Over the past two decades, there has been a resurgence of authoritarianism around the globe.Footnote 1 A third wave of autocratization – the declining quality of institutions for clean elections, freedom of expression, and freedom of assembly – stalled the global spread of democratic ideas and principles.Footnote 2 In 2023, the US nonprofit organization Freedom House registered the seventeenth consecutive year of the decline in state provision of political rights and civil liberties.Footnote 3 In particular, the quality of democracy came under assault in postcommunist Europe.Footnote 4 According to some estimates, more than two-thirds of the world’s population currently live in autocracies.Footnote 5 The persistence of “democratic regression” has far-reaching implications for the pursuit of political change and social justice by ordinary citizens.Footnote 6
A related global trend is an unprecedented frequency, scope, and size of anti-government protests.Footnote 7 Between 2009 and 2019, the incidence of mass protests annually increased, on average, by 11.5 percent worldwide.Footnote 8 Based on data from the Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes (NAVCO) project, Chenoweth concludes that the past decade saw the largest number of nonviolent campaigns since 1900.Footnote 9 Furthermore, there was a proliferation of urban revolutions, involving a high concentration of protesters in urban spaces and popular demands for political freedoms.Footnote 10 Using an original dataset of 345 revolutionary episodes from 1900 to 2014, Beissinger demonstrates that citizens extensively leveraged urban space to bring down autocrats.Footnote 11 Thousands of people in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) poured into the streets to oust long-serving incumbents and demand political change in 2010–2011.Footnote 12 Large-scale anti-government protests also erupted in Belarus, Chile, Hong Kong, Iran, Sudan, Turkey, and Ukraine, to name a few.Footnote 13
Women play a vital role in civil resistance to the entrenchment of authoritarianism,Footnote 14 which is closely intertwined with the persistence of patriarchal norms.Footnote 15 Across the Middle East, women rose against multiple forms of oppression during the Arab Spring.Footnote 16 Likewise, women in Iran joined the Green Movement during the 2009 presidential election and led the 2022 protests against the curtailment of freedoms, abject poverty, and colossal corruption in the country.Footnote 17 In Turkey, women protested against the government’s infringement on women’s rights.Footnote 18 Moreover, women in Ukraine played a significant role during the 2013–2014 Revolution of Dignity, also known as Euromaidan.Footnote 19 Women were also at the forefront of the 2019 revolution that brought down Omar al-Bashir’s thirty-year rule in Sudan.Footnote 20 In Belarus, women’s marches were a hallmark of mass mobilization against gross violations of democratic procedures during the 2020 presidential election and police brutality against participants in peaceful postelection protests.Footnote 21 Taken as a whole, women were actively involved in contemporary revolutions and pro-democracy movements that emerged in the aftermath of rigged elections or outside an electoral cycle.
Yet, women’s engagement in contentious politics often appears to be invisible in the public discourse. The marginalization of women activists derives, in part, from the media’s gendered portrayal of civil resistance, which tends to reinforce a gender-based division of labor within a protest movement. Moreover, the media spotlight often focuses on a handful of movement leaders, which further diminishes the visibility of many rank-and-file female activists. Prior research shows that many African American women who performed various roles comparable to those of African American men were “invisible, unsung heroes and leaders” of the US civil rights movement.Footnote 22 Despite significant advances in our knowledge about women’s movements in the US,Footnote 23 much less effort has been expended to uncover women’s involvement in broad-based pro-democracy movements and contemporary revolutions around the globe.Footnote 24 The book seeks to address this empirical gap in contentious politics literature. The empirical focus on women’s engagement in a revolution is informed by feminist standpoint theory, positing that our understanding of state–society relations is incomplete without a critical reflection on the experiences of marginalized groups, including women.Footnote 25 The book places women at the center of empirical analysis not just as participants in a revolution but also as storytellers.
Theoretically, the book contributes to contentious politics literature by proposing a typology of women’s participation in a revolution. This typology is summarized in Table 1.1. Based on women’s motivations for engagement, modes of women’s participation during a period of mass mobilization, and gender outcomes of revolution, the book distinguishes three models of participation: (1) patriarchal, (2) emancipatory, and (3) hybrid. Reinforcing preexisting patriarchal norms in society, the patriarchal model of women’s participation in a revolution assumes that motherhood is a key driver of women’s activism, women primarily perform “support tasks” during a revolution, and female revolutionaries retreat into the private sphere in the wake of mass mobilization. The emancipatory model, on the contrary, views feminism as a catalyst for women’s activism, assumes women’s access to formal positions of leadership within the movement, and anticipates considerable progress in gender equality in the postrevolutionary period. Located between these two extremes, the hybrid model encompasses a variety of motivations for women’s engagement in the revolution, underscores the diversity of women’s roles over the course of mass mobilization, and acknowledges various degrees of success in gender equality in different spheres. This study suggests that a hybrid model might better capture the diversity of women’s experiences during a twenty-first-century revolution.
Table 1.1 Typology of women’s participation in a revolution
An in-depth analysis of the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine provides a superb opportunity to examine various motivations for women’s involvement in a revolution, diverse domains of women’s engagement, and multifaceted outcomes of mass mobilization in a polity with fragile democratic institutions. Since the collapse of communism, the former Soviet republic located between the European Union, on the one hand, and the Russian Federation, on the other, experienced ebbs and flows in the provision of political rights and civil liberties.Footnote 26 In particular, rampant corruption hampered democratization processes and economic development.Footnote 27 Nevertheless, Ukrainians repeatedly took to the streets to subvert the entrenchment of authoritarian practices and reaffirm the country’s national independence.Footnote 28
An advantage of focusing on the Ukrainian revolution is that there is a trove of under-explored data on mass mobilization. Ukrainian historians meticulously documented citizens’ recollections of civil resistance through oral history projects. Furthermore, Ukrainian sociologists conducted on-site surveys of participants in Kyiv-based protests and fielded a nationally representative survey shortly after the conclusion of protest events. Local journalists also played an important role in chronicling civil resistance to the regime. Drawing on data from large-N surveys, oral history projects, and newspaper articles, the book traces multiple ways in which women participated in the revolution.
The remainder of this chapter elaborates on the study of women and revolutions, provides background information about the Revolution of Dignity and its participants, identifies the main trends in gender inequality in Ukrainian society, and describes data sources.
