Valentyna DOVZHENKO on why the gender problem got lost along the way from Ukraine to Strasbourg
“Ms. Dovzhenko, statistics show that the idea of the social roles of men and women boils down to the traditional distribution of the rights and duties of genders in society. Ukrainian women themselves quite often doubt that anything fundamental ought to be changed...”
“It is a woman’s natural right to be satisfied with the primer’s formula — ‘Mommy washed the windows, and dad read the newspaper,’ that is, that she is not interested in realizing herself in traditionally male-dominated fields. Yet, this approach is archaic even for this country: the law declares equal starting rights and opportunities for men and women. The point is these opportunities often remain just an empty declaration...
“Judge for yourselves: females account for about a half of Ukraine’s university students and over 60% of people with higher education. This means equal rights have indeed been guaranteed in this country. The problems are elsewhere. The 2002 elections showed that, while 42% of the elected members of local councils are women (which many admit has had a positive effect on the performance of these bodies), in oblast councils and the national parliament women account for ‘as many as’ ten and five percent of deputies, respectively. There are no women at all in the cabinet. But how can we build a democratic society if the ideas, attitudes, and experience of the intellectual elite’s greater part are not being taken into account in decision-making? Owing to our neurophysiological properties, we take a different view of the same event. For example, when Western Europe suffered from a flood, sociologists polled men and women about what consequences they thought should be dealt with first of all. Men said the top priority was to rebuild roads and revive the economy, while women opted for the reconstruction of housing and water supply lines. Thus it is a good thing that the number of women in Western executive and legislative bodies has dramatically risen — by 30% in most countries — in recent years. And this meant that women could express their opinion not only to sociologists but also to their decision-making colleagues, which helped reach a consensus on dealing with the flood’s aftermath.
“Here people like to say that ‘historically’ it has turned out that the social sphere is mostly occupied by women who for this reason are often more knowledgeable in these matters than men. Accordingly, decisions in this sphere should be made by men and women on an equal basis. Otherwise, vital documents will be, so to speak, one-sided and not reflect the actual situation.
“On the other hand, it would be wrong to reduce the gender question only to the number of women in politics. For the idea of gender equality embraces all the fields and realms of public life. As Western European experience shows, applying the principle of parity has a beneficial effect on a country’s socioeconomic life.”
“More often than not, sociologists quote statistical data that the woman bears a double burden in our society, for her desire to make a career does not exempt her from household duties. In other words, they say the slogan ‘Bring the woman back into the family!’ is as urgent today as never before.”
“Why not then bring back the men, too — first of all, into the two million fatherless families all over Ukraine? For the Ukrainian Center of Social Research reports that even in full-fledged families only 10% of the fathers polled care for a sick child, 24% take their children from school, and 32% help them do homework. And it would be wrong to seek the root of the problem of the father’s ‘eternal busyness’ in just having to earn the means of subsistence. For instance, the same survey showed that young fathers are not much interested in dealing with one-to-twelve-month-old children (‘let the mother nurse them’) — they feel like caring about the child when he/she grows up a little and begins ‘to get the hang of things.’ Clearly, this kind of approach to bringing up an offspring is detrimental to the latter because the ‘presence’ of his father is no less important for the child than that of his mother. Moreover, individuals who have started a family should equally share the joys and responsibilities. So if a woman wants to exercise her right to be a mother, why should this make an imprint on and stand in the way of her desire to exercise another right — to get promotions in her career, become a research associate, etc.?
“It is, above all, the state that must try to remedy the situation by means of a well thought-out social policy. I can give you a good — unfortunately, foreign — example to this end. The French had one of the world’s lowest birthrates a few years ago. A sociological survey was conducted to know whether women preferred to be a mother or to have a job. The emancipated Frenchwomen put career before maternity. But, as the situation had to be improved in some way, the government adopted a scheme to encourage motherhood. First of all, the French began to actively develop daycare facilities and introduced major privileges for young moms — especially for those who could not afford, for example, to take a break from their studies: they were issued funds so they could hire babysitters. The experiment was a success. It would be a good idea to try the same in our country: although the year 2002 signaled a turning point in terms of birthrate, 400,000 newborns are no match for the 800,000 we had in the mid-1980s.
“We, together with the Women in Science organization, want to implement a similar project in the current year, i.e., to support mothers doing graduate and doctoral studies. For, as I already stated, although women account for more than a half of students and people with a higher education, men predominate among candidates of science, while there are extremely few females among those holding doctorates. Undoubtedly, this project needs funding, and we are going to recommend to the government that it should provide for its being paid for from the national budget. Yet, the initiative is still supposed to come ‘from above...’ Incidentally, let me reiterate in this connection the importance of women taking part in the launching of such projects and give another — again foreign — example. My Swedish counterparts told me that when their parliament had even fewer women than ours does now, two-thirds of the items discussed concerned military and political matters and only one third was of a social nature. Now that women account for over 40% of the parliament members, things have made a U-turn. At present, the state pursues a pronouncedly social policy. I think this is an ironclad’ argument.”
“How should we view, from the perspective of gender principles, the regulations that ban the employment of women at some enterprises, such as coal mines, etc.?”
