Living Gender After Communism

282 Pages·2006·1.48 MB·English

by  Janet Elise Johnson, Jean C. Robinson

Russian and East European Studies
Gender Studies
Janet Elise Johnson is Assistant Professor How has the collapse of
of Political Science at Brooklyn College, “Considerations of the sites and communism across Europe
City University of New York. Her research,
spaces in and through which and Eurasia changed gender?
based on fi eldwork in Russia and other Contributors are In addition to the huge costs that fell
postcommunist societies, covers gender postcommunism has emerged heavily on women, Living Gender after
politics, especially women’s organizations Anna Brzozowska as a gendered geography of Communism suggests that moving
and violence against women. Her
Karen Dawisha transactions, institutions, Living away from communism in Europe and
publications have appeared in the NWSA and relationships are the Eurasia has provided an opportunity for
Journal and edited volumes such as Post- Nanette Funk
subject of [Living Gender gender to multiply, from varieties of neo-
Soviet Women Encountering Transition traditionalism to feminisms, from overt
(2004), Ruling Russia (2005), and Russian Ewa Grigar after Communism]. . . . This negotiation of femininity to denials of
Civil Society (2005). volume highlights not just the Gender gender. This development has enabled
Azra Hromadzic
constraints women face, but some women in the region to tailor
Jean C. Robinson is Professor of Political
Janet Elise Johnson also moves to exert agency gendered identities for their own political,
Science and Gender Studies at Indiana
within these constraints, and economic, or social purposes. Beginning
University. Her research focuses on Anne-Marie Kramer after with an understanding of gender as both
comparative gender policies, and she has in so doing makes a valuable a society-wide institution that regulates
done fi eld research in Poland, China, Tania Rands Lyon contribution to analyzing people’s lives and a cultural “toolkit”
France, and Germany. She is co-editor women’s conditions both in from which individuals and groups may
of Women and Social Policy: From Local Jean C. Robinson postcommunism and beyond.”
Communism sometimes be able to choose ways that
to Global (2001) and has published in
Iulia Shevchenko can subvert or transvalue the sex/gender
numerous edited volumes and journals, —from the foreword by system, the contributors to this volume
including NWSA Journal, China Quarterly, Svitlana Taraban Karen Dawisha provide detailed case studies from Belarus,
and Signs. Bosnia, the Czech Republic, Poland,
Shannon Woodcock
Romania, Russia, and Ukraine.
This collaboration between young
scholars—most from the region—and
experts in the fi elds of gender and
postcommunist studies combines intimate
knowledge of the area with sophisticated
Edited by
gender analysis to inform the discussion
Janet Elise Johnson of the impact of regime change on gender
and women’s lives. Through multiple
and Jean C. Robinson
disciplines and methods and by examining
just how much gender has shifted in the
ISBN-13: 978-0-253-34812-8 region, Living Gender after Communism
ISBN-10: 0-253-34812-9
reveals that the static defi nitions of gender
Jacket illustration: Zuzanna Janin, Sweet Girl,
sculpture made of copper wire and cotton candy, so often used are only imperfect attempts
1997. Courtesy of the artist. to represent a changing reality.
http://iupress.indiana.edu INDIANA
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Johnson
and
Robinson Living Gender after Communism
Living Gender after Communism
Living Gender
after Communism
Edited by
Janet Elise Johnson and Jean C. Robinson
Indiana University Press
Bloomington and Indianapolis
Indiana University Press
601 North Morton Street
Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA
http://iupress.indiana.edu
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Contents
foreword by karen dawisha / vii
acknowledgments / xi
Living Gender Janet Elise Johnson and Jean C. Robinson / 1
I. NEGOTIATING GENDER
1. Housewife Fantasies, Family Realities in the New Russia
Tania Rands Lyon / 25
2. Contesting Violence, Contesting Gender: Crisis Centers Encountering Local
Governments in Barnaul, Russia Janet Elise Johnson / 40
II. DENYING GENDER
3. The Abortion Debate in Poland: Opinion Polls, Ideological Politics, Citizenship,
and the Erasure of Gender as a Category of Analysis Anne-Marie Kramer / 63
4. The Gendered Body as Raw Material for Women Artists of Central Eastern Europe
after Communism Ewa Grigar / 80
III. TRADITIONALIZING GENDER
5. Birthday Girls, Russian Dolls, and Others: Internet Bride as the Emerging Global
Identity of Post-Soviet Women Svitlana Taraban / 105
6. Does the Gender of MPs Matter in Postcommunist Politics? The Case of the
Russian Duma, 1995–2001 Iulia Shevchenko / 128
IV. NEGOTIATING GENDER WITHIN NATIONALISMS
7. Romanian Women’s Discourses of Sexual Violence: Othered Ethnicities,
Gendering Spaces Shannon Woodcock / 149
8. Challenging the Discourse of Bosnian War Rapes Azra Hromadzic / 169
9. Deficient Belarus? Insidious Gender Binaries and Hyper-feminized Nationality
Anna Brzozowska / 185
Fifteen Years of the East-West Women’s Dialogue Nanette Funk / 203
works cited / 227
list of contributors / 251
index / 255
foreword: studying gender and postcommunism
More than a dozen years have passed since the collapse of communism and
its attendant dislocations, crises, and opportunities. A whole generation of
young people has come of political age without ever having experienced
communism for themselves. For them, it is only a set of stories told by their
parents and grandparents, yet it provides the context and the starting point from
which their own lives will proceed. Studying these countries as postcommunist
despite their obvious and increasing dissimilarities is thus important: the real-
ities of present-day existence may differ greatly between postcommunist states,
but without an appreciation of the commonalities of structure and history that
were features of their shared past, it is very difficult to appreciate the extent of the
differences between them or the reasons for these growing gaps.
So too when approaching the issue of the status of women and gender
after communism. The postcommunist transition has impacted men and
women differently. Across Central and Eastern Europe, there have been more
benefits for men than for women from the transition: men are richer, more
men head new companies, more men own privatized firms, and, as Iulia
Shevchenko addresses in this volume, many more men hold political power.