Women and Revolutions
In recent decades, there has been a growing body of interdisciplinary scholarship on women’s involvement in different types of revolutions.Footnote 29 To some extent, the mere presence of women in revolutionary movements is seen as an act of “gender-bending” (the contestation of dominant gender roles),Footnote 30 since the revolutionary struggle is traditionally seen as a man’s domain.Footnote 31 Nonetheless, growing literature suggests that many women sought to challenge the prevailing gender boundaries by assuming a wide range of roles in the revolutionary struggle. Research on eighteenth-century women’s history, for example, shows that women assumed multiple roles during the American Revolution, serving as nurses, soldiers, saboteurs, and spies.Footnote 32 Focusing on a more recent case of a social revolution, de Volo excavates data from primary documents, memoirs of rebel women, and US declassified material to demonstrate “women’s multiple forms of participation” in the Cuban Revolution (p. 6).Footnote 33 Another line of inquiry investigates the causes and consequences of women’s involvement in armed rebellions and guerrilla movements.Footnote 34 Henshaw, for example, analyzes patterns of women’s participation in over seventy rebel groups in the post-Cold War period.Footnote 35 Specifically, Loken identifies four dimensions of women’s involvement in noncombat labor in rebel organizations: logistics, outreach, governance, and community management.Footnote 36 Compared to armed insurgencies, nonviolent revolutions tend to provide a wider range of opportunities for women’s recruitment and participation.
The book proposes a typology of women’s participation in a revolution based on three dimensions: (1) women’s motivations for participation, (2) forms of their participation, and (3) gender outcomes of revolution. The selection of these criteria is informed by three main questions that animate scholarship on mass mobilization: Why do individuals join a revolution? How do individuals participate in a revolution? What are the outcomes of mass mobilization? In this section, I briefly discuss how the book speaks to these strands of research.
Women’s Mobilization
An influential argument in contentious politics literature is that the movement’s strength depends on the effective recruitment of activists and volunteers.Footnote 37 Specifically, women’s participation can bolster the movement’s viability, since women represent nearly half of the population in most societies. It is widely upheld that a sizable movement might raise the costs of repression and decrease the likelihood of the deployment of lethal force against movement participants.Footnote 38 Recent scholarship also shows that a cross-cutting coalition of social forces is a salient feature of contemporary revolutions in non-democracies.Footnote 39 Against this backdrop, it is crucial to understand why individuals with diverse backgrounds get involved in civil resistance at the risk of their lives.Footnote 40 An examination of factors associated with women’s participation in a revolution will enable scholars to provide a partial answer to this question.
The book makes an empirical contribution to contentious politics literature by demonstrating a wide range of women’s motivations for engagement in a contemporary revolution. In her influential article on women’s participation in the struggle against Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, Molyneux distinguishes between strategic gender interests aimed at achieving women’s emancipation and eliminating gender subordination and practical gender interests directed at tackling the immediate perceived needs of women.Footnote 41 This distinction is relevant to identify different models of women’s participation in a revolution. An egalitarian model of women’s participation in a revolution assumes that the development of feminist consciousness and the pursuit of strategic gender interests is a driving force behind women’s activism.Footnote 42 Meanwhile, in line with a patriarchal model of women’s participation in a revolution, maternal identity might serve as a powerful incentive for women’s activism.Footnote 43 In her analysis of women’s community work in low-income neighborhoods in New York City and Philadelphia, Naples develops the concept of activist mothering to encompass caretaking not only for biologically or legally related children but also for the community as a whole.Footnote 44 Thus, the politicization of motherhood “turns needs related to children into political demands and thus promotes political action.”Footnote 45 The hybrid model assumes that a myriad of social identities, including being a mother or a feminist, might provide a catalyst for women’s involvement in contentious politics. In line with a hybrid model, the book illustrates that a broad spectrum of motivations, including motherhood, civic duty, professional service, and solidarity with protesters, provides an incentive for women’s engagement in a contemporary revolution. These findings are consistent with Marian Rubchak’s astute observation that there are “many faces of women,” along with diverse conceptions of feminism, in Ukraine (p. 19).Footnote 46
Moreover, the book contributes to the literature about the impact of biographical availability on protest participation by uncovering conditions under which women might get involved in a revolution. In line with the biographical availability argument, parenthood imposes constraints on women’s engagement in revolutionary activity.Footnote 47 Data from oral history projects, however, reveal that many Ukrainian women with little children tried to carve out some free time for themselves by turning to their parents or friends as a source of tuition-free childcare. The likelihood of women’s physical presence on Maidan increased if grandparents temporarily assumed childcare responsibilities. Concurrently, many women tried to combine their childcare duties with their involvement in the protest movement by virtue of social media. These findings demonstrate how women might come up with creative solutions to overcome barriers to protest engagement.
In addition, the book speaks to a debate about the relative importance of various social ties by exploring women’s networks of contention.Footnote 48 Drawing on data from oral history projects, empirical analysis uncovers a wide range of social networks conducive to mass mobilization in a society with a rather underdeveloped party system and a low level of formal membership in civic organizations. Women were embedded in a wide range of mixed-gender social networks, including professional associations and community-based organizations. Additionally, data from oral history projects indicate that Facebook served as an important source of information about protest events in the mid-2010s. Specifically, individuals with weak offline social ties were more likely to get galvanized into action via social media. For others, friendship ties or professional networks were more influential.
Modes of Women’s Participation in a Revolution
Over the course of mass mobilization, women can perform stereotypically feminine, stereotypically masculine, or gender-neutral roles. In line with a patriarchal model of participation, women’s performance of “caretaking” tasks is traditionally seen as an extension of women’s roles within a household. Meanwhile, involvement in confrontational protest tactics is traditionally viewed as masculine. In line with an egalitarian model, women might break down dominant gender hierarchies by taking up stereotypically masculine roles. Additionally, some revolutionary activities might be less clearly demarcated as feminine or masculine and fall into the category of relatively gender-neutral roles. According to the hybrid model, women might adopt three different strategies: (1) acquiescence to a traditional gender-based division of labor, (2) appropriation of the masculine forms of resistance, and (3) switching from stereotypically feminine to stereotypically masculine roles or adoption of gender-neutral roles.
An empirical contribution of this book lies in identifying multiple domains of women’s activism. Data from oral history projects demonstrate that Ukrainian women coordinated an extensive network of volunteers, executed a wide range of crowdsourcing initiatives, disseminated information, offered pro bono legal aid and urgent medical care, produced art of resistance, and joined self-defense units. Consistent with resource mobilization theory,Footnote 49 women’s performance of these critical tasks sustained the encampment in the heart of Kyiv for nearly three months. In general, women’s engagement in a revolution can bolster the capacity of regime opponents to self-organize through their use of social, cultural, and economic capital.Footnote 50
In addition, a close analysis of women’s engagement in a contemporary revolution contributes to the literature on the interplay between gender and nonviolent action. Conventional wisdom holds that women are more prone than men to oppose the deployment of violence against their adversaries.Footnote 51 As a principled proponent of nonviolence, Mahatma Gandhi wrote in 1938, “Woman is more fitted than man to make exploration and take bolder action in ahimsa [nonviolence].”Footnote 52 Research, for example, shows that the suffragist women in the US fought for the right to vote, using such nonviolent methods as hunger strikes, pickets, and marches.Footnote 53 Similarly, women played a prominent role in peace movements and employed such nonviolent tactics as vigils and peace camps.Footnote 54 Women’s presence at protest events is often seen as a deterrent to violent clashes with the police. In line with this perspective, the book marshals empirical evidence for the argument that women’s participation in a political revolution fosters the use of nonviolent methods of resistance. Meanwhile, the book adds a caveat to this argument. The analysis of state–society relations during the last phase of the Revolution of Dignity reveals that female and male activists were inclined to accept the use of violent tactics when both sides assumed that they reached a point of no return.
