Women played a pivotal role in the anti-government protests held in Ukraine from November 2013 to February 2014. Dubbed as the EuroMaidan or the Revolution of Dignity, these protests were initially triggered by President Viktor Yanukovych's abrupt refusal to sign a free trade agreement with the European Union (EU), but rapidly grew into a protest campaign encompassing a wide range of political demands and attracting a cross-cutting coalition of citizens with a shared distaste for the current regime.Footnote 1 In line with Jack Goldstone's definition of a revolution, the EuroMaidan signified “the forcible overthrow of a government through mass mobilization in the name of social justice, to create new political institutions.”Footnote 2 According to some estimates, women constituted nearly half of the participants in these protests marked by “the rapid concentration of protestors in urban spaces and the articulation of demands for political and civil freedoms.”Footnote 3 Citizens brushed off the threat of police violence and stoically braved sub-freezing temperatures to sustain contentious collective action on the Maidan, Kyiv's central square.Footnote 4 Women coordinated the provision of medical supplies, compiled lists of missing persons, offered legal assistance for detained protesters, organized public lectures and documentary screenings inside the encampment, patrolled the barricades, distributed food, and provided first aid as bullets whistled past. Why did women participate in the protest campaign?
Based upon in-depth interviews with female participants in the EuroMaidan, this study uncovers a wide range of motivations for women's engagement in the protest campaign, including dissatisfaction with the government, solidarity with protesters, motherhood, civic duty, and professional service. The majority of the interviewees brought up various political and socioeconomic grievances as a reason for protesting. Apparently, the main demands of the protest campaign—the signing of a free trade agreement with the EU, the resignation of the incumbent government, the implementation of democratic reforms, and the eradication of corruption—resonated with women and influenced their decision to join it. Another significant motivation for women's involvement in the protest activity was solidarity with the protesters, especially spouses and friends. Moreover, women who were themselves mothers drew on the notions of motherhood and mothering to provide a rationale for protesting. Concern over gender equality, however, was rarely cited as a pivotal factor for women's initial involvement in the EuroMaidan.Footnote 5
This study makes an empirical contribution to comparative democratization literature by analyzing motivations for women's engagement in a protest campaign in a repressive political regime. Voluminous research has examined women's political representation and participation in legislative politics in the post-communist region.Footnote 6 Another prolific body of literature has focused on women's non-governmental organizations and their interactions with the international community.Footnote 7 Engagement in contentious politics constitutes another important mode of women's political participation.Footnote 8 The present study contributes to this growing strand of research.
The remainder of the article is organized as follows: section two discusses prior research on gender and protests at critical points in the region's political development, while section three focuses on women's activism in post-communist Ukraine. Next, the article describes the sample and presents original data from in-depth interviews. The concluding section underscores the significance of these findings and identifies avenues for future research.
Gender and Protest in Comparative and Historical Perspective
The role of women in democratization processes and contentious politics has long been neglected in the mainstream literature. In her analysis of the 1979 revolution in Iran and the 1989 revolutions in east central Europe, Valentine Moghadam pointed out the insufficient attention given to gender in extant sociological research on revolutionary processes and post-revolutionary transformations.Footnote 9 Likewise, taking stock of political science literature in the early 1990s, Georgina Waylen criticized the “very little mention of gender or more specifically women” and called for a gendered analysis of democratization.Footnote 10 Over the past two decades, however, there has been a growing appreciation of women's engagement in contentious politics.Footnote 11
A prominent argument in this literature is that the politicization of motherhood “turns needs related to children into political demands and thus promotes political action.”Footnote 12 The essentialist definition of motherhood assumes that women's innate, fixed characteristics predetermine their primary function as caregivers for their progeny, which excludes women from active participation in the public sphere.Footnote 13 In contrast, in her influential study of women's community work in low-income neighborhoods in New York City and Philadelphia, Nancy Naples develops the concept of activist mothering to broaden the traditional definition of mothering and encompass nurturing work not only for biologically- or legally-related children but also for the community as a whole.Footnote 14 Likewise, Helen Icken Safa argues that increased participation of poor, urban Latin American women in social movements in the 1980s can be attributed to the redefinition and transformation of “their domestic role from one of private nurturance to one of collective, public protest, and in this way challenging the traditional seclusion of women into the private sphere of family.”Footnote 15 Women's legitimization of civic activism with the help of their social identity as mothers has been found in diverse contexts.Footnote 16 Fidelma Ashe, for example, shows how Irish women exploited cultural notions about the role of mothers to justify their involvement in mass protests.Footnote 17 Scholars also find that women in the United States used the ethos of maternal identity as a rationale for their environmental-justice activism.Footnote 18 Building upon extant research on women's activism in North America, western Europe, and Latin America, recent scholarship applies the notions of motherhood and mothering to analyze women's engagement in contentious politics in eastern Europe.Footnote 19
