Women,Civil Society,and Ukraine’s War

© Yurii Zushchyk / Alamy Stock Photo

Two years on from the Russian invasion, Jennifer G. Mathers examines the role of women in Ukrainian civil society and considers whether women will be given more access to formal political power after the war.

Women in Ukraine have played – and continue to play – a pivotal role in Ukrainian civil society. While there has been some public recognition of this, especially since the Russian invasion in February 2022, the gendered nature of public life means Ukrainian women’s contributions are often sidelined or downplayed. Nonetheless, women have been at the vanguard of many of the most seismic moments in Ukrainian life over the past 20 years and continue to play a crucial role in both the war efforts and in shaping what becomes of Ukraine after the conflict.

Twice in the 21st century, large numbers of Ukrainians came out onto the streets to express their dissatisfaction with those who claimed to act on their behalf, and to demand accountability and real political change. In the 2004 ‘Orange Revolution’ mass public protests helped overturn the results of fraudulent elections. Even though an estimated 20 per cent of Ukraine’s population was actively involved in these protests, there is little published research on the extent and nature of women’s participation in them. We know a great deal more about women’s involvement in the 2013-2014 protests on Maidan Square. Widely described in Ukraine as ‘the Revolution of Dignity,’ these protests were sparked by President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to withdraw from an association agreement with the European Union and instead pursue closer economic relations with Russia. Our ability to interrogate the nuances of women’s participation and experiences in the Revolution of Dignity is thanks to data gathered by Ukrainian feminist scholars during and after the events.

Many of the women who are the backbone of Ukrainian civil society today had their first significant experiences of activism a decade ago and regard their subsequent civic involvement as a logical continuation of that politicising moment.

Women who were not content with the stereotypical roles assigned to them by their male colleagues began to organise themselves into groups known as ‘hundreds’ or military-style units that had been adopted by many of the male protesters for self-defence against attacks from the security services.

The Revolution of Dignity

Research by political scientist Olga Onuch and sociologist Tamara Martsenyuk conducted during the Revolution of Dignity, indicates that both men and women were motivated to come to the Maidan in 2013 for very similar reasons: opposition to Yanukovych’s decision to take Ukraine closer to Russia; anger at the extent of corruption by high level state officials; and outrage at the security forces’ brutal treatment of protesting students. Men and women were represented almost equally among the protesters during the first several months of the action. But while the men who came out to protest struggled against the security forces of the Yanukovych government, the women quickly found that they were also engaged in a struggle against the attitudes of their male counterparts. Men could find a protest role that suited their skills, experiences and inclinations – whether that was building barricades, participating in clashes with the security services or using their medical training to treat the injured. As Olesya Khromeychuk points out, women who came forward to offer their support were offered a much narrower range of opportunities: they were routinely directed to the field kitchens. The work of preparing and distributing food to the thousands of protesters was clearly essential, but not all women who were motivated to come to Maidan by the desire for political change were satisfied with being confined to the domestic spaces of the square.

As one female protester explained in an interview with Khromeychuk:

We all took part in the protests as individuals one way or another. But after a while we all got fed up with the popularised discourse that women should go to the kitchen and that they should not go to the barricades, because it is dangerous; and that women should smile because it will be nice for other people (as was suggested by a guard of the Ukrainian House, who checked men’s documents, but not those of women, provided they smiled nicely).

Women who were not content with the stereotypical roles assigned to them by their male colleagues began to organise themselves into groups known as ‘hundreds’ or military-style units that had been adopted by many of the male protesters for self-defence against attacks from the security services. These women’s units organised self-defence training for women as well as providing each other with practical and moral support throughout the protest. Other feminist groups represented at the protest tried – with limited success – to raise awareness of issues such as domestic violence and sexual abuse in Ukrainian society, and the need to improve women’s security within the home and the family. After clashes between protesters and the security services became more violent in January 2014, however, women were actively discouraged from coming onto the protest site at all, and the proportion of women among the protesters declined dramatically, from nearly 50 per cent to approximately 12 per cent. But while women’s experience of this nation-defining event was, for many, rather disappointing in its limitations, it nevertheless inspired a continuing commitment to civic and political participation that has played a significant role in sustaining Ukraine through a decade of conflict.

Women in war

The outbreak of war in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine in the spring of 2014 found the Ukrainian armed forces largely unprepared for the challenge posed by local militias, which had declared their intention of secession from Kyiv’s control. These militias were also armed and funded by Moscow, and supplemented by the covert involvement of the Russian armed forces. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, beset by a combination of limited resources and significant and long-standing problems of institutional corruption, desperately needed civilians to fill gaps in the provision of goods, services, skills and expertise, including caring roles for injured war veterans. Civil society, fresh from the experience of people power in the Revolution of Dignity, stepped up to meet this new challenge. Charities, both large and small, were set up almost overnight and in bewildering numbers to raise money, buy or collect useful items and transport them directly to combat units. During the first few years of the conflict, the war in Ukraine became known as the world’s ‘first crowdfunded war’, raising the equivalent of many millions of dollars to buy everything that soldiers needed, including food supplies, helmets and body armour, drones and field hospitals.

