Abstract
This chapter suggests an analytical and empirically grounded argument about the ways to rethink the feminist agenda in postsocialism. My theoretical speculations are inspired by two independent research projects. The first one is dedicated to women’s informal cross-border activities on the Belarus–Lithuania border. It was conducted in 2010–2012 in a small Belarusian town where I collected 18 in-depth interviews with women involved in cross-border petty trade in the region (Sasunkevich 2014, 2015; Liinason and Sasunkevich 2018). The second project is my current research about feminist and LGBTI+ activism in Russia in the transnational perspective. Although two projects have been conducted independently, with different aims and within two different, though tightly linked, national states, bringing them together I aspire to show how a more nuanced understanding of living conditions, choices, and rationales of different groups of women shed light on potential and limits of dominant feminist ideas in the postsocialist context. My examples of the postsocialist feminist agenda are based on fieldwork and interviews with feminist activists in Russia. Thus, this chapter does not claim broad generalizations since the scope of both projects is limited. However, revealing how petty traders conceptualize their financial independence and personal self-sufficiency (Sasunkevich 2015), I try to explain why they do not find their experience of personal emancipation (the influential feminist idea) particularly appealing and instead consider a man-as-breadwinner model as their ideal. Departing from experience of these women, I suggest an alternative way to formulate the feminist question in the postsocialism to make it more appealing to broader categories of people.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Attwood L, Schimpfössl E, Yusupova M (2018) Gender and choice after socialism. Springer, Berlin
Borovoy A, Ghodsee K (2012) Decentering agency in feminist theory: recuperating the family as a social project. Women’s Stud Int Forum 35:153–165
Butler J (1997) Merely cultural. Social Text 52/53:265–277
Butler J (2006) Precarious life: the powers of mourning and violence. Verso, London
Butler J (2015) Notes toward a performative theory of assembly. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
Coole D (2015) Emancipation as a three-dimensional process for the twenty-first century. Hypatia 30(3):530–546
Dhawan N, Engel A, Holzhey CHE, Woltersdorff V (eds) (2015) Global justice and desire: queering economy. Routledge, London
Eglitis DS (2010) Cultures of gender and the changing Latvian family in early post-communism. J Baltic Stud 41(2):151–176
Fraser N (1997a) Heterosexism, misrecognition, and capitalism: a response to Judith Butler. Social Text 52/53:279–289
Fraser N (1997b) Justice interruptus: critical reflections on the “postsocialist” condition. Routledge, London
Fraser N (2009) Feminism, capitalism, and the cunning of history. New Left Rev 56:97–117
Fraser N (2011) Marketization, social protection, emancipation: toward a neo-Polanyian conception of capitalist crisis. In: Calhoun CJ, Derluguian G (eds) Business as usual: the roots of the global financial meltdow. The Social Reasearch Council and New York University Press, New York, pp 137–158
Gapova E (2010) Itogi sezda: eshche raz o klassovom voprose postsovetskogo feminisma. Zhurnal issledovanii socialnoi politiki 7(4):465–484
Gapova E (2016) Klassy nacii: Feministskaia kritika naciostroitelstva. Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, Moscow
Ghodsee K (2004) Feminism-by-design: emerging capitalisms, cultural feminism, and women’s nongovernmental organizations in postsocialist Eastern Europe. Signs J Women Cult Soc 29(3):727–753
Gill R (2016) Post-postfeminism?: new feminist visibilities in postfeminist times. Fem Media Stud 16(4):610–630
Grigoriev P, Grigorieva O (2011) Self-perceived health in Belarus: evidence from the income and expenditures of households survey. Demogr Res 24:551–578
Grigoriev P, Shkolnikov V, Andreev E, Jasilionis D, Jdanov D, Meslé F et al (2010) Mortality in Belarus, Lithuania, and Russia: divergence in recent trends and possible explanations. Eur J Population 26(3):245–274
Issledovatel’skii Centr IPM (2012) Bednost’ i social’naia izoliaciia v Belarusi. IPM, Minsk
Kiczková Z, Farkašová E (1993) The emancipation of women: a concept that failed. In: Funk N, Mueller M (eds) Gender politics and post-communism: reflections from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Routledge, London, pp 84–94
Knudsen IH (2012) New Lithuania in old hands: effects and outcomes of Europeanization in rural Lithuania. Anthem Press, London
Liinason M, Sasunkevich O (2018) Women resisting border regimes: two case studies from eastern and northern Europe. In: Martinsson L, Mulinari D (eds) Global change, doing local feminisms: visions of feminism. Global north/global south encounters, conversations and disagreements. Routledge, London, pp 39–57
Lissyutkina L (1999) Emancipation without feminism: the historical and socio-cultural context of the women’s movement in Russia. In: Bridger S (ed) Women and political change: perspectives from east-Central Europe. Macmillan Press, London, pp 168–187
Mahmood S (2001) Feminist theory, embodiment, and the docile agent: some reflections on the Egyptian Islamic revival. Cult Anthropol 16(2):202–236
Mahmood S (2005) Politics of piety: the Islamic revival and the feminist subject. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ
McLellan J (2011) Love in the time of communism: intimacy and sexuality in the GDR. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Muravyeva M (2014) Traditional values and modern families: legal understanding of tradition and modernity in contemporary Russia. J Soc Policy Stud 12(4):625–638
Natsional’nyi statisticheskii komitet Respubliki Belarus’ Ozhidaemaia prodolzhitel’nost’ zhizni muzhchin i zhenshchin pri rozhdenii po g. Minsku i oblastiam. http://www.belstat.gov.by/ofitsialnaya-statistika/solialnaya-sfera/demografiya_2/g/ozhidaemaya-prodolzhitelnost-zhizni-muzhchin-i-zhenschin-pri-rozhdenii-po-oblastyam-i-g-minsku/. Accessed 18 April 2018
Natsional’nyi statisticheskii komitet Respubliki Belarus’ (2013) Zhenshchiny i muzhchiny Respubliki Belarus. Natsional’nyi statisticheskii komitet Respubliki Belarus’, Minsk
Natsional’nyi statisticheskii komitet Respubliki Belarus’, UNICEF (2013) Monitoring polozheniia detei i zhenshchin: Mnogoindikatornoe klasternoe obsledovanie po ocenke polozheniia detei i zhenshchin v Respublike Belarus’, 2012 god. Itogovyi otchet. Natsional’nyi statisticheskii komitet Respubliki Belarus’, Minsk
National Statistical Committee of the Republic of Belarus (2016) Women and men in the Republic of Belarus. National Statistical Committee of the Republic of Belarus, Minsk
Nygren KG, Fahlgren S, Johansson A (2016) Normalisation meets governmentality: gender equality reassembled. In: Martinsson L, Griffin G (eds) Challenging the myth of gender equality in Sweden. Policy Press, Bristol, pp 49–67
Pastore F, Verashchagina A (2011) When does transition increase the gender wage gap? An application to Belarus. Econ Transit 19(2):333–369
Rottenberg C (2014) The rise of neoliberal feminism. Cult Stud 28(3):418–437
Rubin G (1975) The traffic in women: notes on the ‘political economy’ of sex. In: Reiter R (ed) Toward an anthropology of women. Monthly Review Press, New York, pp 157–210
Salecl R (2010) The tyranny of choice. Profile Books, London
Sasunkevich O (2014) ‘Business as casual’: shuttle trade on the Belarus–Lithuania border. In: Morris J, Polese A (eds) The informal post-socialist economy. Routledge, London, pp 155–171
Sasunkevich O (2015) Informal trade, gender and the border experience: from political borders to social boundaries. Ashgate, Burlington
Scharff C (2011) Disarticulating feminism: individualization, neoliberalism and the othering of ‘Muslim women’. Eur J Women’s Stud 18(2):119–134
Scott JW (2018) Sex and secularism, vol 23. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ
Senkova O (2018) ‘Ia s etimi lud’mi v odin avtozak ne siadu’: Solidarnosti i konflikty v feministskikh initsiativakh Peterburga. Zhurnal issledovanii social’noi politiki 16(3):457–472
Šiklová J (1993) Are women in central and Eastern Europe conservative? In: Funk N, Mueller M (eds) Gender politics and post-communism: reflections from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Routledge, London, pp 74–83
Standing G (2011) The precariat: the new dangerous class. Bloomsbury Academic, London
Stella F (2015) Lesbian lives in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia: post/socialism and gendered sexualities. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke
Stella F, Nartova N (2015) Sexual citizenship, nationalism and biopolitics in Putin’s Russia. In: Stella F, Taylor Y, Reynolds T, Rogers A (eds) Sexuality, citizenship and belonging: trans-national and intersectional perspectives. Routledge, London, pp 24–42
Stuckler D, King L, McKee M (2009) Mass privatisation and the post-communist mortality crisis: a cross-national analysis. Lancet 373(9661):399–407
Suchland J (2015) Economies of violence: transnational feminism, postsocialism, and the politics of sex trafficking. Duke University Press, Durham
Tasker Y, Negra D (2007) Introduction: Feminist politics and postfeminist culture. In: Negra D, Tasker Y (eds) Interrogating postfeminism: gender and the politics of popular culture. Duke University Press, pp 1–25
Zdravomyslova E (2010) Working mothers and nannies: commercialization of childcare and modifications in the gender contract (A sociological essay). Anthropol East Eur Rev 28(2):200–225
Acknowledgments
This chapter is written within the project “Spaces of Resistance. A Study of Gender and Sexualities in Times of Transformation,” supported by Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (the project leader is Wallenberg Academy Fellow Mia Liinason (University of Gothenburg)). I am grateful to Mia Liinason for her comments on the first draft of this text. I am also indebted to Hülya Arik and Selin Çağatay for our discussions of contemporary feminist issues during project meetings. The earlier drafts of this paper were presented at the conferences “Gender-Power-Eastern Europe: Changing Concepts of Femininities and Masculinities and Power Relations” (June 2017, Berlin) and “‘V teme’: seks, politika i zhizn’ LGBT v Central’noi Azii” (March 2019, Bishkek). I would like to thank conference organizers and participants for their comments and questions.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sasunkevich, O. (2021). Emancipation is More than the Freedom of Choice: Rethinking the Feminist Agenda in Postsocialism. In: Bluhm, K., Pickhan, G., Stypińska, J., Wierzcholska, A. (eds) Gender and Power in Eastern Europe. Societies and Political Orders in Transition. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53130-0_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53130-0_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-53129-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-53130-0
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)