A growing body of literature focuses on women's resistance to the communist regime.Footnote 20 Based upon the memoirs of participants in the nationalist underground movement in western Ukraine, Oksana Kis demonstrates how women's involvement in guerilla warfare caused the contestation of traditional gender norms and the subordination of their personal lives to the national cause.Footnote 21 Specifically, Kis finds that female insurgents postponed marriage and childbearing but subscribed to motherhood as a cultural value, assuming collective responsibility for the well-being of all children in their community. Similarly, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo redefined the role of mothers in a patriarchal society and began to express concern about all missing persons, not just their biological children, under the military junta in Argentina.Footnote 22
Another line of inquiry investigates women's activism during the transition from communism.Footnote 23 Valerie Sperling, for example, provides a compelling analysis of Russian women's organizations in the 1990s, showing how the transition period created both opportunities and challenges for women activists.Footnote 24 The Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers was one of the most active civic organizations in Russia during that period, especially with a start of military operations in the Chechen Republic and a spike in the violations of soldiers’ rights. Empirical work on this Russian NGO indicates that the mothers’ concern about the well-being of their sons provided an incentive for their civic engagement.Footnote 25 Elena Zdravomyslova, for example, analyzes the organization's adoption of the “responsible motherhood” frame to redefine the concept of mothers’ rights and use it against the military.Footnote 26 In contrast, the Serbian anti-war group Women in Black framed its organization of silent vigils as “a conscious political choice” rather than a product of women's “natural” propensity for nurturing.Footnote 27
A spate of recent work examines women and protests in repressive political regimes that have been installed in the post-Soviet region since the collapse of communism.Footnote 28 In response to the entrenchment of authoritarian practices, women became involved in newly-formed pro-democracy movements and deployed innovative tactics against the regime. The Russian punk rock band Pussy Riot, for example, creatively challenged the patriarchal gender norms in Russian society and, among other things, staged a flashmob-style performance inside Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior.Footnote 29 As pointed out by Janet Elise Johnson, Pussy Riot exemplifies the development of “informal feminism” in Russia in the aftermath of state repression against “NGO feminism.”Footnote 30 Likewise, the Ukrainian women's group FEMEN, founded by Anna Hutsol, Oksana Shachko, Inna Shevchenko, and Oleksandra Shevchenko in 2008, adopted radical action to fight against patriarchy.Footnote 31 In another political setting, focusing on post-1989 Poland, Joanna Regulska and Magdalena Grabowska also observe an increasing diversification of strategies pursued by women's NGOs and feminist groups.Footnote 32 Nonetheless, despite the emergence of various feminist initiatives since the collapse of communism, the concept of feminism is ridden with controversy in the dominant public discourse.Footnote 33
Overall, there are multiple motivations for women's engagement in contentious collective action, lying at the heart of all social movements and revolutions.Footnote 34 Some women might exploit the notion of motherhood to account for their activism. Others might explain their involvement in protest activity outside the framework of the mother's role in society. This study uses the case of women's activism during the EuroMaidan to examine why women in a repressive political regime engage in contentious politics.
Women's Activism in Ukraine
Women, albeit comprising nearly 54 percent of the country's total population, have been subject to a great deal of gender discrimination in Ukraine.Footnote 35 Ukraine ranked 57th out of 188 countries on the 2014 Gender Inequality Index, with a higher value signifying a higher level of inequality in achievement between women and men in three dimensions: reproductive health, empowerment, and the labor market.Footnote 36 Similarly, the 2014 Global Gender Gap Index ranked Ukraine 56th out of 142 countries based upon a set of education, health, economic, and political criteria.Footnote 37 Ukrainian women, on average, have a higher level of educational attainment than men. For example, women made up 52.3 percent of the student population in tertiary-level institutions during the 2013–14 academic year.Footnote 38 Yet, women tend to earn less than their male peers.Footnote 39 The average monthly wages were UAH 2,866 ($362) for women and UAH 3,711 ($469) for men in 2013, meaning that female full-time workers made seventy-seven cents for every dollar earned by men.Footnote 40 Gender disparities in wages were even larger in higher-paying sectors of the economy and, for example, stood at 66.7 percent in the financial and insurance sectors.Footnote 41 Another socioeconomic trend in contemporary Ukraine is the feminization of poverty.Footnote 42 Access to a smaller pool of economic resources puts women at a significant disadvantage in the political sphere.