Gender Outcomes
One of the main questions in the literature on women and revolutions is, How do women fare in the aftermath of revolutionary struggle?Footnote 55 Assuming the centrality of gender to state-building, economic development, and the construction of national identity, Moghadam singles out two types of revolution: the woman-in-the-family model “excludes or marginalizes women from definitions and constructions of independence, liberation, and liberty,” while the women’s emancipation model envisions women as “part of the productive forces and citizenry, to be mobilized for economic and political purposes” in the postrevolutionary period.Footnote 56 This book, however, proposes a tripartite typology of women’s participation in a revolution. Consistent with a patriarchal model of women’s participation in a revolution, women are expected to retreat into the private sphere in the aftermath of a revolution. In contrast, an egalitarian model assumes that women’s participation in a revolution will lead to the increasing visibility of women in domestic politics and the advancement of gender equality in the postrevolutionary period. Between these two extremes lies a hybrid model, signifying various degrees of women’s empowerment in different domains.
A detailed analysis of women’s status in the postrevolutionary period will extend our understanding of outcomes of mass mobilization in new democracies and non-democracies. Prolific research has gauged the impact of social movements on public policies and cultural norms in mature democracies.Footnote 57 A related strand of research has investigated the dynamics of democratic reforms and economic development in the aftermath of electoral revolutions in the post-Soviet region.Footnote 58 There is also growing literature on reforms and social change in Ukraine since Euromaidan.Footnote 59 This study focuses on the advancement of gender equality as an outcome of anti-regime mobilization. Specifically, the book traces patterns of women’s representation in government, participation in the labor market, and civic engagement, as well as changes in public policies and public opinion. Data from oral history projects further reveal the biographical consequences of women’s participation in a revolution. However, the analysis of gender outcomes is confounded by the temporal proximity of the revolution and the ensuing war. Russia’s military intervention began immediately after the conclusion of protest events in Kyiv and the ouster of the incumbent.Footnote 60 Still, based on insights from women’s narratives, it is clear that participation in the Revolution of Dignity served as a catalyst for women’s subsequent activism in multiple ways.Footnote 61
Contentious Politics in Eastern Europe
A detailed analysis of women’s participation in the Revolution of Dignity seeks to expand the scope of empirical research on contentious politics in Eastern Europe.Footnote 62 Despite a rich literature on social and political revolutions that swept across the region in the twentieth century, a great deal of historical research has yet to be done to unravel women’s engagement in those tumultuous events.Footnote 63 On the centennial of the 1917 Russian Revolution, for example, Ruthchild pointed out that “the voices of women arguing for citizenship, equality, respect, and civil rights are the often silenced or ignored sopranos and altos of Russia; without them Russian history is all bass and baritone” (p. 694).Footnote 64 Likewise, women’s activism has received relatively sparse attention in the literature on velvet revolutions and civil resistance under communism.Footnote 65 In her book Solidarity’s Secret: Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland, Penn challenges a male-centered narrative of resistance and shows how Polish women worked “tirelessly behind the scenes” and “carved out distinctive, influential roles” within the movement in the wake of the 1981 martial law.Footnote 66 Similarly, further research should be done to trace women’s engagement in twenty-first-century revolutions in Eastern Europe.
The book builds on existing literature on Euromaidan but departs from it by focusing on women’s participation in the revolution.Footnote 67 A growing body of research investigates the role of social media in facilitating civil resistance and affording new opportunities for activism.Footnote 68 Another line of inquiry has concentrated on the cultivation of offline social networks and citizens’ capacity to self-organize.Footnote 69 Channell-Justice, for example, meticulously traced how male and female left-wing activists demonstrated the capacity to self-organize despite attacks from far-right groups and the state.Footnote 70 Scholars also analyzed sociodemographic characteristics of participants in the Revolution of Dignity.Footnote 71 Several studies within this rich literature have examined women’s activism during Euromaidan.Footnote 72 Phillips, for example, scrutinizes the creation of women’s squads as a feminists’ response to their exclusion from the barricades.Footnote 73 Drawing on visual art, interviews, and other materials, Zychowicz documents a generation of artists and activists who debated the construction of feminism and considered art as a form of resistance in postcommunist Ukraine.Footnote 74 Unlike most prior publications, the book explores women’s activism in multiple domains critical to the resilience of the protest movement, including the coordination of an extensive volunteer network, the execution of crowdsourcing initiatives, the provision of food, legal aid, and medical services, the formation of self-defense units, the production of art, and the organization of educational activities and library services inside the encampment.
Furthermore, the book makes an empirical contribution to political science literature by enhancing public understanding of sources of Ukraine’s fierce resistance to Russia’s invasion. Following the fall of Viktor Yanukovych’s government, Russia annexed Crimea, a peninsula in the Black Sea, and provided military backing for rebel groups in eastern Ukraine.Footnote 75 As a result of Russia’s military intervention, over 14,000 people, including approximately 3,000 civilians, were killed in the conflict-affected areas between April 2014 and January 2022.Footnote 76 The scale and the severity of human casualties have dramatically risen with the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.Footnote 77 Numerous human rights reports and eyewitness accounts documented a high incidence of war crimes, including a systematic rape of women, rampant torture and extrajudicial executions of people in occupied territories, and the shelling of civilian infrastructure.Footnote 78 Yet, Ukrainian men and women are stoically fighting against the Russian armed forces, sharing the goal of living in a free, democratic society.
Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity
The definition of a revolution is vigorously debated in the literature, especially with the rise of nonviolent revolutions in urban settings.Footnote 79 Broadly construed, the concept of revolution denotes “a collective mobilization that attempts to quickly and forcibly overthrow an existing regime in order to transform political, economic, and symbolic relations.”Footnote 80 Here, the usage of the concept is not meant to suggest that a profound transformation in political institutions and economic structures actually occurred in the aftermath of mass mobilization. It should also be emphasized that contemporary revolutions differ from social (“great”) revolutions in several ways.Footnote 81 Twenty-first-century revolutions tend to be less violent, encompass a cross-class coalition, take place in urban areas, and have the regime, rather than the state, as a primary target.Footnote 82
The book considers the 2013–2014 mass mobilization in Ukraine as a case of a contemporary revolution. Consistent with a broad-based conceptualization of a twenty-first-century revolution, participants in the revolution represented a cross-cutting coalition of social forces united by their utmost dissatisfaction with the current regime.Footnote 83 According to various estimates, more than four million people, comprising approximately 10 percent of Ukraine’s adult population, joined anti-government protests across the country.Footnote 84 In addition, thousands of people provided in-kind support, donated money for protesters, and disseminated information through civic initiatives on social media.Footnote 85 Given a large concentration of protesters in the urban space and popular demands for political freedoms, the Revolution of Dignity falls into the category of what Beissinger defines as an “urban civic revolution.”Footnote 86
The main square in the center of Kyiv – Independence Square (Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or simply Maidan) – was the epicenter of a three-month-long confrontation between the ruling elite and ordinary citizens. It was a site of large protest rallies and an encampment during the Revolution of Dignity. The choice of Independence Square as a meeting place for regime opponents was not accidental. Over the past century, the square located within a short distance from major government buildings has been a major venue for mass gatherings and protests.Footnote 87 In particular, this urban space served as the main site of the 1990 student hunger strike, the 2000–2001 Ukraine without Kuchma movement, and the 2004 Orange Revolution. Moreover, given the political significance of this urban space, the ruling elite frequently renamed it to reaffirm the reconfiguration of power in a changing political landscape. Originally known as Khreshchatyk Square (Khreshchatytska Ploshcha), it was named Dumska (1878–1919) after the Russian Tsar Nicholas I abolished Kyiv’s Magdeburg Rights and Alexander II established a new system of local self-government, including the City Duma. Under the Soviet rule, the square was named Soviet (Radianska Ploshcha) and later Kalinin (Ploshcha Kalinina) after the Russian Bolshevik Mikhail Kalinin. In 1977, the square was renamed again to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution. For several years, the October Revolution Square (Ploshcha Zhovtnevoi revoluitsii) served as a site for military parades and demonstrations in support of the communist regime. Since the demise of the Soviet Union, the square became the most popular venue for mass protests against the ruling elite.
Another salient feature of the Ukrainian Revolution is that it exemplifies mass mobilization demanding the government’s recognition of human dignity.Footnote 88 Nowadays, the concept of dignity is widely seen as a critical element of international human rights law and an essential attribute of the democratic political system.Footnote 89 The idea of human dignity as an inherent, inviolable quality of every human being is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations, and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.Footnote 90 Drawing upon the human rights discourse, participants in the Indignados movement in Spain, the Occupy Wall Street in the US, and the 2011 Egyptian Revolution articulated their demands for the government’s respect of dignity.Footnote 91 As noted by Fukuyama, mass mobilization in the name of dignity represents “a large part of the political struggles of the contemporary world, from democratic revolutions to new social movements.”Footnote 92 A close examination of the Ukrainian Revolution sheds light on this global phenomenon and in particular unravels women’s claim-making within a heterogeneous pro-democracy movement.
The incumbent’s abrupt decision to abandon the idea of political association and economic integration with the EU sent shockwaves in Ukrainian society. At the Vilnius Summit in November 2013, President Yanukovych was expected to sign an Association Agreement with the EU, which would liberalize EU–Ukraine trade, introduce a visa-free travel regime for citizens of Ukraine, and spearhead a series of reforms in education, energy, environment, transportation, and other sectors of the economy.Footnote 93 In particular, Yanukovych punctured the hopes of many young people to witness Ukraine’s movement toward European integration.
The Ukrainian government reportedly declined to sign a treaty with the EU and changed its foreign policy orientation under the Kremlin’s pressure.Footnote 94 Since the demise of the Soviet Union, Russia has been trying to reassert its control over the former Soviet republics and install a revamped model of the Soviet Union, with the solo power center in Moscow.Footnote 95 Putin’s fixation on Ukraine was, in no small degree, driven by his fear of democratic tendencies in the neighboring country, which undermined his grip on power in the authoritarian regime.Footnote 96 As a part of Putin’s grand plan, Ukraine was supposed to join the Eurasian Economic Union, consisting of such corruption-ridden autocracies as Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.Footnote 97 Yet, despite the Kremlin’s information warfare,Footnote 98 the majority of Ukrainians rejected Russia’s model of political and socioeconomic development. In March 2013, for example, only 31 percent of the voting-age population and in particular 19 percent of eighteen–twenty nine-year-old Ukrainians favored a customs union with Russia.Footnote 99 Against this backdrop, Yanukovych’s policy shift upset many Ukrainians.
The revolution began with a Facebook post by Mustafa Nayyem, a thirty-two-year-old Ukrainian journalist of Afghani descent. “Come on guys, let’s be serious. If you really want to do something, don’t just “like” this post. Write that you are ready, and we can try to start something,” he wrote on November 21. Over 600 Facebook users made a comment within an hour of the original post, and Nayyem suggested meeting on Independence Square that night.Footnote 100 Hundreds of people filled the square. A group of university students and civic activists subsequently decided to occupy the urban space to demand the government’s commitment to European integration.Footnote 101 Ukrainian youth waved the national flag, consisting of two equally sized horizontal bands of blue and yellow, and chanted the slogan “Ukraine Is Europe.” The incumbent responded with a violent dispersal of youthful protesters at dawn on November 30.Footnote 102 Yet, police violence backfired.
A peaceful protest against the government’s reversal of Ukrainian foreign policy has rapidly evolved into a broad-based movement, demanding the incumbent’s resignation, respect for human dignity, eradication of corruption, and implementation of democratic reforms.Footnote 103 On December 1, 2013, between 100,000 and 350,000 people joined the March of Millions to denounce police violence and demand political freedoms.Footnote 104 “People felt that if they [police] had beaten students today, then they [police] would beat everyone tomorrow,” remarked Sviatoslav Shevchuk, Major Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC).Footnote 105 Many individuals who aspired to “change the world … change Ukraine” got involved in civil resistance.Footnote 106 As a result, the encampment on Maidan swelled in size, and protesters occupied a few adjacent buildings to provide shelter and medical services for revolutionaries.Footnote 107
The riot police made another attempt to clear the square on December 11, 2013. That night, the bells of St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Cathedral, originally built in 1108, rang the alarm for the first time in modern history since the city’s seizure by the Golden Horde in the thirteenth century.Footnote 108 In response, hundreds of Kyivites rushed to the protest site to prevent the police’s destruction of the encampment. Over time, protesters built more formidable barricades to protect themselves against a police assault.
Another escalation in state–society relations was triggered by the adoption of draconian anti-protest laws in January 2014. These laws introduced prison terms of up to fifteen years for the violation of public order, as well as criminal responsibility for the defamation of state officials and the distribution of the so-called extremist materials.Footnote 109 To decimate the protest movement, the riot police deployed tear gas, stun grenades, water cannons, rubber bullets, and live ammunition, which resulted in the deaths of nearly 100 civilians.Footnote 110 As a result of the shootings on February 20, 2014, alone, at least forty-eight protesters were killed and 200 people sustained injuries.Footnote 111 The slain revolutionaries became known as the Heavenly Hundred. Numerous eyewitness accounts testify that snipers deliberately aimed at protesters’ eyes or spines to physically maim Euromaidan participants, including journalists with flash cameras and nurses with a red cross on their clothes, and thus break their will to resist the regime.Footnote 112 In turn, some revolutionaries threw Molotov cocktails, while others burnt tires to create a smoke screen and hinder the advancement of the riot police.Footnote 113 Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was the bloodiest standoff between the incumbent government and regime opponents in Ukraine.
