1st Edition
The Routledge Handbook of Gender in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia
This Handbook is the key reference for contemporary historical and political approaches to gender in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Leading scholars examine the region’s highly diverse politics, histories, cultures, ethnicities, and religions, and how these structures intersect with gender alongside class, sexuality, coloniality, and racism. Comprising 51 chapters, the Handbook is divided into six thematic parts:
Part I Conceptual debates and methodological differences
Part II Feminist and women’s movements cooperating and colliding
Part III Constructions of gender in different ideologies
Part IV Lived experiences of individuals in different regimes
Part V The ambiguous postcommunist transitions
Part VI Postcommunist policy issues
With a focus on defining debates, the collection considers how the shared experiences, especially communism, affect political forces’ organization of gender through a broad variety of topics including feminisms, ideology, violence, independence, regime transition, and public policy.
It is a foundational collection that will become invaluable to scholars and students across a range of disciplines including Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Central-Eastern European and Eurasian Studies.
Part 1: Conceptual Debates and Methodological Differences
Introduction
Janet Elise Johnson, Katalin Fábián, and Mara Lazda
The Development of the Field
Chapter 1: Between Regional and Transnational Contexts
Maria Bucur
Chapter 2: Fluidity or Clean Breaks?
Joanna Regulska and Zofia Włodarczyk
Chapter 3: Neoliberal Intervention: Analyzing the Drakulić–Funk–Ghodsee Debates
Eva Maria Hinterhuber and Gesine Fuchs
Methodologies
Chapter 4: Legacies of the Cold War and the Future of Gender in Feminist Histories of Socialism
Anna Krylova
Chapter 5: The Case and Comparative Methods
Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom
Chapter 6: Quantitative and Experimental Methods
Olga A. Avdeyeva and Nellie Bohac
Epistemologies
Chapter 7: Postcoloniality in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia
Tatsiana Shchurko and Jennifer Suchland
Chapter 8: Post-Soviet Masculinities: Sex, Power, and the Vanishing Subject
Eliot Borenstein
Part 2 Feminist and Women’s Movements Cooperating and Colliding
Introduction
Katalin Fábián, Mara Lazda, and Janet Elise Johnson
Women’s Organizing under Empires
Chapter 9: Challenging Tradition and Crossing Borders: Women’s Activism and Literary Modernism in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy
Agatha Schwartz
Chapter 10: The First All-Russian Women’s Congress: "The Women’s Parliament"
Rochelle Goldberg Ruthchild
Socialist (Feminist) Interpretations
Chapter 11: The Russian Revolution and Women’s Liberation: Rethinking the Legacy of the Socialist Emancipation Project
Elena Gapova
Dissident Women and Feminisms
Chapter 12: Czechoslovak Feminisms during the Interwar Period
Iveta Jusová and Karla Huebner
Chapter 13: Women in Poland's Solidarity
Shana Penn
Postcommunist NGO Feminisms and Beyond
Chapter 14: From Soviet Feminism to the European Union: Transnational Women's Movements between East and West
Magdalena Grabowska
Chapter 15: Transnational Feminism and Women’s NGOs: The Case of the Network of East–West Women
Nanette Funk
Chapter 16: Contentions of Funding Gender Equality in Central-Eastern Europe
Jill Irvine
Chapter 17: Pussy Riot and FEMEN’s Global Trajectories in Law, Society, and Culture
Jessica Zychowicz and Nataliya Tchermalykh
Part 3 Constructions of Gender in Different Ideologies
Introduction
Mara Lazda, Janet Elise Johnson, and Katalin Fábián
Nationalism
Chapter 18: Nationalism and Sexuality in Central-Eastern Europe
Anita Kurimay
Chapter 19: Gender, Militarism, and the Modern Nation in Soviet and Russian cultures
Karen Petrone
Fascism
Chapter 20: Far-Right Expectations of Women in Central-Eastern Europe
Andrea Pető
Socialisms and Communisms
Chapter 21: Paradoxes of Gender in Soviet Communist Party Women's Sections (the Zhenotdel), 1918-1930
Elizabeth A. Wood
Chapter 22: Women’s Education, Entry to Paid Work, and Forced Unveiling in Soviet Central Asia
Yulia Gradskova