To date, women's access to political power is dismally low.Footnote 43 The share of women in Ukraine's national parliament, Verkhovna Rada, is consistently below ten percent in the post-Soviet period, ranging from 5.3 percent in 2002 to 9.4 percent in 2012.Footnote 44 Women's representation was slightly higher at the local level, with 12 percent of seats held by women in provincial councils (oblasni rady) in 2010.Footnote 45 Outside the legislative arena, women worked in the NGO sector to tackle a broad spectrum of issues, including domestic violence, human trafficking, and gender equality. According to some estimates, there were more than 700 women's organizations in Ukraine in the early 2010s.Footnote 46 Furthermore, women became engaged in protest activity and participated in the Orange Revolution and the EuroMaidan. This section provides a succinct overview of extant scholarship on women's activism in Ukraine.
An influential body of research has shown that the notion of Berehynia, a pagan goddess of the hearth, affects the dominant construction of women's identity in contemporary Ukraine.Footnote 47 As a modern-day embodiment of Berehynia, women are expected to take care of their family and by extension safeguard the country's physical survival. The concept of Berehynia is also used to promote the woman's role in preserving Ukrainian culture. Solomea Pavlychko, for example, observes that references to Berehynia are woven into the dominant public discourse to propagate the idea of women as guardians of Ukrainian cultural heritage.Footnote 48 Based upon her ethnographic work in Cherkasy oblast, Martha Kichorowska Kebalo concludes that the Berehynia discourse made women “subjected to a deceptive dual standard whereby they are encouraged to think of themselves as being empowered through motherhood and the sphere of cultural reproduction, even as they are simultaneously openly oppressed by new social patterns revealed in a litany of negative indicators (unemployment, representation in decision making positions, business management, and others).”Footnote 49 In light of this dominant public discourse, “traditional” gender roles refer to women's responsibilities for household chores and childrearing and men's primary function as a breadwinner. Women's engagement in politics falls out of the scope of “traditional” gender roles, but there have been some attempts to change the power imbalances between women and men.
Prolific research has examined women's participation in legislative politics.Footnote 50 Based upon the analysis of biographical information of 1,768 parliamentarians elected between 1990 and 2007, Elena Semenova concludes that the introduction of the proportional electoral system did not lead to a higher level of women's representation in the national parliament.Footnote 51 In addition, few women were promoted to leadership positions inside political parties. Among Ukraine's most successful female politicians was Yulia Tymoshenko, leader of the political party Batkivshchyna (Fatherland), former minister of energy, former prime minister, and a presidential candidate. Given Tymoshenko's prominent position in Ukrainian politics, scholars have analyzed how she utilized femininity to advance her political career.Footnote 52 Oksana Kis, for example, argues that Tymoshenko's popularity can be attributed to a savvy combination of two predominant modes of femininity—Berehynia and Barbie—and her projection of herself as both “a virtuous mother of her nation” and “a national sex symbol.”Footnote 53 Tymoshenko performed these dual roles without speaking out in favor of women's rights.Footnote 54
Another substantial body of literature has analyzed women's involvement in civic associations.Footnote 55 Within this literature, a great deal of attention has been devoted to interactions between local NGOs, transnational feminist organizations, and the international donor community. In her extensive work on women's organizations in the post-Soviet period, Alexandra Hrycak identifies substantial differences between the western understanding of women's empowerment and local conceptions of women's activism.Footnote 56 Furthermore, Tatiana Zhurzhenko argues that intra-country differences in the development of the Ukrainian women's movement compounded a shift from a western conceptualization of feminism to the invention of “the myth of the ‘strong’ Ukrainian woman and of the ‘matriarchal’ roots of Ukrainian culture.”Footnote 57 Using an ethnographic approach, Sarah Phillips uncovers how women activists became exposed to the western feminist discourse and “reproduced it in culturally specific ways.”Footnote 58 In particular, FEMEN concocted an interpretation of feminism that produced mixed reactions in Ukraine and abroad.Footnote 59 Theresa O'Keefe, for example, argues that the subversive use of naked bodies might entail the group's “reproduction of patriarchal, hegemonic norms.”Footnote 60 On a more optimistic note, Jessica Zychowicz concludes that FEMEN might stimulate “greater pluralism within feminist studies and practices in Ukraine.”Footnote 61