“I wondered what attitude the French took on this: it turned out that the situation there has been changing over the past 150 years. In all probability, this issue should be treated in terms of common sense, for the state ought to be interested in the woman being able to fulfill herself as mother. Thus the International Labor Organization conventions ratified by Ukraine include a list of jobs that women should not have. At the same time, louder and louder voices are being heard that woman must be free to choose her place of work (as well as whether or not to be a mother). That the conventions need some liberalization is also the opinion of UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women experts. Incidentally, one of our people’s deputies, a coal mine manager, once told me it would be right to allow women to do some jobs (of course, not with a coal hammer!) because they would do them better and more conscientiously than men.
“In brief, such questions should be subject to public discussion. And we should not immediately dismiss it as another attempt at more ‘emancipation.’ Let us look at this issue from a different perspective: the number of women worldwide and in this country far exceeds that of men, and the Ukrainian public only discusses female — but not male — reproductive health. Meanwhile, what has long caused alarm is the ratio between the men who can become fathers and those who cannot, to say nothing about men’s far shorter life expectancy. So slimming down the list of banned occupations is not just a question of the freedom of personal choice.
“And, on the whole, it is more important to discuss quite a different issue, the improvement of labor conditions and safety.”
“Quite recently, Macedonia hosted another UN conference on equality...”
“...and on the role of women in securing peace and averting conflicts. Incidentally, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan advised foreign ministries to recommend to their governments that they carefully address the problem of women’s participation in military operations and, above all, to appoint more of them to the leading army and police offices.
“In general, I must admit that, since the penultimate conference held in late 1997 in Istanbul, EU full and associate members have achieved notable progress in gender equality and utilization of female intellect and professionalism in decision-making bodies. The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women notes the following. If a society has certain historical circumstances, mentality, and traditions not conducive to ensuring equal rights and opportunities to both sexes, administrative measures can be taken, such as setting quotas (officially setting aside for women a certain number of seats in the parliament and government) and establishing special oversight bodies to preclude discrimination and ensure equality. European Union and Council of Europe documents have set the minimum quota of up to 30%. So, from the perspective of these documents, Europe views Ukraine as an ‘exotic’ country.
“Germany, where gender inequality used to be a serious problem, has passed a direct-action law under which any attempt at discrimination is punishable. This law even forbids employers to mention in their advertisements which gender of the prospective employee they prefer or ask a woman candidate if she is pregnant. Moreover, every enterprise is advised to establish services monitoring the ratio of both sexes; and if, for example, there are more women, these services should recommend the employer to institute a hiring preference for men. And vice versa. Naturally, quotas were set. A secretary of the German Federal Ministry for Family and Youth Issues told at the last conference that after the latest elections women account for 33% of Bundestag deputies, there are six women and seven men in the cabinet, and that the Germans are sure this ‘correlation of forces’ will have a positive effect on policies to improve the quality of life. Macedonia, an EU associate member, has also adopted a similar law. When the Baltic states announced they were going to integrate into Europe, they were given an unambiguous condition: ‘gender equality is one of the standard criteria by which we will be assessing your democracy.’ This requirement was also addressed to this country in the now remote 1998, along with the moratorium on death penalty. But, while the latter demand was met, the former somehow get lost on the way from Ukraine to Strasbourg.
“At the moment, the Council of Europe is scrutinizing the basic bill on gender equality (debated by the previous Verkhovna Rada). In my view, this document meets all international requirements. And I am pleased to say that one of the directors of the UN Committee on Equality has informed us that the law has been translated into Ukrainian, and experts have begun to examine it. He also suggested that the law be presented in Ukraine with all the expert findings, debated and, if necessary, amended before being voted on. On April 7, Council of Europe and Ukrainian experts began a joint analysis of the draft.”
“At present, owing to assistance of the Canadian Gender Foundation, all Ukrainian legislation is being scrutinized for compliance with the principles of gender equality. What are the initial results and how long will it take to complete this work?”
“The experts have found a lot of discrepancies that could well be viewed as juridical precedents, given the current development level of the Ukrainian legislative basis. For example, the criminal code uses the term ‘aggrieved party’ exclusively in the masculine, not feminine, [grammatical] gender. The very process of expert examination must be continuous, while new laws should be adopted taking into account the gender principle. We are going to initiate introducing this rule.”
“Some gender experts believe that the previous parliament’s failure to pass this law can be attributed, not as the least important factor, to subjective attitudes — the deputies’ bias toward the problem.”
“First, it takes so much effort to make a good law out of a bill. Secondly, although I cannot talk about everything, I still understood, dealing with many of the current male deputies (including the bill’s cosponsors), that gender policy enjoys some support and the phrase ‘experience of European countries’ makes some sense to these men. As of today, the bill is on Verkhovna Rada’s list of top priorities. An agreement has been made with Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych that the law will not longer be put off.
“Moreover, we won’t be able to ignore this point. At the 2000 Millennium Summit, we supported all the basic tasks to be fulfilled by all UN member states in the future. Achieving gender equality is third on that list. It would be sheer nonsense to maintain relations with international organizations and simultaneously ignore generally-accepted norms. As Ukraine has opted for the ‘European vector,’ the world community will be prodding us to adopt the necessary laws. Yet, we cannot deny the existence of a nuance typical of a transition period: as long as politics remains a profitable activity, there will be few women in it.”
