Women's Voices Rising

Vera and I spent a day in Lugansk last week attending a seminar on gender issues and visiting another women's organization, Chaika, that she works with. It’s a great network. Three brand new PCVs, Wyoming, Caroline and Hailey, serving in Lugansk and area, also attended. It was nice meeting them. It reminded me of when I was a raw recruit, 15 months ago, trying to navigate new cultural terrain, a new language, and new roles and expectations. They will be great PCVs.

Women of Ukraine, a training and development NGO focused on women's issues and headed by an up-and-coming leader named Oxana, sponsored the seminar. It helped to have a translator present (thanks to Wyoming), a wonderful young man hoping for an international career. He was excellent, and seemed naturally attuned to the issues and comfortable discussing them, in itself an impressive and hopeful sign of change.

More than 35 women of all ages listened to a thoughtful panel discussion, which included the PCVs and young Ukrainian women, all knowledgeable and articulate advocates. The PCVs spoke about the women's movement and changing roles in America, interesting because they represented two generations, each with different experiences. Hailey, for example, acknowledged that she benefitted from the experiences of Wyoming and Caroline.

We then worked in small groups, reported out, and discussed ideas. A wide range of opinions emerged, but the issue are familiar: equal pay for equal work; increasing women’s participation in the political process; equal rights; supporting women in business; improving economic and political opportunities; addressing domestic abuse; combating stereotypes about women's roles; mentoring young women for leadership positions across the public sector.

The big question was "How and where do we begin?" Here's where disagreements flourished, just as they did during the resurgence of the women's movement in the U.S. in the 1960s to 1980s. Just as they did within NOW, the National Organization for Women, founded by Betty Friedan (author of the influential The Feminine Mystigue) and other pioneering women leaders. It took a 100 years of struggle in America for women to get the vote (with due homage to Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton), and then another 70 years or more to see some results.

So it will be here. Ukrainian women are strong and resourceful, family and community anchors, but they are not powerful, not yet. There's inevitable resistance to change and a need for more public awareness and activism. Nor do many Ukrainians have much faith in the present governments, at all levels.

But if this seminar is an example of the leavening influence of women working together, then there is hope for the future, hope for fundamental change, not coming from the top down, but, as I've written previously, from the bottom up. It was Loren’s mantra. Such grassroot efforts, multiplied many fold and over time, will help in the critical task of identifying and nurturing women leaders, building consensus, and galvanizing people around a common agenda. Women pioneers are setting the stage now. The voices of Ukrainian women are rising.