There exists scant empirical work on women's participation in the Orange Revolution.Footnote 62 The 2004 protest campaign was triggered by large-scale electoral fraud during the presidential elections.Footnote 63 According to some estimates, nearly one-fifth of the country's population joined demonstrations in the capital city or their hometowns during the Orange Revolution.Footnote 64 Hrycak finds that most women participated in the Orange Revolution “by performing care work” for protesters, especially out-of-town youth.Footnote 65 Compared to the Orange Revolution, the EuroMaidan was marked by a greater visibility of women's initiatives aimed at gender equality on the Maidan and more broadly in Ukrainian society.Footnote 66
Over the past few years, Ukrainian journalists and writers gathered memoirs of EuroMaidan participants to document extraordinary narratives of people's power and dignity at a critical juncture in Ukrainian history.Footnote 67 For example, well-known Ukrainian poet and writer Oksana Zabuzhko, in collaboration with her colleagues, compiled an anthology of social media postings by EuroMaidan witnesses to capture a broad spectrum of their emotions and chronicle Ukrainian history in the making.Footnote 68 To challenge a media bias in the coverage of the revolutionary situation—over-reporting of men's presence on the barricades and women's work in the kitchen—and underscore women's diverse contributions to the EuroMaidan, Iryna Virtosu published a collection of interviews with seventeen women activists.Footnote 69 One of Virtosu's interviewees—Olena Shevchenko, a member of the women's squad (Zhinocha sotnia) named after Olha Kobylianska—conveyed the book's main message by stating that “heroism manifests itself not only in standing on the barricades, but also in covering the events, defending detainees in courts, taking part in the AutoMaidan [a civic initiative organized by automobile drivers], and carrying out educational work.”Footnote 70
Furthermore, a flurry of academic research has analyzed women's activism during the EuroMaidan.Footnote 71 A central debate in this literature revolves around the extent of women's success in overcoming patriarchal gender norms on the Maidan. Olesya Khromeychuk finds that some women expected and accepted “the performance of traditionally feminine gender roles on the Maidan,” while others challenged a gender-based division of labor.Footnote 72 Based upon twenty-two focused interviews with EuroMaidan participants between April and August 2014, Sabine Rossmann concludes that women, with the exception of a minority of young women, “did not challenge their ‘traditional’ role as men's helpmates but participated on the basis of gendered social roles.”Footnote 73 In contrast, Tamara Martsenyuk argues that Ukrainian women found niches for egalitarian participation and should be regarded as “makers,” rather than “helpers” of the revolution.Footnote 74 To some extent, women's roles on the Maidan—gendered or not—were shaped by their motivations for protesting.
This study primarily speaks to a strand of research on determinants of citizens’ engagement in contentious politics. Most analysts concur that the EuroMaidan was spearheaded by the middle class.Footnote 75 Volodymyr Paniotto, for example, finds that 64 percent of protesters received higher education and an additional 12 percent were university students.Footnote 76 Numerous reports also indicate that young people played a vital role in the EuroMaidan, especially during its initial phase.Footnote 77 Notably, the protest campaign was marked by the cross-generational exchange of expertise in nonviolent action, whereby veterans of the Revolution on the Granite (the 1990 student hunger strike in Soviet Ukraine) and the Orange Revolution (post-election protests in 2004) shared their experience with a younger generation of protesters. The article contributes to this line of inquiry by focusing on women's protest behavior.
Methodology
We use in-depth interviewing as a data collection method, since it enables us to gain a more nuanced understanding of women's motivations for protesting than a large-N survey consisting of multiple-choice questions.Footnote 78 Interviews consisted of open-ended questions that prompted women to narrate how and why they became engaged in the EuroMaidan. Given the open-ended nature of the interview questions, interviewees could mention more than one reason for their civic engagement. The average length of the interview was thirty minutes. Most interviews were conducted in Ukrainian during one of the author's field trips to Ukraine between March 2015 and March 2016, and several interviews were completed via Skype. The interviews were transcribed and human coded to identify various motivations for women's engagement in the EuroMaidan.
A total of thirty-seven female protesters were interviewed. The respondents were recruited using the snowball sampling method. This sampling method is especially appropriate when the population under study—“ordinary citizens”—is not easily identifiable.Footnote 79 We sought to recruit a sufficiently diverse initial set of respondents so that the sample would capture women with different sociodemographic characteristics. The interviewees ranged in age from sixteen to seventy-one, with the mean age of 30.5.Footnote 80 Respondents had different levels of educational attainment, including high school, incomplete higher education, and advanced graduate degrees. They all resided in Kyiv during the protest events, although many were born outside the capital city and moved there to receive higher education or seek employment. The pseudonyms are reported in the article to protect the interviewees’ identity.