Chapter 23: "Gypsies"/Roma and the Politics of Reproduction in Post-Stalinist Central-Eastern Europe
Eszter Varsa
Chapter 24: Legalizing Queerness in Central-Eastern Europe
Judit Takács
Democracy
Chapter 25: Gender and the Democratic Paradox in Latvia
Daina S. Eglitis, Marita Zitmane, and Laura Ardava-Āboliņa
Chapter 26: Anti-Gender Mobilization and Right-Wing Populism
Agnieszka Graff
Part 4 Lived Experience of the Individual in Different Regimes
Introduction
Mara Lazda, Katalin Fábián, and Janet Elise Johnson
Empires and Monarchies
Chapter 27: Late Imperial Russia and Its Gendered Order in the Countryside
Christine D. Worobec
Chapter 28: Gendered Moral Panics in the Late Habsburg Monarchy: Prostitution, Sex Trafficking, and Venereal Disease
Nancy M. Wingfield
Independence
Chapter 29: The Promise of Gender Equality in Interwar Central-Eastern Europe
Melissa Feinberg
Nazism, Stalinism, and War
Chapter 30: Sexuality in the Holocaust
Anna Hájková
Chapter 31: Deportation and Gulag as Gendered Processes
Dovilė Budrytė
Socialisms and Communisms
Chapter 32: Yugoslav Gender Experiments and Soviet Influences
Ivan Simić
Chapter 33: Struggles to Reconcile Women's Wage Labor and Kitchen Labor in the German Democratic Republic
Alice Weinreb
Part 5 The Ambiguous Postcommunist Transitions
Introduction
Janet Elise Johnson, Mara Lazda, and Katalin Fábián
Democratic and Economic Changes
Chapter 34: Gender and the Ambiguities of Economic Transition in Romania
Jill Massino
Chapter 35: Democratization, Authoritarianism, and Gender in Russia
Andrea Chandler
Europeanization
Chapter 36: Europeanization and the Challenge of Gender Equality
Andrea Spehar
Chapter 37: The Europeanization and Politicization of LGBT Rights in Serbia
Koen Slootmaeckers
Migrations
Chapter 38: Russian-Speaking LGBTQ Communities in the West
Alexandra Novitskaya
Chapter 39: Postsocialist Migration and Intimacy
Alexia Bloch
Armed Conflict/Resolution
Chapter 40: The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the Development of Legal Frameworks on Violence against Women in Conflict
Belinda Cooper
Chapter 41: Gender, Conflict, and Social Change in Armenia and Azerbaijan
Sinéad Walsh
Part 6 Postcommunist Policy Issues
Introduction
Katalin Fábián, Janet Elise Johnson, and Mara Lazda
Political Leadership
Chapter 42: Women’s Representation in Politics
Sharon Wolchik and Cristina Chiva
Gender-based Violence
Chapter 43: Hybrid Regimes and Gender Violence Prevention Campaigns in Ukraine
Alexandra Hrycak
Chapter 44: Bride Kidnapping and Polygynous Marriages: Gendered Debates in Central Asia
Cynthia Werner
Chapter 45: Trafficked Women and Men to and from Russia
Lauren A. McCarthy
Reproductive Rights
Chapter 46: Assisted Reproduction: Poland in a Comparative Perspective
Elżbieta Korolczuk
Chapter 47: Abortion and Reproductive Health in Eurasia: Continuity and Change
Cynthia Buckley
Social Policy and Health
Chapter 48: Single Mothers, Family Change, and Normalized Gender Crisis in Russia
Jennifer Utrata
Chapter 49 Social Welfare and Family Policies in Central-Eastern European Countries
Dorota Szelewa
Chapter 50: Women’s Representation in Sports
Honorata Jakubowska
Chapter 51: Gender, Sexuality, and Disability in Postsocialist Central-Eastern Europe
Teodor Mladenov
Biography
Katalin Fábián is Professor of Government and Law at Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvaniam, USA. She edited Globalization: Perspectives from Central and Eastern Europe (2007) and served as the editor of the journal Canadian-American Slavic Studies that focused on the changing international relations of Central and Eastern Europe. Her book Contemporary Women’s Movements in Hungary: Globalization, Democracy, and Gender Equality (2009) analyzes the political significance of women’s activism in Hungary. She contributed chapters to and edited Domestic Violence in Postcommunist States: Local Activism, National Policies, and Global Forces (2010). With Ioana Vlad, she edited Democratization through Social Activism: Gender and Environmental Issues in Post-Communist Societies (2015). With Elżbieta Korolczuk, she edited and wrote chapters that appeared in Rebellious Parents: Parents’ Movements in Central-Eastern Europe and Russia (2017).
