The political and economic transitions in the former Soviet bloc ushered in momentous change, some welcome, some not. Alongside political and civil rights, citizens (ostensibly) enjoy expanded educational, professional, and travel opportunities. At the same time, cuts in state entitlements and rising unemployment have produced new inequalities and increased poverty rates, especially among women, minorities, and marginalized groups. The process has also given rise to new forms of exploitation and discrimination, as well as efforts, in some countries, to return to a more conservative gender order. Gendering Postsocialism explores the continuities, ruptures, and ambiguities of transition in eastern Europe and Eurasia, analyzing the nexus between gender and postsocialist citizenship, governance, and marketization. Of particular concern are everyday experiences, because “In the turbulence of competing, postsocialist winds of change—socioeconomic liberalisation, political transformation, and an ideological clash of values—it is worth remembering that the lives of real women and men are impacted” (xv).
Composed of thirteen chapters by scholars primarily from the region, the book is organized around four major themes: “New gendered geographies”; “Neoliberal governance and the gendered enterprising self”; “Resilient legacies of state socialism”; and “Postsocialist societies between marketisation, democratization, and retraditionalisation.” As employed in the volume, “postsocialism” is both a spatial and temporal marker—and also ideally suited to underscoring continuities between the pre and post-1989/91. By examining how the inequalities, hierarchies, and uncertainties associated with marketization shape the lived realities, practices, and expectations of ordinary people, the chapters challenge triumphalist discourses that emerged after socialism's collapse. Accordingly, the emancipating effects of postsocialism have been unevenly felt, and are a function of gender, among other identifiers such as class, educational level, ethnicity, and religion.
The chapters incorporate quantitative and qualitative sources including statistics, surveys, interviews, internet posts, and travelogues, and cover a range of topics, including elderly care work in Russia, failed masculinities in Lithuania, promoting conservative gender norms in Poland, and combatting social exclusion of Roma women in Hungary. Collectively, they analyze how politics, institutions, the market, individual memories, and cultural ideals about gender, from longstanding and locally specific ones to newer, globally-inflected ones, shape discourses about women and men as well as their everyday lives.
The transition to marketization affected the nature of employment and the employee. Accordingly, postsocialist workers, particularly in the private sector, are expected to be flexible and mobile. These expectations, combined with lack of job opportunities and the opening of borders, have led to a proliferation of migrant workers. Noriko Igarashi explores this phenomenon from the perspective of the Central Asian sidelka (part and full-time care worker) who migrates to Russia to care for elderly individuals. These sidelkas, some of whom are well-educated and have families of their own, are motivated by various factors from low wages in their home country to the need to save for a wedding or major household purchase. Meanwhile, demand for sidelkas is necessitated by the rudimentary care regime in Russia. While some sidelks are employed by the state, most are hired through private companies or unofficially by individuals who are unable to care for elderly parents, yet ineligible for state subsidies under the Russian family code. As in other parts of the world, sidelki are part of the “global care chain”—the product of neoliberal economics and policymaking.
While some women migrate out of economic need, others do so for enhanced opportunity. According to Yulia Mikhailkova, who draws on the travelogues of two Russian hostesses formerly employed at Japanese nightclubs, migration can be an enterprising endeavor, facilitating independence, empowerment, and educational advancement. Exploiting the patriarchal system for personal gain, these women, Mikhailkova argues, reconfigured the (seemingly) demeaning work of hostessing into a catalyst for academic and professional achievement.
While the collapse of state socialism ushered in great change, continuities remain, particularly women's challenges in reconciling work and family responsibilities. According to Olena Sterlnyk, in Ukraine these responsibilities have increased with the advent of neoliberal notions of “good motherhood,” which are predicated on the combined role of educator, teacher, family manager, and successful professional. While motherhood assumed a sacrificial component prior to 1991, the current maternal ideal is based on an indulgent form of parenting, in which the state no longer plays a supportive role as they had under socialism. The consequence, at least for Sterlnyk's female interlocuters, is exhaustion and time poverty.