It should be born in mind that the sample is not representative of the total population of female participants in the protest campaign. As seen in Table 1, the sociodemographic profile of the interviewed women is slightly different from a sample of protesters surveyed by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation (DIF) and the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) on December 7–8, 2013. Our sample has a fourteen percent higher proportion of sixteen–twenty-nine-year-old respondents and thus a slightly higher percentage of university students. The DIF/KIIS questionnaire did not include survey items about the respondent's marital status and children. More than half of the interviewed women in our sample were single, and only 37.8 percent of the interviewees had children. A possible implication of an overrepresentation of younger protesters in our sample might be a lower salience of mothering as an incentive for protest behavior. It should also be noted that our sample includes only women residing in Kyiv during the EuroMaidan. In contrast, DIF/KIIS finds that 35.5 percent of women came from other locales to the capital city for the sole purpose of participation in the protest campaign. Forty-eight percent of out-of-town protesters were thirty years old or older. As a result, our sample might not have captured female protesters who had committed a larger amount of time and money to join the EuroMaidan.
Sociodemographic Profile of Women Protesters
Note: Percentages are reported in the table.
The respondents performed a wide range of functions during the EuroMaidan. Some women were responsible for the provision of food and first aid to protesters. Others dealt with logistics, fundraising, and public relations to maintain the encampment's infrastructure. The interviewed activists, for example, coordinated the dissemination of protest-related information and organized public lectures on the premises of the encampment. One of the interviewees belonged to a group of university students who held poetry readings on the Maidan. “Like [Vladimir] Maiakovskii and his generation, we felt like revolutionary poets, capable of changing the world with our words,” recalled eighteen-year-old Ganna, an undergraduate student majoring in literature.Footnote 81 Among the respondents were also members of the AutoMaidan and Zhinocha sotnia.Footnote 82 The interview data suggest that a gender-based division of labor was imposed upon women on the Maidan. Some women challenged the notion of “traditional” gender roles, however, and the emergence of a women's squad is a vivid example of this. In the words of a woman activist, “no matter which roles—traditional, nontraditional, interesting, difficult roles—[woman performed] it is important to bear in mind that nobody has a right to reduce their role to maintenance work.”Footnote 83
Findings
Table 2 summarizes the main motivations for women's engagement in the EuroMaidan. As seen in column 1, the interviewees reported a host of reasons for protesting, including civic duty, solidarity with protesters, motherhood, and professional service. The most frequently cited motivation for women's activism was profound dissatisfaction with the incumbent government. Citizens’ grievances arose from the government's utmost disrespect for human rights, disproportionate police violence against protesters, rampant corruption, and scarce job opportunities. The president's decision to abandon a trade agreement with the EU was widely seen as the final straw, rather than the sole reason for contentious collective action. Another oft-cited motivation for protesting was solidarity with relatives, friends, and colleagues who joined the protest campaign. Moreover, the notion of activist mothering provided a powerful incentive for political engagement, especially among women with child-rearing experience. As shown in column 2, a quarter of the interviewees looked upon their participation in the protest campaign as fulfillment of their civic duty. Furthermore, some women came to the Maidan out of desire to put their professional skills to use. Concern over gender equality in Ukrainian society was rarely mentioned as an incentive for women's initial involvement in the EuroMaidan. It must also be noted that approximately two-thirds of the interviewed women provided multiple reasons for protesting, so the above-mentioned motivations should be treated as complimentary, rather than self-exclusive.
Women's Motivations for Protesting
Note: The interviewees could report more than one motivation for their engagement in the EuroMaidan so the total is more than 100 percent.
