ‘Coping with Chaos’, pp.78–9; and Marfa Skoryk, ‘Na Shliakhu do Hendernoi Polityky’, in Zh. Bezpiatchuk, I.L. Bilan and S.A. Horobchyshyn (eds.), Rozvytok Demokratii v Ukraini, 2001– 2002 (Kyiv: Ukrainskyi nezalezhnyi politychnyi tsentr, 2006), pp.71– 92, esp. p.75. 54. Kyseliova, ‘Instytutsiini Mekhanizmy’, p.152. 55. Hrycak, ‘Foundation Feminism’, p.92. 56. Ibid., pp.79–83. 57. Hrycak, ‘From Global to Local Feminisms’, pp.19–23. 58. Oleksandr Sydorenko, ‘Zhinochi Orhanizatsii Ukrainy: Tendentsii Stanovlennia’, in Olek- sandr Sydorenko (ed.), Zhinochi Orhanizatsii Ukrainy: Dovidnyk (Kyiv: Tsentr innovatsii ta rozvytku, 2001), pp.45– 52. 59. Hrycak, ‘Foundation Feminism’, pp.93–7. 60. Hrycak, ‘Coping with Chaos’, pp.75– 6; and Jana Sverdljuk and Svitlana Oksamytna (eds.), Zhinki v Politytsi: Mizhnarodnyi Dosvid dlia Ukrainy (Kyiv: Atika, 2006). 61. See <http://www.spu.in.ua/program.php>, accessed 15 Aug. 2006. 62. Yet the party programmes of member parties of the bloc include a range of themes. The Our Ukraine People’s Union claims in its programme to support the protection of rights for all citizens; it also supports increased social benefits for mothers and children. The Party of Industrialists and Businessmen of Ukraine supports equal constitutional rights and freedoms for all citizens, but makes no specific proposals regarding women or GENDER AND THE ORANGE REVOLUTION 179 gender equality. The Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists makes no statements regarding rights; it backs increased state support for mothers and children. Narodniy Rukh Ukrainy states that it places priority on guaranteeing the rights of children and also advocates increased state support for mothers and children. The Christian Democratic Party makes no direct references to material guarantees for maternity and equality of rights of men and women. 63. Andreenkova draws these conclusions about nomination and resource disparities, see Andreenkova, ‘Women’s Representation’, pp.24– 5. 64. Hrycak, ‘The Dilemmas of Civic Revival’, p.154. 65. Olena Bondarenko, ‘Zhinky-Polityky’, in Jana Sverdljuk and Svitlana Oksamytna (eds.), Zhinka v Politytsi: Mizhnarodnyi Dosvid dlia Ukrainy (Kyiv: Atika, 2006), pp.20–27. 66. Ibid., p.24. 67. ‘Zhinky Verkhovnoi Rady: Bantyky Tymoshenko, Kvity Zasukhy, Khalatky Semeniuk’, tabloid, available at <http://www.tabloid.com.ua/news/2006/7/12/709.html>, accessed 12 Aug. 2006; see also Bondarenko, ‘Zhinky-Polityky’, p.25.