The Revolution of Dignity culminated in a parliamentary vote on February 22, 2014, declaring Yanukovych’s removal from office and scheduling snap elections for May 25, 2014.Footnote 114 When leaders of opposition political parties announced that the incumbent had agreed to hold early presidential elections in December 2014, most ordinary citizens rejected the terms of elite-led negotiations and threatened to oust the autocrat by force. On February 21, Volodymyr Parasiuk, a twenty-six-year-old commander of a self-defense unit (sotnik), climbed onto Maidan’s stage and articulated public disapproval of the politicians’ deal with the incumbent. “No Yanukovych is going to be a president for a whole year,” Parasiuk said. “Tomorrow, by 10:00 a.m., he must be gone!”Footnote 115 Out of concern for his personal safety, Yanukovych fled the capital city and found refuge in Russia, albeit he refused to accept the legitimacy of his removal from power. Meanwhile, the newly elected president Petro Poroshenko signed the Association Agreement with the EU, fulfilling one of the protesters’ demands.
A Portrait of Participants in the Revolution
Over the span of three months, thousands of Ukrainians participated in the Revolution of Dignity. Figure 1.1 displays the level of women’s and men’s participation in different types of activities. According to a nationally representative survey conducted in July 2014, 6 percent of men and nearly 3 percent of women joined anti-government protests in the capital city.Footnote 116 In addition, 6.4 percent of men, as well as 4.4 percent of women, were involved in protests outside Kyiv. Moreover, 9 percent of women and men provided in-kind support and donated money for the protest movement. Overall, the survey results show a high level of women’s and men’s engagement in civil resistance to the regime.
Figure 1.1 Women’s and men’s participation in the Revolution of Dignity.
Note: Percentages are displayed in the figure.
What is remarkable about this case of an urban revolution is that on-site surveys conducted by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation (DIF) and the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in downtown Kyiv enable scholars to explore cross-time patterns in protest participation.Footnote 117 Ukrainian sociologists distinguished three phases of mass mobilization: Student Maidan (November 21–30, 2013), with a high rate of student participation in protest events; Maidan Tabir (December 1, 2013–January 15, 2014) marked by the construction of barricades and the growth of the encampment on Maidan; and Maidan Sich (January 16, 2014–February 22, 2014), signifying an escalation in state violence and the radicalization of protest tactics. Consistent with this typology, survey respondents represented participants in peaceful protest rallies on December 7–8, 2013 (N = 1,037), inhabitants of the encampment on December 20, 2013 (N = 515), and defenders of barricades on February 3, 2014 (N = 502). Remarkably, 86.3 percent of Maidan participants stated in February 2014 that they were going to stay inside the encampment “as long as it takes” (skilku bude treba) to achieve the movement’s goals. Meanwhile, the survey results indicate that the share of women inside the encampment drastically dropped from 42.8 percent in early December 2013 to 11.8 percent in February 2014. Some women were turned away from the encampment in response to an escalation in police violence.Footnote 118 Yet, despite their physical absence from the Kyiv-based encampment, many women remained actively involved in the revolutionary movement.
As seen in Table 1.2, there were gender differences in the sociodemographic characteristics of participants in Kyiv-based protests. Women, on average, had a higher level of education than men. Furthermore, the share of female protesters with higher education remained quite stable over the course of anti-regime mobilization. In contrast, among men, the percentage of protesters with a university degree decreased more markedly with an increasing level of police violence. Despite the visibility of young people, especially university students, at the start of anti-government protests in November 2013, the survey results show that thirty–fifty four-year-old Ukrainians made up the plurality of participants in the Revolution of Dignity. Among women, the percentage of 18–29 protesters dropped from 42.8 percent in early December 2013 to 25.4 percent in February 2014, signifying the greater physical presence of middle-aged women in the epicenter of civil resistance. Among men, youth made up one-third of protesters throughout the period.
Table 1.2 Sociodemographic characteristics of Kyiv-based protesters
| Variable | Date of the survey | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| December 7–8, 2013 | December 20, 2013 | February 3, 2014 | ||||
| Women | Men | Women | Men | Women | Men | |
| Age | ||||||
| 18–29 | 42.8 | 34.2 | 39.0 | 33.3 | 25.4 | 34.4 |
| 30–54 | 41.5 | 54.3 | 46.8 | 53.0 | 55.9 | 55.9 |
| ≥55 | 15.7 | 11.5 | 14.3 | 13.7 | 18.6 | 9.7 |
| Education | ||||||
| Secondary/vocational | 11.7 | 30.0 | 26.3 | 41.0 | 22.4 | 45.8 |
| University student | 17.4 | 9.4 | 15.8 | 9.3 | 12.1 | 9.1 |
| Higher education | 70.4 | 59.4 | 53.9 | 47.8 | 65.5 | 40.3 |
| Language spoken at home | ||||||
| Ukrainian | 46.4 | 58.6 | 53.2 | 52.3 | 57.6 | 59.5 |
| Russian | 35.4 | 21.6 | 18.2 | 19.9 | 13.6 | 16.1 |
| Ukrainian and Russian | 17.0 | 19.5 | 28.6 | 27.4 | 28.8 | 23.6 |
| Kyiv resident | 65.6 | 37.5 | 67.5 | 17.4 | 24.1 | 10.8 |
| Membership in organizations | ||||||
| Political party | 2.0 | 5.5 | 15.6 | 14.8 | 15.3 | 6.8 |
| Civic organization | 2.9 | 3.9 | 3.9 | 9.8 | 10.2 | 8.1 |
| Number of respondents | 453 | 584 | 77 | 438 | 59 | 443 |
Note: Percentages are reported in the table. The three-wave survey Student Maidan (N = 1,037), Maidan Tabir (N = 515), and Maidan Sich (N = 502) was conducted by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation and the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.
Another statistically significant gender difference is related to the geographical origin of protesters. In early December 2013, one-third of female and two-thirds of male participants in Kyiv-based protests were non-Kyivites. By February 2014, 75.9 percent of female and 89.2 percent of male protesters on Maidan came from outside the capital city. Half of the protesters arrived in Kyiv from western Ukraine, 23 percent came from central Ukraine, and 21 percent were from eastern or southern parts of the country. Reflecting the linguistic situation in Ukrainian society,Footnote 119 59.3 percent of protesters mostly spoke Ukrainian at home, 15.8 mostly spoke Russian, and 28.8 percent used either Ukrainian or Russian in their interactions with family members.
