The place of honor on the wall of my study is occupied by a painting called Three Sisters, which I was given in 1993 when the Woman’s Community of Ukraine decided to name me their First Knight. It is not only a thing of beauty but a perpetual reminder that the problems of the fair sex that constitutes the majority of our species can never be relegated to the background. As the product of a society where feminism became the fashion three decades ago, I am constantly reminded that Ukraine lags far behind more advanced countries in dealing with women’s issues. Of course, feminism in its pure form has never had much success in winning over most women in any society, but in when it comes to practical issues like equal pay for equal work, equal opportunity, and equal respect, every fair-minded individual has to become something of a feminist.
Women will always be somewhat underrepresented in some aspects of life, if only because women alone have the burden and privilege of childbirth. Those who decide to become mothers simply have to take some time off from their careers, and some women will always choose the rewards of home and hearth over those of career and worldly fame. In last Friday’s interview Valentyna Dovzhenko, chairperson of Ukraine’s State Committee on Family and Youth Issues, cited the internationally accepted benchmark figure of 30% as a minimum target for women in governmental bodies, and that would seem to be the most reasonable minimum, which Ukraine still has a long way to reach. In short, she eloquently and rightly argued that if Ukraine wants to join the civilized world, women’s issues are one area in which it will have to make a much greater concerted effort.
In Ukraine the issue is less one of working women than one of the jobs those women are allowed to occupy. As a rule, if one goes to, say, a public school or health care facility, most of the workers will be women and most of those in charge will be male. Most university students are female but most of the intellectual and professional leaders tend to be male. In America, this phenomenon has been called the glass ceiling, an invisible barrier which most women find it impossible to surmount. Since there is no evidence that men are any better in such fields than women, the issue becomes not only one of justice but of society denying as a whole talents it could otherwise more fully utilize to the benefit of all.
The even uglier side of the problem, that of battered women and the appalling state of their health also remains largely outside the public consciousness. In 1996, the United Nations Ukrainian Health Initiative sponsored a poll on the health of women and children in Ukraine that showed that poverty keeps all too many from having a decent diet and makes them afraid to have as many children as they would like.
Saying these things is one thing, and actually doing something about it is something quite different. There are all sorts of things that clearly ought to be done but are not because they are not in the interests of those in a position to take the needed actions. To put it bluntly, the status of women will improve not because the state decides to do something, but because an influential support group forces the state to take action. Unfortunately, even a knight cannot save the women of Ukraine. That will require a movement capable of mobilizing the support of women as a whole by catering to their real needs for equal opportunity, equal pay for equal work, child care, protection from sexual harassment and physical abuse, as well as demonstrating an ability to really accomplish something to raise the consciousness of Ukrainian society as a whole to an issue that affects not only the majority, but of all citizens of both genders.