An ethos of self-sacrifice also figures prominently in the life stories of older Czech women. Radmila Švaríčková Slabáková argues that despite enjoying full legal equality with men, the women she interviewed experienced social marginalization, unhappy marriages, and, in some cases, physical abuse by their husbands. Ascribing to essentialized and conservative notions of gender, the women accepted their fates as natural, presenting their ability to suffer in silence as signs of courage and moral strength.
Essentialized notions of gender also influence perspectives on women's education. Valéria Szekers explores how traditional gender norms, including among parents, teachers, and policymakers often deter women from enrolling in technical higher education in Hungary. Those who do enroll face stereotypes regarding women's intellectual capabilities and, at times, rude treatment by male colleagues. Despite these obstacles, women's presence in technical fields in Hungary has, paradoxically, increased since 1989 due to high demand for trained electrical and mechanical engineers and IT professionals.
With cuts in social entitlements throughout the region, NGOs have increasingly assumed the role of service provider. Ildikó Asztalos Morell examines how a women's NGO works to empower Roma women in rural Hungary, who, due to youthful pregnancy, joblessness, and state marginalization, experience the greatest social exclusion. In collaboration with municipalities, the NGO facilitates women's (re) integration into the labor force through training programs, supervises reciprocal assistance initiatives, and engages individuals in public works projects. Additionally, it promotes cooperation and community-building between Roma and non-Roma. Through these initiatives the NGO challenges prevailing discourses that stigmatize Roma as deviant, dependent, and untrustworthy citizens.
Meanwhile, Sanela Bajramović Jusufbegović examines collaborations between a Swedish development NGO and two Bosnian women's organizations between 1993–2013. Drawing on interviews and organizational reports, Jusufbegović argues that Cold War-inflected conceptualizations prevented Swedish feminists from recognizing the feminist competencies the Bosnian activists had developed under socialism. Although the latter accepted this “hierarchical sisterhood” for the purpose of achieving a common goal—and even claimed to have gained essential knowledge about gender equality from the Swedish activists—they also pushed back against the notion they were “lagging behind.”
While most chapters explore women, two focus specifically on men and masculinity. Arturus Tereškinas analyzes the relationship between neoliberalism and manhood in Lithuania, focusing on three categories of men: “men of toxic normativity”—enterprising and rational family men; “impasse men”—illegally and/or temporarily employed men who define themselves through consumption; and “the precariat,” the silent losers of transition. Tereškinas interprets impasse men's flouting of socially accepted masculinity as a form of resistance to the neoliberal ethos. While a provocative interpretation, one wonders if these acts are also a defense mechanism and/or rooted in aversion to work.
While some men resist hegemonic masculinity, others mobilize it in the hopes of returning to a traditional gender order. Renata Ingbrandt examines how hyper masculinity, combined with Polish patriotism, homophobia, Catholicism, and the idealization of the Matka Polka has contributed to a conservative backlash in Poland. She locates the onset of this process in the 1980s with the increasing influence of Solidarity and the Catholic Church in politics, demonstrating how it has undermined reproductive freedom, as well as discourses surrounding abortion. At the same time, Ingbrandt charts mass resistance against these efforts, beginning with the Black Monday protests in 2015.
In addition to these essays, Li Bennich-Bjorkman examines elite perceptions of female empowerment in Georgia, comparing it with Armenia; Yulia Gradskova explores, the gendering of housing in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia; and Kuanysh Tastanbekova compares girls’ secondary, tertiary, and vocational schooling in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
The thematic and geographical breadth of this volume is both its strength and weakness. While the chapters illuminate how the state, market, and social and cultural practices shape discourses about gender and women's and men's daily lives in various countries in eastern Europe and Eurasia, topics are too varied to enable productive comparison. Organizing the volume around a specific theme (employment, the family, reproduction) might have yielded a more cohesive collection. That said, the book does achieve its primary aim, namely to uncover “the problems, contradictions, and conflicts of changes that otherwise are not always visible to researchers” (6-7) and offers valuable insight into women's and men's daily lives in the former Soviet Bloc. As such, it provides a solid foundation upon which subsequent scholars can build. Written in accessible prose, the book will be of use to graduate and undergraduate students, as well as scholars of gender and transition.