Janet Elise Johnson is Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, Bronx, USA. Her books include The Gender of Informal Politics (2018), Gender Violence in Russia (2009), and Living Gender after Communism (with Jean C. Robinson, 2007). In the last few years, she has published articles in Slavic Review, Human Rights Review, Journal of Social Policy Studies, Politics & Gender, Perspectives on Politics, Journal of Social Policy, and Aspasia: The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women's and Gender History as well as online in The New Yorker, The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage, and The Boston Review. From 2008–2019, she was one of the coordinators of the monthly workshop on Gender and Transformation: Women in Europe, at New York University.
Mara Lazda is Associate Professor of History at Bronx Community College, City University of Brooklyn, New York, USA. Her regional focus is on Latvia, with broader research interests on the intersections between gender, nationalism, and transnationalism in historical and contemporary contexts. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Baltic Studies, the International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, and Nationalities Papers. She has served as the President of the Association of Baltic Studies (2014–2016), a coordinator of the Gender and Transformation: Women in Europe workshop at New York University, and an editor for Aspasia: The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women's and Gender History.
"The Routledge Handbook of Gender in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia is an invaluable resource for understanding the sometimes-heated debates which have animated global conversations about postsocialist, postcolonial, and post-Cold War studies over the last three decades. Fabian, Johnson, and Lazda have expertly curated an excellent selection of interdisciplinary chapters from a wide variety of preeminent scholars whose work collectively challenges the epistemic hegemony of Western feminist perspectives. The essays included provide fascinating intersectional analyses of how gender interacts with race, class, ethnicity, nationalism, and other factors to organize polities, economies, and societies. This Handbook is a must read for all scholars and policy makers interested in gender issues in the region."
Kristen R. Ghodsee, Professor, Russian and East European Studies, University of Pennsylvania
"This timely and thorough reference collection is an essential guide to gender studies scholarship on postcommunist Europe and Eurasia. The editors gathered the highest caliber experts in the field to explicate the debates on gender in this diverse region, and to examine key topics, from methodology, to ideology, to intriguing empirical research on women’s organizing, everyday life, and gender-related policy before, during and after communist party rule. This engaging and comprehensive volume will be indispensable for anyone undertaking research on gender in the region, whether a novice or an advanced scholar long steeped in the subject. Rather than applying an "add women and stir" approach, the contributors examine the political, economic, social, cultural and legal systems that create and enforce gender norms, revealing the ineluctable centrality of gender to our understanding of politics."
Valerie Sperling, Professor of Political Science, Clark University, USA, author of Sex, Politics and Putin.
"What an extraordinary volume! At the time when the rights of women and the non-heteronormative people are under assault by the increasingly belligerent right-wing forces, a stellar cast of top researchers gives us a comprehensive overview of what needs to be known about gender in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Dozens of erudite chapters cover a lot of ground, ranging from useful reviews of theories, approaches and methods to illuminating historical studies and insightful dissections of cultural constructs and power constellations underpinning gender relations in these societies and elsewhere."
Jan Kubik, Professor, Department of Political Science, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA
"The handbook’s chapters can be used as a reliable source of information on specific research topics by a broad audience ranging from scholars to policymakers. Through its content and structure as well as the intersections between and among its 51 chapters, this volume is one of the best resources in the field of gender in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia."
Simona Mitroiu, Institute of Interdisciplinary Research, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași, Romania