Living Gender After Communism

by Johnson, Janet Elise; Robinson, Jean C.

• ISBN13: 9780253348128
• ISBN10: 0253348129
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-01-01
• Publisher: Indiana Univ Pr

Summary

How has the collapse of communism across Europe and Eurasia changed gender? In addition to acknowledging the huge costs that fell heavily on women, Living Gender after Communism suggests that moving away from communism in Europe and Eurasia has provided an opportunity for gender to multiply, from varieties of neo-traditionalism to feminisms, from overt negotiation of femininity to denials of gender. This development, in turn, has enabled some women in the region to construct their own gendered identities for their own political, economic, or social purposes. Beginning with an understanding of gender as both a society-wide institution that regulates people's lives and a cultural "toolkit" which individuals and groups may use to subvert or "transvalue" the sex/gender system, the contributors to this volume provide detailed case studies from Belarus, Bosnia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine. This collaboration between young scholars-most from postcommunist states-and experts in the fields of gender studies and postcommunism combines intimate knowledge of the area with sophisticated gender analysis to examine just how much gender realities have shifted in the region.Contributors are Anna Brzozowska, Karen Dawisha, Nanette Funk, Ewa Grigar, Azra Hromadzic, Janet Elise Johnson,Anne-Marie Kramer, Tania Rands Lyon, Jean C. Robinson, Iulia Shevchenko, Svitlana Taraban, and Shannon Woodcock.Janet Elise Johnson is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College, City University of New York.Jean C. Robinson is Professor of Political Science at Indiana University.Russia & Eastern Europe, Political Science, Gender

Author Biography

Janet Elise Johnson is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College, City University of New York.

Jean C. Robinson is Professor of Political Science at Indiana University. She is co-editor of Women and Social Policy: From Local to Global, a special issue of NWSA Journal.

Table of Contents

Foreword	vii
Karen Dawisha
Acknowledgments	xi
Living Gender	1	(24)
Janet Elise Johnson
Jean C. Robinson
I. NEGOTIATING GENDER
Housewife Fantasies, Family Realities in the New Russia	25	(15)
Tania Rands Lyon
Contesting Violence, Contesting Gender: Crisis Centers Encountering Local Governments in Barnaul, Russia	40	(23)
Janet Elise Johnson
II. DENYING GENDER
The Abortion Debate in Poland: Opinion Polls, Ideological Politics, Citizenship, and the Erasure of Gender as a Category of Analysis	63	(17)
Anne-Marie Kramer
The Gendered Body as Raw Material for Women Artists of Central Eastern Europe after Communism	80	(25)
Ewa Grigar
III. TRADITIONALIZING GENDER
Birthday Girls, Russian Dolls, and Others: Internet Bride as the Emerging Global Identity of Post-Soviet Women	105	(23)
Svitlana Taraban
Does the Gender of MPs Matter in Postcommunist Politics? The Case of the Russian Duma, 1995--2001	128	(21)
Iulia Shevchenko
IV. NEGOTIATING GENDER WITHIN NATIONALISMS
Romanian Women's Discourses of Sexual Violence: Othered Ethnicities, Gendering Spaces	149	(20)
Shannon Woodcock
Challenging the Discourse of Bosnian War Rapes	169	(16)
Azra Hromadzic
Deficient Belarus? Insidious Gender Binaries and Hyper-feminized Nationality	185	(18)
Anna Brzozowska
Fifteen Years of the East-West Women's Dialogue	203	(24)
Nanette Funk
Works Cited	227	(24)
List of Contributors	251	(4)
Index	255