Women have suffered more from the loss of social services, women dominate
professions that remain in the resource-starved state sector, and women and
women’s issues have not been a central part of the postcommunist political
landscape. And yet, the impact of gender ideologies for many remain hidden.
Anne-Marie Kramer shows that even when issues impacting women and gen-
der become salient—such as abortion in Poland—the relevance for women’s
lives is neutralized. As Ewa Grigar argues for women artists in the region, an
explicit critique of gender or use of feminism remains radical.
The transition has encouraged the gendering of nations and bodies in
ways that are not positive for women. For example, the age-old gendering of
recumbent nations in the Balkans as female to be protected by the resurgent
and mobilized male states put feminists, such as Slavenka Drakulic´ , in the
position of being accused of ‘‘raping Croatia’’ (or Bosnia, or Serbia) when they
refused to give up their trans-Balkan campaign for women’s rights in the face of
impending war. In this climate, the rapes of individual Balkan women—and
women’s varied resistance to these rapes—are, as Azra Hromadzic argues in
this volume, hidden under metaphors about the nation, ignoring the woman.
vii
Foreword
Anna Brzozowska shows that the gendering of the nation easily reinforces the
identification of the feminine with weakness and passivity, with consequences
for the autonomy of the state as well as for female citizens.
Hromadzic makes the case for recognizing women’s agency, even in situa-
tions where the only outcomes are violent. The notion of agency and the
enhanced space to negotiate gender in postcommunism have not necessarily
made life ‘‘better’’ or easier for women, but postcommunism has meant spaces
for women to manipulate their environment. Tania Rands Lyon shows the
ways in which Russian women and men move back and forth between artic-
ulating traditional gender views and living more nontraditional lives. In Ro-
mania, Shannon Woodcock shows that women may manipulate ethnocen-
trism to ‘‘safely’’ raise the issue of such interpersonal violence in public by
blaming the Other, such as the Roma, but leaving invisible the domestic
violence many women face in private. In charting the new recognition of
domestic violence, Janet Elise Johnson unveils the ways in which the assertion
of agency and activism can begin to transform discourse as well as policy and
people’s lives.
Some of this activism of course is in response to the ways in which the
opening of the communist world enabled the West’s hyper-sexualization of
women’s bodies in advertising to become part of the postcommunist public
space, as billboards and commercials replaced propaganda posters. Images in
the market were not the only sign of this hyper-sexualization; as Svitlana
Taraban describes, the Internet also became an avenue for virtual and actual
gendering, as Western male and Eastern female found each other in hyper-
space and stimulated the exodus of brides and prostitutes. The increase in
trafficking in women and the new availability of Internet brides are matched
by the rise of neotraditionalist conceptions of gender for both men and women
and of an emphasis on women’s bodies as their only valuable commodity.
Many of the chapters included here address the fallout from the resurgence of
rigid gender roles.
Considerations of the sites and spaces in and through which postcommu-
nism has emerged as a gendered geography of transactions, institutions, and
relationships are the subject of this book. These essays came out of a con-
ference on ‘‘Placing Gender in Postcommunism’’ held in October of 2002 at
the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies at Miami Univer-
sity. The goal of the center is to foster interdisciplinary study and research on
the challenges facing the countries of this area by students and scholars from
around the world. The conference was one of the center’s annual series of
international and interdisciplinary conferences for young scholars.
In this volume are contributions from the disciplines of political science,
art history, sociology, anthropology, and history, and from scholars from Rus-
sia, the United States, Great Britain, Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Bosnia, and
Australia. It is a tribute to the editors, Janet Johnson and Jean C. Robinson, as
well as to the discussants and the contributors themselves, that the articles are
viii
Foreword
so well integrated and so provocative. Younger scholars, including those from
the region, bring a fresh voice to the discussion of gender in postcommunism.
In particular, their fieldwork is outstanding, and many of their case studies are
little known in Western literature. In this sense, the volume makes a contribu-
tion to the recent work done in the study of gender and postcommunism,
particularly the excellent volumes by Susan Gal and Gail Kligman on gender
and postcommunism (The Politics of Gender after Socialism [Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 2000] and Reproducing Gender: Politics, Publics,
and Everyday Life after Socialism [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
2000]). They also follow recent journal issues on the topic, Feminist Review 76,
no. 1 (2004), and Signs 29, no. 3 (2004).
The Soviet system was one that both preached a solution to the ‘‘women’s
question’’ and promised equality in the workplace. Despite the obvious failure
to deliver on these and many other issues, Soviet-style regimes did at least
place these items on the social agenda. In postcommunist countries, the social
agenda is dictated less by ideology than by the market. The language and
practice of capitalism make everyone ‘‘equal’’ before the market but also
equally vulnerable. In this new climate, it is up to women to maneuver them-
selves so as to take advantage of capitalism’s opportunities, while at the same
time recognizing that power and opportunity structures are being constructed
that disadvantage them. The chapters by Johnson and Lyon show that some
Russian women have successfully organized against gendered violence while
others draw upon more egalitarian gender roles in their intimate relations
(even if they espouse traditional views about women’s and men’s place in their
rhetoric). Thus, this volume highlights not just the constraints women face,
but some moves to exert agency within these constraints, and in so doing
makes a valuable contribution to analyzing women’s conditions both in post-
communism and beyond.
Karen Dawisha
Director, Havighurst Center for Russian and
Post-Soviet Studies, Miami University
ix