Women’s Club — Weapon or Defense?

One could well have guessed the quantity of saccharine greetings that poured on our women on the eve of March 8. The more so that the President himself provided the impetus: on March 5 Leonid Kuchma congratulated the lady People’s Deputies and presented them with spring souvenirs, gold brooches and souvenir volumes of the book Leonid Kuchma: The President And Man. Meanwhile women who work at Pervomaisky vuhillia (Pervomaisk Coal), for example, celebrated International Women’s Day with a hunger strike, for their husbands had not been paid for almost half a year, and they cannot afford to buy their children their daily bread. Could it be that there is more gold than bread in our country?

Certainly the officials need this holiday as much as February 23 (Soviet Army Day, given universal military service in the USSR, this was really a day for all Soviet men — Ed.) to remain in power after this October. And in this context Ukraine’s women are not simply representatives of fair sex but of the electorate. Unfortunately, our small women’s social organizations do not yet understand that they are slated to play the role of the regimes’ hostages. For in every European country such a holiday arranged to purchase women’s preferences would immediately become the subject of close scrutiny and criticism by non-governmental structures. The silence here means only one thing: both national and local officials are convinced they have non-governmental organizations, women’s ones in particular, in their pocket. Or is it because women Ukrainian voters can see striking leaders like Natalia Vitrenko or Yuliya Tymoshenko (and the forces they represent) are currently bound up with those in power? These rather less than festive notes, it seems to me, are reason for long and serious discussion.

Our group arrived in Washington during Senate hearings on the Clinton-Lewinski case. And what is more, we stayed only in two blocks from the Mayflower Hotel where Monica stayed, besieged by journalists from dawn till dusk. Hence, it was not surprising that every meeting with the Americans started with questions on our attitude toward White House sex-scandal. All America was aware of the moment’s importance: it was a time and place of history in the making. Americans were reading with pleasure and telling the whole world about this frivolous page in their history: America likes to teach, even if it is advanced sexual education. No wonder that I flunked the first question about Monica asked by colleagues from The Voice of America. I stammered when their correspondent, Uliana Teliuk, asked whether the Ukrainian mass media would cover a similar sex-scandal. Russians are in better position: this question they answer without hesitation: “If such thing happened we would at least know that Yeltsin is still alive.” And what about those of us who cannot imagine Leonid Kuchma sex-symbol, even after Iryna Zaytseva’s program, “Politician Without a Necktie,” where our President not only dashingly played the guitar but also playfully put his hand on the reporter’s back nether regions. Perhaps it is because Russians accept their President as human, even sick and connected with characters like Berezovsky and Lisovsky, but still a man, while in our minds Kuchma becomes more and more associated with such official and sublime functions as Guarantor of the Constitution or Arbiter of the Nation. But let us assume that the details of a such a case could infiltrate our mass media. The President’s opponents, having got such a chance would hardly dwell upon the intimate details of the case; they would use it only as a key to unlock the door to the realm of the head of state’s abuses. On the other hand, cynical pressure on the judiciary does not leave the slightest chance for an independent prosecutor like Starr to appear on our horizon. I listed all these ifs without interruption and only then understood why a sex-scandal would be impossible in Ukraine. It would be hard to find a woman willing to share the details of such a romance. Americans, ready to discuss all the details of Clinton’s case, carefully avoid conversations showing that in the country with centuries-old gender traditions a woman can become not only the Secretary of State, a District Attorney, or a Senator but also a weapon of political struggle and political pressure. Of course, this is a slap in the face to the thousands of women’s organizations in the US which present a quite different image of the American woman: self-confident and having equal rights. It is worth mentioning that in the United States there are over 50,000 various women’s movements, programs, organizations, and almost every American women takes part in them, and not only as an outgrowth of her business, social, or legal activity. I think that her desire to emphasize her belonging to some women’s club is caused by her lack of ordinary human contacts. And membership in any social group is something like psychological support and gives people confidence that everything is all right in their private life.

