Post-Soviet Women

This volume explores how different post-Soviet countries have reinterpreted and diverged from the Soviet gender roles and values. It synthesizes results from multiple empirical studies that attend to increasingly conservative features of political governance in the region, particularly the authoritarian regime in Russia. The authors consider diverse enactments of ideologies, policies and practices of gender equality and women's rights in crucial areas, such as legislative institutions, media, and social activism. The volume contributes to understanding post-Soviet societal dynamics relevant to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5, which emphasizes gender equality as part of fundamental human rights.

Chapter 1: Post-Soviet Women: New Challenges and Ways to Empowerment - Introduction.- Part I: Women’s positions in the Post-Soviet Societies.- Chapter 2: From defending women’s rights in the “whole world” to silence about Russia’s predatory war? The (geo)politics of the Eurasian Women’s Forums in the context of “traditional values”.- Chapter 3: Debates around domestic violence prevention law in Russia - pro and contra.- Chapter 4: The Private Remains Non-Political: Gender Equality in a Non-Western Context: The Example of Armenia.- Chapter 5: General Trends in Gender Inequality in Post –Soviet Central Asia.- Chapter 6: Women’s rights in Central Asian countries in the grip of retraditionalization and neoliberal capitalism.- Chapter 7: Why was there no FEMEN in the Baltic states? Some preliminary observations Matthew Kott.- Part II: Negotiating Women’s Roles.- Chapter 8: Being a Woman and Russian National Identity: Discourses and Representations through the Lenses of Russian Conservative and Nationalist Organizations.- Chapter 9: Female parliamentarians in Armenia: from traditional theme-takers to the new theme-givers.- Chapter 10: Valkyries & Madonnas: Constructing femininity during the Russo-Ukrainian War.- Chapter 11: Women cultivating love in the Belarusian countryside.- Part III: Women’s Agency, New Movements and Activisms.- Chapter 12: They beat us, we fly.’  Indigenous Activism among Women in the Russian North.- Chapter 13: Women’s Activism in Ukraine: Artistic Method in Early Civic Documentations of the Ukraine-Russia War.- Chapter 14: Generations of Feminist Translations: Connecting Russophone Academic and Activist Feminist Translation Debates across the 2000s and 2010s.- Chapter 15: Balancing between global trends: what happens with women empowerment in Azerbaijan?. Chapter 16: Women’s Responses to the Conservative Wave in Russian Social Policy.