A salient feature of the Revolution of Dignity is the development of horizontal social networks and citizens’ distrust in politicians of different stripes.Footnote 120 More than two-thirds of out-of-town protesters reported that they had traveled to Kyiv on their own, without any assistance on the part of a political party or a nonprofit organization. At that time, a lot of car owners offered free rides to Kyiv by making posts on social media. Only 2 percent of female and 5.5 percent of male participants in protest rallies on December 7–8, 2013, were members of a political party. By February 2014, the presence of protesters with a party affiliation rose to 15.3 percent among women and 6.8 percent among men. Likewise, 10.2 percent of female protesters and 8.1 percent of male protesters reported affiliation with a nonprofit organization during the revolution’s last phase. Apparently, opposition political parties played a minor role in mobilizing the population against the regime.Footnote 121
Additional data from the nationally representative survey Ukrainian Society – 2014: Social Monitoring conducted by the Institute of Sociology, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in collaboration with the Kyiv-based SOCIS Centre for Social and Marketing Research in July 2014 provide insights into patterns of protest participation in and outside the capital city (N = 1,800). Consistent with the results of on-site surveys, the analysis finds that the plurality of protesters was aged between thirty and fifty-four. The majority of protesters were Ukrainian-language speakers. Though a sizeable portion of participants in anti-government protests came from western Ukraine, the protest movement embodied people from different parts of the country.Footnote 122 In line with prior findings, the analysis finds that a minuscule fraction of protesters was affiliated with a political party or a civic organization. Compared to on-site surveys, however, the results of nationally representative surveys suggest that the proportion of protesters with a university degree was lower. As seen in Table 1.3, only one-third of participants in anti-government protests reportedly received higher education. Apart from educational attainment, opinion polls conducted during and shortly after mass protests sketch a similar portrait of a typical participant in the Revolution of Dignity.
Table 1.3 Participants in anti-government protests in and outside Kyiv
| Variable | Protests in Kyiv | Protests outside Kyiv | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Women | Men | Women | Men | |
| Age | ||||
| 18–29 | 25.0 | 39.6 | 13.6 | 25.5 |
| 30–54 | 42.9 | 45.8 | 61.4 | 49.0 |
| ≥55 | 32.1 | 14.6 | 25.0 | 25.5 |
| Education | ||||
| Secondary/vocational | 67.8 | 72.3 | 63.7 | 60.0 |
| Higher education | 32.2 | 23.4 | 28.9 | 32.0 |
| Language spoken at home | ||||
| Mostly Ukrainian | 50.0 | 64.6 | 65.9 | 76.5 |
| Mostly Russian | 14.3 | 14.6 | 11.4 | 7.8 |
| Ukrainian and Russian | 35.7 | 20.8 | 22.7 | 15.7 |
| Region | ||||
| West | 41.7 | 28.6 | 56.8 | 54.9 |
| Center | 50.0 | 57.1 | 13.6 | 29.4 |
| South | 8.3 | 10.7 | 20.5 | 13.7 |
| East | 0 | 3.6 | 9.1 | 2.0 |
| Membership in organizations | ||||
| Political party | 3.6 | 2.1 | 4.5 | 5.9 |
| Civic organization | 3.6 | 0 | 2.3 | 3.9 |
| Number of respondents | 28 | 48 | 44 | 51 |
Note: Percentages are reported in the table.
The results of binary logistic regression analysis, with participation in Kyiv-based protests as the dependent variable, are summarized in Table 1.4.Footnote 123 As shown in the table, gender had a significant impact on citizens’ engagement in anti-government protests in the capital city, controlling for a variety of variables. Women were less likely than men to participate in anti-government protests in Kyiv. Across the models, age had a significant impact on the odds of protest participation. Young people were twice as likely as persons aged between thirty and fifty-five to join anti-government protests. The results of multivariate analysis also suggest that Higher education and Income had weak effects on the odds of citizens’ involvement in the Revolution of Dignity. In addition, being married did not appear to affect the likelihood of protest engagement.Footnote 124 Concurrently, having a preschool child decreased the odds of participation in Kyiv-based protests by 73 percent.Footnote 125 The analysis also finds that Ukrainian-language speakers were almost twice as likely to get involved in protest activity in the capital city. As seen in Model 2, membership in political parties and civic organizations did not boost the likelihood of protest engagement. In contrast, trust in compatriots is positively associated with protest engagement.
Table 1.4 Gender and protest participation: multivariate analysis
| Variables | Model | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | |
| Gender (1 = female) | 0.512** | 0.513** | 0.516** |
| (0.137) | (0.138) | (0.139) | |
| Under 30 | 2.430*** | 2.460*** | 2.374*** |
| (0.760) | (0.770) | (0.750) | |
| Over 55 | 0.760 | 0.757 | 0.739 |
| (0.254) | (0.253) | (0.249) | |
| Higher education | 1.314 | 1.292 | 1.337 |
| (0.395) | (0.395) | (0.401) | |
| Income | 1.000 | 1.000 | 1.000 |
| (8.35e-05) | (8.36e-05) | (8.59e-05) | |
| Married | 1.051 | 1.063 | 1.017 |
| (0.297) | (0.301) | (0.288) | |
| Preschool child | 0.265*** | 0.265*** | 0.277** |
| (0.134) | (0.135) | (0.141) | |
| Ethnic Ukrainian | 1.469 | 1.480 | 1.508 |
| (0.826) | (0.836) | (0.864) | |
| Ukrainian language | 1.922** | 1.897** | 1.824** |
| (0.526) | (0.526) | (0.512) | |
| Party membership | 1.761 | ||
| (1.461) | |||
| Membership in civic organization | 1.359 | ||
| (1.594) | |||
| Trust in compatriots | 1.404** | ||
| (0.222) | |||
| Constant | 0.0250*** | 0.0244*** | 0.007*** |
| (0.017) | (0.016) | (0.007) | |
| Observations | 1,640 | 1,640 | 1,638 |
| Log likelihood | -268.4 | -268.1 | -265.4 |
| Pseudo R-square | 0.062 | 0.063 | 0.072 |
Note: Odds ratios are reported in the table, with robust standard errors in parentheses.
***p < 0.01, **p < 0.05, *p < 0.10.
This book focuses on female participants in anti-government protests held in the capital city because Kyiv’s Maidan was a prime site of the confrontation between the incumbent government and regime opponents. Methodologically, it is advantageous to focus on mass mobilization in one city to control for within-country variation in political conditions.Footnote 126 For example, the costs of participation in local protests were much higher in Donetsk, Yanukovych’s home base in eastern Ukraine, than in Lviv, a stronghold of Ukrainian culture, located on the western edge of the country. In part, the book highlights how women from different parts of the country joined forces to sustain anti-government protests in the capital city.