Public disapproval of the president's rejection of a free trade agreement with the EU was a major reason for the start of mass protests in November 2013. For example, twenty-six-year-old Ruslana said:
When I joined, it was a question of being tied to Russia like to an old log, or to finally strengthen ties with the EU. Russia is an authoritarian country, it bears no promise of a better economy or democracy. EU-orientation is the best route for Ukraine. I want my kids to have a European standard of living, not whatever we have now.Footnote 84
Among the perceived positive benefits of trade liberalization with the EU were better prospects for the preservation of families torn apart by labor migration. Fifty-year-old Sophia looked upon the trade agreement as a chance for improved family relations in migrant-sending households:
In fall 2013 I was closely following political developments over the EU trade deal. It meant so many things to different people. Due to a lack of job prospects and scarcity of ways to make money and support one's family, many families are split apart. One parent, usually the father, but sometimes the mother, or both, are forced to go abroad and do manual, denigrating jobs, just to make ends meet. What kind of marriage is it when the father is absent for years at a time? What kind of family is it? More importantly, what do children learn about family relations, love, responsibility, in torn families like these? It is heartbreaking, it is awful … the EU trade deal would open up a lot of economic prospects for people, and possibly alleviate Ukraine's many problems. It would also allow people to visit their families, therefore preserving at least some form of a family unit.Footnote 85
Beyond the disapproval of the then-government's foreign policy priorities, a slew of political, socioeconomic, and cultural issues alienated women from the incumbent government and drove them into the street. Protesters found appalling the quality of governance under Yanukovych. As thirty-one-year-old Ivanna put it, “Murderers and degenerates were in power, and I could not stand by and watch them destroy my motherland.”Footnote 86 Specifically, a dearth of job opportunities and the strangulation of entrepreneurship were sources of concern for many protesters. Olena, a seventeen-year-old computer science student, discussed her dissatisfaction with the government on economic grounds:
As a software specialist [programist], I am very aware of how our government stifles creativity and life in general, particularly for young people. If I had a chance to study abroad, I would learn more, and I would also make so much more money. And here, not only people laugh at me for being a girl and a computer geek, but I don't get any professional respect either. There is a term aitishnik [IT specialist]. Have you heard of it? That's how people in this country think of software specialists because the concept of a start-up is like a fantasy here. Aitishnik is someone who installs Windows on your laptop and downloads a new anti-virus to get rid of all the evidence that you have been illegally downloading music on your work computer. It's a joke. There is no innovation here, no creativity. You are punished for trying to make something of yourself. This is not a good environment to live in. So I went and protested, and yeah, threw some bricks here and there.Footnote 87
Moreover, corruption was a major source of political discontent among EuroMaidan participants.Footnote 88 The incidence of corruption reached enormous proportions under Yanukovych, and it had a profound impact on the lives of ordinary citizens.Footnote 89 For example, Yaryna, an eighteen-year-old native of Volyn oblast, Ukraine's north-western region on the border with Poland, recalled how corruption in the police engendered a climate of lawlessness in her hometown and later influenced her decision to become engaged in the EuroMaidan:
I come from a small town where corruption is rampant. I could not do anything there because everyone was so corrupt. If you stood up for your rights, someone would come and burn down your house, and the police would do nothing … when [Mustafa] Naiiem posted a call to go to the Maidan, I responded. I helped out in any way I could. I felt a little bit like a member of the white guard [bilogvardiiets], except we were fighting for human rights, for the right to be treated as a human being by our government, rather than fighting for the tsar.Footnote 90
Likewise, forty-year-old Kateryna from Bila Tserkva, a city fifty miles south of Kyiv, cited corruption as a motivation for her involvement in the protest campaign:
I joined the protests because I firsthand experienced the injustices of the regime and I've had enough of it. My business got raided as soon as it made a profit, it was a legal car wash. My house had bricks thrown at it when I tried to complain. I live in a small town where everyone knows everyone, and this sort of violence wasn't present even in the 90s. The police and government officials walked around as if they owned the place, and they were all members of the Party of Regions. If you weren't [a party member], you were as good as dead.Footnote 91
As seen in Table 2, solidarity with protesters was another major reason for women's activism. Several middle-aged respondents reported that their spouse's participation in the protest campaign influenced their decision to join it. In contrast, younger respondents, including high school and university students, discussed the importance of peer influence. For example, sixteen-year-old Myroslava recalled how her classmates joined the EuroMaidan: “I was in high school at that time, and one day the entire class decided to go to the Maidan. And afterwards we stayed [there] because we felt that it was the right thing to do … the idea of dignity permeated the air, and everybody tried to be their best, to be better than the scum in the government.”Footnote 92
The notion of activist mothering provided a powerful motivation for protesting among women with firsthand child-rearing experience. Eighty percent of those who employed a “maternalist frame” to explain their protest behavior were mothers.Footnote 93 Drawing on their social identities as mothers and grandmothers, the interviewed women expressed determination to protect their children and grandchildren against police violence and secure a better future for younger generations of Ukrainians. For example, Oksana, twenty-four-year-old mother of two children, spoke about the so-called maternal instinct as a driving force behind women's civic engagement:
Many women, including myself, participated because they understood that we, as womankind, bear responsibility for our children and our husbands. Women understood that they could do things that are irreplaceable and necessary, even if men did not recognize it. There is a certain maternal instinct in all women, and I think women deeply understand their social role and public needs, and perform it even if they get nothing in return.Footnote 94
