Person or Thing?

The Embassy of France and the French Cultural Center continue their tradition of discussing the most diverse topics in a relaxed atmosphere. The subject of the latest such debate held at the Last Barricade Cafe was Woman: a person or a thing? after the name of a chapter in Andre Maurois’ famous To the Fair Unknown. At first glance, the subject is nothing but provocation, for the twentieth century said everything or even more about woman. Under the legislation of European countries, all international law acts, and the Declaration of Human Rights, woman has long enjoyed equal rights with man in all spheres of public and political life. But even now, even in the countries with a well-developed economy and predominant democratic values, women are paid less for the same work than men are. Even now, the higher echelons of power have far fewer women than men, while a career woman as a rule has no family.

The family and the attitudes toward it both in France and in Ukraine constitute one of the most sensitive points of what can be called the existential discrimination of women. Girls, mostly French-language students, said they did not feel discriminated against as members of the fairer sex. But a Ukrainian lady writer, participating in the debate, noted that she had no problems with getting her works published, but, as a woman with two children, she had big problems getting her texts written. On the other hand, children are not at all an obstacle for a man to reveal his creative talent. And the French lady writer Annie Ernaux, also present in the cafe, showed full understanding of what her Ukrainian counterpart said. Local feeling was that the problem of how a woman can realize herself in and outside the family remains the same in post-Soviet Ukraine and democratic France.

Also under discussion was such an acute subject, as far as Ukrainian and all post-Soviet women are concerned, as abortions and contraceptives. The public discussion took place without false prudery, which means that the epoch of openly discussing the most intimate but also the most painful issues has at last come to Ukraine. The French women said that the availability of easily accessible contraceptives was a more portentous factor of female emancipation than improved laws. For the relief of women from the burden of unwanted pregnancy not only saves women the threat of horrible diseases but also cures society of the hypocritical double morality such that condones a man having sex but not a woman. So far, the average statistical female in Ukraine has from five to twenty abortions during her reproductive period. Moreover, this side of Ukrainian life is especially unclear to the French side. The discussants pointed out that sexual culture education is a must and should begin well before puberty. Of paramount importance is the sexual culture of men. For a positive result is possible only if a man is as wary of his partner’s unwanted pregnancy as she herself is. In this respect, most Western men have climbed on a higher rung of the cultural ladder than have their Ukrainian counterparts.

But this does not mean that the relationships between Ukrainian women and Western men, should these occur, will be full of harmony. The debate pointed out that marriages between Western men and post-Soviet women, clearly on the rise, are not always happy. Western men conduct their matrimonial searches on the territories of poorer countries because they are dissatisfied with their too emancipated feminine compatriots who are very well aware of their rights. And although Liane Guillaume, a writer and the wife of Olivier Guillaume, cultural counselor at the French embassy, noted that “the Ukrainian woman is a Western woman deep in her heart,” the fact remains. Ukrainian wedding agencies keep receiving letters from the women who dream of marrying a well- off Western man, and it really does not matter if he is not so young and not so strikingly handsome.

The debate again touched upon the thesis once put forward by Simone de Beauvoir, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” She might have been right. To become a woman, as a person and not a thing, one has to go through a rebellion and understand one fine day that she will no longer tolerate either her oppressor husband, her nasty boss, or her submissive status in society. Of course, it will be impossible to overcome everything at one gulp, but woman as a personality is born precisely from rebellion.

Also on the agenda was the feminine nature of Ukrainian men and the traditional Ukrainian matriarchy. Ukrainian participants in the debate, women and a few men, admitted that women bear the main burden of today’s unhappy Ukrainian society. They raise and win bread for children because nobody else can do it. Ukrainian women are unaware of depression, leaving this fashionable malady to their male compatriots.

Can all the problems of Ukrainian women be reduced to our hard economic situation? Is it only poverty that makes the Ukrainian woman a thing, not a person? The debate was participated in by quite a few young ladies who, although not belonging to the families of the so-called new Ukrainians, are well educated and have a good command of foreign languages. They also claimed that woman, like man, is no way a thing but a personality. One must always try to look for a way out and not to bow to circumstances.

Yes, the economic situation in Ukraine is very hard, with women thought to be on the receiving end. Provincial women are in especially dire straits. They predominantly become customers of wedding agencies and semi-criminal job centers which offer illegal employment in Western countries. Often such women fall into white slavery with no hope of getting out. Of course, the women who slip into this kind of situation are things, not at all personalities, and not terribly valuable things at that.

There are many women in Ukraine. They are all very different, like the women of Paris described by Andre Maurois, “These are utterly beautiful ladies in a posh restaurant, as well as suburban girls who have no place to sit in the subway.” And, since we have recalled the famous Frenchman whose line became the title of a Ukrainian-French discussion, it will be both interesting and advisable to recall how he further developed this idea, “The woman can be both a thing and a personality. She is a personality if she remains independent of the man she loves, is self-sufficient in her views and plans, is the mistress of her body and thoughts. She is a thing if she allows herself to be treated as a thing.”