She also stated that entry points for woman activists striving to make change should start at the community based levels and that involving the day to day people will build better awareness. Martsenyuk stressed that certain words common to promoting women’s rights, such as “gender” and “feminist,” are politically poisonous in Ukraine. Ukrainians are supportive of the principle of equality for women as long as specific legislation or policy is framed without feminist terms.

When she told Amir she wanted to leave and find a different job, he threatened her. “There are so many vulnerable people who survive in desperate situations on http://thegirlcanwrite.net and do not get any help,” one NGO worker who does not wish to be identified told The Times of Israel. The alleged rape happened at night, after weeks of lewd remarks, hints and overt suggestions of sex. A few months after arriving, she said, she was raped by the man who wrote the letter of invitation that had gotten her out of the war zone.

• Ukraine’s women soldiers are also often in the news, talking about their military experiences.
• Mamo pracuj’s ambition is to provide Ukrainian women with multi-faceted support, from legal advice to psychosocial assistance.
• While exploitative individuals are not new, “the real problem is the policy,” says lawyer Anat Ben-Dor, clinical instructor at the Refugee Rights Clinic at Tel Aviv University.
• Like her colleagues “Phoenix” and “Oksana” , Sultan distinguished herself as a volunteer soldier in territorial defence units.

There have been more woman-led parties in Ukraine and even a few “woman issue” parties (analyst’s have described these as “virtual parties designed to steal votes from opposition parties”). The NELLE 2023 special edition features a folio of writing by Ukrainian women and their translators and is co-edited by poet Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach. The cover image, by artist Olga Morozova of Kyiv, depicts a city park dug up by trenches close to the artist’s home. ‘Employers often expect domestic workers to be available 24 hours, seven days a week. The money we get cash in hand is little more than a minimum wage, but the majority are hired without any contracts at all,’ she said. Poberezhnyk, who originally comes from Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine, has been working as a nanny for two decades.

Prisoner swap with Russia sees 108 Ukrainian women released

A politically weak Ukraine, with high levels of corruption, will be prey to future attacks and the West may hesitate to continue to support its independence. Ukrainians are already looking to a future free of Russian interference. Political leaders are calling for international support to finance the reconstruction of the country – a cost estimated at between $350 billion and $750 billion and rising. Oleksandra Matviichuk, a human rights lawyer, is the director of Kyiv’s Centre for Civil Liberties, which shared the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize.

In families where both parents are serving in the armed forces, parental leave is no longer the exclusive preserve of mothers. According to Ukraine’s deputy minister of defence, Hanna Maliar, by the summer of 2022 more than 50,000 women were employed by the armed forces in some capacity, with approximately 38,000 serving in uniform.

Ukraine’s need for women in war conflicts with nation’s gender norms, VCU professor’s new research finds

As of 2014, when Russia invaded Crimea, women were still barred from combat roles. It wasn’t until 2018 that female soldiers were finally given the same status as men — and, according to Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, women now account for close to a one-fifth of Ukraine’s armed forces. Unlike men of conscription age, Ukrainian women are not barred from leaving the country. An initiative to extend the draft to women working in critical professions was due to be enacted last October, but it was postponed amid popular outcry.

Health

Many Ukrainian female combatants mention in interviews with journalists that they must avoid captivity by any means and that they are ready to die rather than being captured by the Russians. One indication of the recognition of women’s presence in the military and society’s rating of their contributions was when National Defenders’ Day was renamed in 2021 as the Day of Men and Women Defenders of Ukraine. Only a handful of cases of using services from trafficking victims get prosecuted. I’m happy for the family and overjoyed that they will be reunited,” Kuleba wrote in a Facebook post on Monday. “Mothers and daughters were in captivity and their relatives were waiting for them,” he wrote, adding that 12 civilians were among the women freed. Thirty-seven women who had been captured after Russian forces took over Mariupol’s besieged steel plant in May were also released.

The Ukrainian military has tried to adopt more equal policies, but those have faced pushback from Ukrainian society, which largely sees women’s place in society as guardians of the home and family. This past year, I’ve been focused on how the human cost of the war has been felt unevenly, as Iwrote in the Washington Postlast March. Part of why the human cost is uneven is due to Ukrainian military policy decisions.