Consistent with Naples's argument, this study finds that female protesters broadened the traditional definition of mothering to encompass their voluntary work for the betterment of their community. Many women felt that they could not stand on the sidelines when both the future of their country and the well-being of their children were in jeopardy. Solomiia, a thirty-year-old mother of two children, stated: “I am interested in what will happen to my country, where my children will live. Ukraine is a country rich with resources and potential, and the old regime misused them and outright stole. They plundered our people and ravaged the country, and I want a better future for my family. I would like to see my country flourish. I would like my children to live in a civilized country and have a good life.”Footnote 95
Also a mother, thirty-seven-year-old Olha expressed a similar mix of feelings: “I think that a lot of women, myself most definitely, felt a motherly feeling and duty towards the protesters and our country. We were there to take care of the movement, and in doing so, our country. While it seems to some people that we were merely cleaners and cooks, we were so much more than that. Women were the glue that made this movement last and succeed.”Footnote 96
Likewise, the interviewees invoked motherhood when they described their motivations for protesting in favor of the free trade agreement with the EU or against the use of excessive violence against peaceful protesters. This finding is consistent with women's behavior during the revolutionary situation. In February 2014, for example, a few dozen women, with self-made signs “Mother” pinned to their clothes, organized a march in front of the police cordon on the Maidan and addressed the government with a plea: “Do not to kill our children!”Footnote 97 Women also blockaded military bases to disrupt the execution of orders regarding the violent dispersal of protesters.Footnote 98 Outrage over police violence against university students in November 2013 motivated Uliana, a retired university professor, to join the protests: “I was outraged over the things that happened to the kids. Usually I stay out of things, but I just couldn't bear it any longer. We, all the professors, went together [to the Maidan] because our students were there, and it was time we united with them. We hoped that the more people were there, the safer the kids would be.”Footnote 99
Interest in gauging the authenticity of the anti-government protests provided another incentive for some women's arrival at the protest site. Forty-four-year-old Zlata, for example, admitted that her professional experience—employment at an international organization—had piqued her interest in the EuroMaidan: “Everyone was going crazy over the Maidan at the time so I went to see for myself what was really going on. I also had a professional interest because I worked with public opinion polls and stuff like that. The question that interested me most was whether the Maidan was a genuine grassroots phenomenon or a carefully orchestrated PR campaign. I wanted to see with my own eyes how it was organized.”Footnote 100
The provision of much needed professional services was cited as another reason for women's engagement in the protest campaign. Trained as a nurse, forty-year-old Iryna was moved by a mix of civic and professional duties: “This protest was my duty as a Ukrainian. Plus, I have a medical background so I could be useful,” she said.Footnote 101 A few interviewees were mobilized via their professional associations. The Ukrainian Association of Psychologists, for example, brought a large number of its members to the encampment to provide counseling for protesters, especially during an escalation in police violence.Footnote 102 Khrystyna, twenty-five-year-old graduate student in psychology, described how she had been touched by the amount of human suffering on the Maidan:
My decision was primarily driven by the desire to alleviate human suffering, of which there was plenty. I was also very concerned about the effects of these events on the human psyche and therefore society at large. There was a lot of anxiety among people. Fear for themselves, their families, fear of getting hurt or killed. But there was also fear for the country, concern over its future, anxiety about the economic situation, and of course there was also the fear of “what if we do not win?” … there were also many great women who were truly fearless, who fought with men despite sexual harassment and police threats.Footnote 103
Turning to women's issues, only three out of thirty-seven respondents explicitly mentioned women's empowerment as a primary motivation for their involvement in the EuroMaidan. Having been a women's rights advocate for several years, thirty-five-year-old Olesia joined a women's squad to champion the idea of gender equality and boost the visibility of women in the protest campaign. Olesia explained: “It was an opportunity for real societal change, and as a women's rights activist I could not leave the gender question out of the creation of a new political order … when men are the only people defending the protests, it gives them the right to claim any victory as theirs, and there is no place for that in contemporary Ukraine.”Footnote 104
Similarly, twenty-five-year-old Maria underscored the significance of women's engagement in the EuroMaidan for the betterment of women's position in Ukrainian society: “I was a member of a feminist organization, and I joined [the EuroMaidan] when we realized that it was more than a protest against the cancellation of a trade deal, it was a fight for human rights. It was important for women to participate because since the French Revolution, there is a tradition of excluding women from all the decision making and reforms, because we supposedly don't give our blood and sweat to the movement.”Footnote 105
An abundance of anecdotal evidence demonstrates women's encounter with sexism on the Maidan.Footnote 106 A placard inside the encampment diminished women's role in the protest campaign, stating: “Woman, if you see a mess, clean it up; it will please a [male] revolutionary.” Furthermore, given a surge in police violence in January 2014, Maidan commandant Andrii Parubii advised women against participating in direct combat on the barricades. As noted by a woman protester, “the traditional model of interactions between men and women in society, their unequal access to resources, was unfortunately reproduced in the course of revolutionary events.”Footnote 107 In response, feminist activists organized the Night of Women's Solidarity on the Maidan and started a Facebook group “Half of Maidan: Women's Voice of Protest” (Polovyna Maidanu: Zhinochyi golos protestu).Footnote 108 One of their initiatives dealt with a design of posters portraying women's heroism on the Maidan.Footnote 109 Moreover, some women began to form women's self-defense units and offer master classes in self-defense.Footnote 110 Nina Potarska, a sotnia's co-founder, considered the women's squad “a resource for amplifying the ‘woman's voice’ under conditions of egregious discrimination.”Footnote 111 By the same token, women's initiatives challenged the traditional definition of women's role as Berehynia by making women more visible in a male-dominated public space.