Gender Inequality in Ukrainian Society
Women, albeit comprising 53.8 percent of the country’s 45-million population, faced a great deal of gender discrimination in Ukrainian society in the early 2010s.Footnote 127 Global rankings suggest that the former Soviet republic lagged behind many European countries in terms of women’s empowerment. The 2013 Global Gender Gap Index, for example, ranked Ukraine 64th of 136 countries, indicating wider gender disparities in labor market participation and political representation in Ukraine than in Latvia (12th) and Lithuania (28th).Footnote 128 Similarly, Ukraine was ranked sixty-first of 149 countries on the 2013 Gender Inequality Index, scoring 0.326 on a scale from 0 to 1, with a higher value indicating a higher level of gender inequality.Footnote 129 A brief overview of the status of women in education, economy, and politics further illustrates the magnitude of gender inequality prior to the onset of anti-government protests in November 2013.
Women, on average, have a higher level of educational attainment than men in contemporary Ukraine. At the start of the 2013–2014 academic year, women made up 51.2 percent of all the students enrolled in institutions of higher education.Footnote 130 In the class of 2013, women comprised 51.3 percent of graduates with a bachelor’s degree, 54.4 percent of those with a specialist (five-year) degree, and 59.6 percent of those with a master’s degree.Footnote 131 Yet, despite women’s access to higher education, there remained a high degree of occupational segregation.Footnote 132 In the fall of 2013, for example, 96.7 percent of undergraduate students majoring in elementary education, as well as 90.1 percent of library science majors and 87.7 percent of philology majors, were women.Footnote 133 In contrast, women made up 23 percent of computer science, 57.4 percent of international law, and 60.2 percent of marketing majors. Gender differences in educational attainment affected women’s participation in the labor market.
In the past two decades, the gender wage gap in Ukraine has reduced, but it remained higher than the EU mean.Footnote 134 The average monthly wages were UAH 2,866 ($362) for women and UAH 3,711 ($469) for men in 2013, meaning that female full-time workers made seventy-seven cents for every dollar earned by men.Footnote 135 Gender disparities in wages were even larger in higher-paying sectors of the economy and, for example, stood at 66.7 percent in the financial and insurance sectors.Footnote 136 Access to a smaller pool of economic resources put women at a significant disadvantage in the political sphere.
Women were underrepresented in national and local legislatures.Footnote 137 The share of women in Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s national parliament, ranged from 2.9 percent in 1991 to 9.4 percent in 2012.Footnote 138 There is mixed empirical evidence regarding the effects of new electoral rules – the introduction of the proportional electoral system – on women’s representation in the national parliament.Footnote 139 Women edged out a slightly better representation in local governments.Footnote 140 Female candidates, for example, secured 12 percent of seats in provincial councils (oblasni rady) as a result of the 2010 local elections.
A myriad of structural and cultural factors impeded women’s representation in government.Footnote 141 First, the ruling elite tossed away the Soviet-era practice of allotting a certain proportion of parliamentary seats for women to maintain a façade of gender equality. Second, the collapse of communism created a fertile ground not only for the emergence of a multiparty political system but also for the rise of oligarchs with enormous political clout.Footnote 142 Oligarchs lobbied their business interests, in part, by financing fledgling political parties and placing their loyalists in positions of power. The costs of election campaigning were also on a steady rise. According to some estimates, it cost up to $5 million to win a race for a parliamentary seat in a single-member district in 2012.Footnote 143 Moreover, dominant cultural norms created enormous barriers to women’s empowerment.Footnote 144 Opinion polls showed that gender equality was not at the top of public agenda. When asked to identify the top five public policies that should be implemented by the national parliament, only 8 percent of voting-age Ukrainians in 2012 mentioned equal rights and opportunities for women and men.Footnote 145 Under these circumstances, Ukrainian women had to overcome a plethora of structural and cultural constraints to realize their political ambitions.
Women played an active role in the nongovernmental sector to tackle a broad spectrum of issues, including domestic violence, human trafficking, and gender equality. According to some estimates, there were over 700 women’s organizations in Ukraine in the early 2010s.Footnote 146 But few women’s organizations captured as much media attention as FEMEN. Since its emergence in 2008, FEMEN stirred up a storm by using topless body as a method of resistance to patriarchal norms in Ukraine and beyond.Footnote 147 Bare-breasted activists, for example, protested against prostitution and sex tourism during the Euro-2012 soccer championship cohosted by Poland and Ukraine.Footnote 148 Another group of women formed the Feminist Offensive (Feministychna Ofenzyva) in 2010 to advance the development of critical gender studies and advocate women’s empowerment through public events.Footnote 149 The Feminist Offensive, for example, organized marches on March 8 to reclaim the political significance of International Women’s Day and raise public awareness of women’s rights.Footnote 150
Overall, despite some progress in the education sector and the labor market, Ukrainian women fell far behind in terms of their political empowerment. Women held less than 15 percent of seats in the national parliament and oblast legislatures. Furthermore, women were typically denied high-level positions in government. Nonetheless, women en masse joined the 2013–2014 protests to reassert the country’s right to choose its own path of political development. Some of them seized an opportunity to raise a feminist voice at a critical juncture in Ukrainian modern history.
Data Sources
Using the case study approach, the book analyzes quantitative and qualitative data from multiple sources. The abovementioned on-site surveys conducted in December 2013 and February 2014 provide an empirical basis for sketching a portrait of participants in anti-government protests in the capital city. Furthermore, nationally representative surveys administered by the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in July 2014 allow for a comparison of protesters and non-protesters across different strata of the country’s population. To assess gender outcomes of the revolution, statistical data are retrieved from publications and online archives of the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, the Central Election Commission of Ukraine, Verkhovna Rada, other government agencies, and nongovernmental organizations. Qualitative data primarily come from oral history projects carried out by Ukrainian historians immediately upon the conclusion of protest events.
Oral history as a research method is best suited to uncover “hidden realities” and elucidate women’s perspectives on their engagement in a revolution.Footnote 151 Oral history helps us better understand women’s activism because it documents not only what women did but also how they felt about it.Footnote 152 In particular, data from in-depth interviews with female protesters offer valuable insights into diverse ways in which women engage in civil resistance.