While the largest and most high-profile charities tended to be headed by men and to have close connections with the Ministry of Defence, women played a prominent role in civilian fundraising and support for Ukrainian soldiers during these early years, especially in the smaller organisations. One example of a small, woman-run charity is the Diana Makarova Fund. Founded by a former journalist of the same name, this organisation was originally comprised of women who met during the Maidan protests, when they came together to sew bulletproof vests to protect protesters at risk from being shot by the security services. Many of the women who engaged in these kinds of volunteer efforts saw their work as a seamless extension of their activism during the Maidan protests.

The other major civil society effort that Ukraine’s women participated in during the period between the start of the war in the Donbas in 2014 and the beginning of Russia’s mass invasion in February 2022, was support for internally displaced persons (IDPs). Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the fighting in eastern Ukraine created displacement on a massive scale. While many IDPs sought refuge with family and friends in other parts of the country, in other cases it was local charities, communities and church groups that helped IDPs survive until government bureaucracy caught up with the situation on the ground and managed to provide basic benefits payments.

Over the past two years, the direct and indirect results of Russia’s large-scale invasion have left no part of Ukraine unaffected. The need for a proactive, resilient and compassionate civil society has never been greater. Volunteering has become widespread since February 2022. Among those not serving in the armed forces, many Ukrainians, both men and women, are actively engaged in unpaid work, often carrying out volunteer duties alongside their paid employment. According to a rapid gender analysis of Ukraine published by UN Women in 2022, there is a distinct gendered division of work among volunteers in Ukraine, which echoes patterns of gendered civic activism established in the recent past: men devote their efforts primarily to activities related to defence and security or the transportation of goods, especially to units on the front lines, while women are more often to be found providing humanitarian support to vulnerable populations. An estimated 3.7 million people are internally displaced in Ukraine, as of January 2024, according to UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates. Women also support the armed forces through gendered activities, such as weaving camouflage nets that help to conceal military equipment in the field. These gendered differences among volunteers also reflect gendered understandings of citizenship in Ukraine generally, where it is widely regarded as more appropriate for men to take responsibility for defending the country against external threats while women are seen as more naturally suited to caring roles, both within the family and within the community.

Women in post-war Ukraine

It is precisely because much of women’s civil society work happens outside formal, institutional structures or through community efforts, that it tends to be less visible and receive little formal recognition. In areas closest to active combat zones, and in areas that were formerly under Russian occupation, the situation is often one of women helping other women to survive the everyday hardships of wartime life. In the towns and villages of Kharkiv recently liberated by Ukrainian forces, for example, the populations are overwhelmingly composed of women, children and the elderly, many of whom are highly dependent on items donated to local charities and humanitarian centres which are staffed by the voluntary efforts of their neighbours.

Ukrainians appreciate the value of their own civil society, with volunteers among the most trusted social institutions in the country. According to a survey carried out by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in late 2023, 84 per cent of respondents said that they trust volunteers. This result has held steady over the previous year, while the levels of trust in the presidency, the Parliament, the judiciary, and the police have declined over the same period. Only the armed forces of Ukraine inspires a higher level of public trust.

But while women’s civil society work has played a large role in keeping Ukraine going throughout the war, there are real questions over how effectively women will be able to leverage their wartime contributions into peacetime political gains, particularly when it comes to contributing to decision-making about the future direction of the country. The fact that so much of women’s civil society activism is an extension of women’s roles within the family makes it easy to overlook, especially in comparison to higher-profile contributions typically made by men, such as service in the armed forces.

Politics at the national level in Ukraine continues to be very male-dominated. Despite a significant increase in the proportion of women elected to Ukraine’s Parliament in 2019 (21 per cent) compared with the previous Parliament elected in 2014 (12 per cent), the proportion of women remains well below the European and North American average. There are, however, some encouraging signs that the Ukrainian government is taking gender equality and the security of women seriously. In 2020 Ukraine adopted a new National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security that commits Kyiv to addressing the needs of women during and after conflict, and involving them in peace making and peace building efforts. In 2022, Ukraine ratified the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. The challenge in the years to come, however, is for Ukraine’s government and society to translate these formal commitments into everyday practices that enable women to bring their wartime insights and experiences to the crucial debates about the country’s direction after the conflict.