Furthermore, faced with men's gender stereotypes inside the encampment and biased media coverage of the revolutionary situation, some women who did not consider women's rights as a pivotal issue at the start of the anti-government protests began to challenge a gender-based division of labor on the Maidan and construct an alternative narrative of women's engagement in the EuroMaidan. Twenty-one-year-old Nadiia recalled how she fought against gender discrimination inside the encampment:
My future and the future of my generation were on the line. My husband was also very much into it. And I felt the need to support him. At first I went because he was there. But he hung out with other men. Men made barricades and other defensive structures. I joined a lot of women who were discussing politics. We had our discussions in the kitchens … when there were wounded, I went on runs to get medical supplies, and my friends and I fought hard for the right not to be sent home. The men tried to tell us that it was not our place, but at that time I believed that it was as much my responsibility to defend my rights as it was my husband's.Footnote 112
A limitation of these findings is that they cannot be generalized to the whole population of female protesters. Nonetheless, the findings presented in this article are consistent with the results of the Ukrainian Protest Participant Survey (n = 1475) conducted between November 26, 2013 and January 10, 2014.Footnote 113 Olga Onuch and Tamara Martsenyuk found that both male and female survey respondents mentioned concerns about the quality of life and human rights abuses as top reasons for protesting, while women were slightly more motivated by police violence against students than men.Footnote 114 Additional data from Onuch and Martsenyuk's rapid on-site interviews show that parenthood was more frequently cited by women than men as an incentive for protest behavior. Similarly, women polled by the DIF, in collaboration with the KIIS, on December 7–8, 2013, mentioned outrage over police violence against peaceful protesters (70.9 percent), disapproval of the president's refusal to sign a free trade agreement (53.3 percent), and the desire to improve the quality of life in Ukraine (53.3 percent) as their main reasons for protesting.Footnote 115 The findings support the argument that political discontent, along with the notion of activist mothering, provided a rationale for women's protest behavior.
This study has examined why women in post-communist Ukraine joined a protest campaign. Taken together, the findings reveal a broad spectrum of motivations for women's involvement in the EuroMaidan, ranging from dissatisfaction with the government and civic duty to solidarity with protesters and professional service. These findings have important implications for the study of contentious politics in eastern Europe. A great deal of empirical work has focused on motherhood as an incentive for women's political engagement. Consistent with prior research, this study demonstrates that a broadened understanding of mothering can serve as a catalyst for women's activism in a repressive political regime. Women's concerns about the well-being of their biological children can evolve into a broader concern about the future of their country, which might spur women to action despite the high costs of activism. This study, however, finds that the notion of activist mothering is mostly salient among women with child-rearing experience. Apparently, a wide range of factors influences women's propensity to protest. Further research needs to explore how different social identities intersect and reinforce women's engagement in contentious politics in non-democracies.
The EuroMaidan's impact on the status of women in Ukrainian society is another avenue for future research. The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine adopted a state program on gender equality in December 2006.Footnote 116 A follow-up program was adopted in September 2013.Footnote 117 The incumbent government, however, failed to make significant progress in implementing democratic reforms and enforcing gender mainstreaming policies. With the appointment of Volodymyr Groisman as Prime Minister in April 2016, women were nominated to head only two Ministries: the Ministry of Education and Science and the Ministry of Health.Footnote 118 This distribution of minister portfolios appears to reinforce a gender-based segregation in the labor market and the exclusion of women from key positions of power.
Moreover, women's activism in response to Russia's annexation of Crimea and the violent conflict in eastern Ukraine is a fruitful area for future research. Numerous reports indicate that the conflict has engendered the growth of civil society and in particular the development of a volunteer movement.Footnote 119 Since Ukraine faced an unprecedented refugee crisis, with more than 1.5 million internally displaced people (IDPs), civic activists stepped in to provide assistance for IDPs and compensate for the inefficiency and corruption inside government agencies. In addition, women organized fundraising campaigns to supply the cash-strapped army with food, clothes, and medical equipment. Future work should explore multifaceted forms of women's activism in conflict-ridden societies and identify conditions under which women can achieve greater gender equality.