On the other hand, the variety and diversity of non-governmental organizations and groups demonstrates the realization of skills in the sphere of legal culture which in American primary schools USA are taught even before grammar and math. Perhaps it is because Americans know that the so-called third sector, non-governmental organizations, long ago made the authorities not only take it into consideration but also recognize it as equal partner in carrying out practically all aspects of political, economic and social life.

Perhaps that is why the most interesting and lively among all the necessary meeting was the acquaintance with Julie Stuart, founder and leader of the Family Against Maximum Imprisonment Term organization, the goal of which is to give judges more freedom in pronouncing sentences.

Our delegation was the most surprised by the fact that Congress not only pays attention and reacts to the activities of the movement defending the interests of a very small social group and supporting (also thereby asserting) the right of its representatives to solve similar problems through official structures. Perhaps we have not yet realized the simple truth learned in the USA on the level of truism: one of the main functions of public organizations is to track violations of citizens’ interests and rights by the authorities and drawing public attention to them. We will never understand this. For in our country the distance between the state and people’s representatives is a yawning abyss that grows wider every day. 80% of our citizens think that their participation in social and political processes cannot change anything in real life. Perhaps that is why in Ukraine there are only 120 women’s public associations, and the number is very symbolic. Apparently, the lack of faith in the real capabilities of public and political organizations is one of the reasons why our women’s political parties, Women of Ukraine and Women’s Initiatives, have suspended their activity.

However, I was most impressed by the fact that Ms. Stuart has no desire for a political career. She says, “To solve problems on the local level, remaining an observer of political processes, is harder but more effective,” while in our country an organization with 30,000 members would be considered as a good jumping-off place into the world of big-time politics (for only the most influential parties can boast of such size).

In addition to “Monicagate” Americans in 1998 found one more trifle: the problem of trade in women in the USA was detected, and the struggle against it began, which looks somewhat paradoxical considering that America is one of the world’s main consumers of sex services. Still, everything is very simple, like in our country, I would even say. Public organizations got the idea from First Lady Hillary Clinton within the context of her campaign for family and moral values. Such use of the idea of struggle against sexual slavery seemed to me serendipitous for the pragmatic Americans. First, because putting into practice the idea of the President’s wite means a kind of skeleton key to the financing of similar programs not only from federal funds but from local budgets as well. There is one more side of this award which Americans themselves prefer to pass over in silence. The point is that Slavic women in only a couple of years have become a real threat to the homegrown priestesses of sexual gratification. This, however, was a small loss. The Slavs who crowded the United States became more serious threat to good American wives: the number of divorces grew and it became fashionable to “marry Russians.” And even that might not have been the main reason for initiating a mechanism to combat sex slavery. Most likely, such programs do not help individual victims of sexual abuse because the fighters do not even know their exact number. Such organizations as a rule are headed by former employees of the FBI and other law enforcement structures who have no intention of catching pimps red-handed or join the police on raids into the red-light districts.

Quite obviously, the struggle for the rights of women netted in the sex-industry as a part of struggle for human rights is nothing more than a nice cover for the real basis of the problem. No wonder that the USA painstakingly tries to explain to Ukraine the importance of the idea and do not want to accept the counter-argument that the active migration of young women seeking an easier and better life is only a part of our social and economic problems: when living standards rise migration will decrease.

But we should also be honest: seven years of relative democracy in Ukraine is very short period in which to understand that the problem of asserting the rights of women who fell into sex-industry net and is in general a problem of asserting human rights and developing democracy. Society’s nebulous reaction to this problem is a litmus test of the level of democracy, of civil rights and freedoms in the country, something quite obvious even without PACE’s conclusions.

And those numerous public organizations that suddenly and sooner than others “understood” the national importance of rescuing sex slaves do not really demonstrate third sector development as an essential part of democratic society, as much as Americans want to believe it. In the present instance this faith is ruthlessly exploited, just like all those calls “for closer friendship with dear American friends,” which often looks like the friendship of a tortoise and a snake.