The book leverages rich qualitative data from two oral history projects on the Revolution of Dignity. The oral history project “Maidan: Oral History” (Maidan: Usna istoriia) was administered by the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance (Ukrainskyi instytut natsionalnoi pamiati, UINP).Footnote 153 Between 2014 and 2017, a nationwide team of Ukrainian historians, coordinated by Tetiana Kovtunovych and Tetiana Pryvalko, interviewed over 1,000 Euromaidan participants across the country. Focusing on Kyiv as a key venue for revolutionary events, I retrieved raw data for a randomly selected subset of women who participated in civil resistance in the capital city.Footnote 154 The sample consisted of eighty five interviewees, ranging in age from eighteen to sixty-four in 2014, with a mean of 34.5. The youngest one was a freshman at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, one of the most prestigious Ukrainian universities. Born in 1950, the poets Mariia Makhovets (Volynska) and Olha Strashenko were the oldest respondents. Most interviewees received a university degree or were enrolled in an institution of higher education. Approximately one-third of the interviewees presented themselves as Kyiv-born residents (korinna kyianka). More than half of the interviewees lived in Kyiv at the start of anti-government protests. Others came to the capital city during the Revolution of Dignity with the intent to sustain civil resistance. The interviewed women performed a wide range of roles, including crowdsourcing, food provision, hospital guard, legal aid, public relations, shield painting, street actions, and urgent medical care. Approximately half of the interviews (N = 46) were conducted in 2014, and twenty-nine interviews were completed in 2015. Eight women were interviewed in 2016, and only one interview in the sample dates back to 2017.Footnote 155 A list of eighty-five female interviewees, including their place of birth and their age in 2014, is provided in Appendix 1.Footnote 156
Most interviews were transcribed by a professional Ukraine-born transcriber. A compilation of transcripts with thirty-two female interviewees was published in two UINP books. The first book, Maidan vid pershoi osoby: 45 istorii Revoliutsii hidnosti [Maidan from the first person: forty-five stories of the Revolution of Dignity], showcased the occupational diversity of participants in the revolution, ranging from university students and journalists to clergy and entrepreneurs. Of forty-five interviewees featured in the book, ten were women.Footnote 157 The second book, Maidan vid pershoi osoby: Mystetsvo na barykadakh [Maidan from the first person: Art on the barricades] featured thirty-six artists, poets, and musicians, including twelve women.Footnote 158
Another oral history project, titled “Maidan. Testimonies” (Maidan. Svidchennia), was implemented by the Center for the Studies of History and Culture of East European Jewry at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (NaUKMA). The project was coordinated by Leonid Finberg, distinguished professor of Jewish Studies and the Center’s director, and Anna Prokhorova, senior lecturer in sociology and the Center’s deputy director. Between late February and July 2014, a team of researchers conducted in-depth interviews with 300 participants in the revolution.Footnote 159 The quota sampling was employed to reflect the sociodemographic diversity of protesters. Interviews were conducted in Russian or Ukrainian (depending upon the interviewee’s language preference) and transcribed in the original language. One of the main outputs from this oral history project was the 784-page long book, Maidan. Svidchennia. Kyiv, 2013–2014 roky [Maidan. Testimonies. Kyiv, 2013–2014].Footnote 160 This compilation of transcripts with 147 protesters, including sixty women, provides a trove of qualitative data on protest participation.Footnote 161 Female interviewees ranged in age from sixteen to seventy, with a mean of 34.6. The youngest respondent was a high-school student during the protest events. Almost half of the respondents self-identified as natives of Kyiv. Others moved to the capital city from all over the country, including Dnipro, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kharkiv, and Lviv. Most interviewees either had higher education or were university students. Many participants in the oral history project were employed in the healthcare sector or the media sector. The interviewed women were responsible for art production, food distribution, legal aid, medical assistance, organization of street actions, public relations, patrol of the encampment, religious services, and transportation of the wounded. A list of female respondents whose interviews were transcribed in the original language (Ukrainian or Russian) and published in the abovementioned book in 2016 is provided in Appendix 2. All the translations of transcribed interviews from Ukrainian or Russian are my own.
An Overview of the Book
The book is divided into six chapters. Following the introductory chapter, the book places women’s engagement in the Revolution of Dignity in the context of women’s activism over the past century. Chapter 2 examines women’s participation in three revolutions that had far-reaching repercussions for Ukraine’s political development. The 1917 February Revolution ended the Romanov dynasty’s rule over the Russian Empire and opened up an opportunity for the establishment of the Ukrainian National Republic.Footnote 162 The 1990 student hunger strike, also known as the Revolution on Granite, exposed the diminishing legitimacy of the communist regime and presaged Ukraine’s exit from the Soviet Union the next year.Footnote 163 The 2004 Orange Revolution was triggered by gross violations of democratic procedures during national elections and culminated in an unprecedented rerun of the second round of the presidential election, signifying the victory of pro-democracy forces.Footnote 164 Although women were involved in these tumultuous events, women’s stories of resistance tend to be marginalized in Western historiography on the topic. The chapter aims to address this oversight and trace continuities or ruptures in Ukrainian women’s activism over the past century.
Chapters 3–5 illustrate the applicability of a hybrid model to the case of women’s participation in Ukraine’s Euromaidan. Chapter 3 uncovers a myriad of women’s motivations for participation in the revolution. In addition, data from oral history projects show that a variety of social networks, including family ties, professional associations, and community-based organizations, galvanized women into action. Chapter 4 demonstrates that women performed a broad spectrum of roles to sustain civil resistance under precarious political conditions. Additionally, the chapter chronicles how women’s multifaceted participation expanded the resisters’ access to a considerable pool of material and nonmaterial resources. Chapter 5 traces the political, socioeconomic, and cultural outcomes of the revolution, with a focus on women. The analysis begins with an assessment of women’s representation in government and describes women’s bids for the presidency. Next, the chapter analyzes patterns of women’s participation in the labor market. Moreover, the chapter examines how women contested gender hierarchies in the armed forces during the early phases of the Russia–Ukraine war (2014–2021). Finally, the chapter analyzes public opinion on women’s role in society in the post-2013 period. Overall, the analysis registers some variation in the degree of gender equality in different domains.
The concluding chapter underscores the book’s contribution to contentious politics literature and elaborates on the implications of the main findings for the study of contemporary urban revolutions. The chapter brings up the cases of the 2013 Gezi Park uprising in Turkey and the 2020 electoral revolution in Belarus to elucidate various forms of women’s engagement in civil resistance. The Turkish government’s infringement on women’s rights ignited women’s involvement in anti-government protests and fueled their demands for gender equality. In particular, young college-educated women with a feminist agenda actively participated in the 2014 uprising.Footnote 165 Additionally, middle-aged women responded to the government’s call to bring their rebellious children home by forming human chains around the encampment and protecting youngsters against police violence.Footnote 166 Meanwhile, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya positioned herself as a loving wife and a caring mother who ran for the presidency in the aftermath of her spouse’s imprisonment on the promise to create more favorable conditions for the conduct of free and fair elections and subsequently resign from the post.Footnote 167 Nonetheless, despite the invocation of maternalist frames and a high level of state repression, many Belarusian women subverted patriarchal stereotypes and reasserted their agency.Footnote 168 A cursory look at women’s activism in Turkey and Belarus reveals the diversity of women’s voices within a protest movement.
In addition, the concluding chapter suggests that an in-depth analysis of women’s activism during Euromaidan enhances our understanding of women’s multifaceted engagement in the Russia–Ukraine war. Since 2014, Ukrainian women have been fighting for national independence on the frontlines, the home front, and abroad. At the time of this writing, thousands of Ukrainian women serve in the armed forces to defend the country’s territorial integrity and protect the Ukrainian nation against Russia’s aggression. Women’s struggle for democracy and gender equality is far from over in today’s world so the book might inform women’s ongoing efforts to have a say in domestic politics in Eastern Europe and beyond.
