World phenomenon of a Ukrainian woman
Within the framework of the first in Ukraine International Forum of Ukrainian Women’s Organizations Ukrainian women from 17 countries described how they preserve national identity and lobby the positive image of Ukraine abroad.
“We want to find out what Ukraine’s needs are, how we can help, and how we can cooperate,” activists of Ukrainian women’s organizations, who came to Lviv from 17 countries, told The Day. The forum in Lviv initiated by the World Federation of Ukrainian Women’s Organizations (WFUWO) gathered representatives of all WFUWO member states.
World Federation of Ukrainian Women’s Organizations, founded in 1948 at the World Congress of Ukrainian Women held in Philadelphia, aims to “unite Ukrainian women in its organizations, coordinate their work, represent before their fellow citizens and foreign nations, and work for defense of the Ukrainian people.” Nowadays the Federation includes 28 women’s organizations in 17 countries. WFUWO work in the UN and international NGOs is of great importance, since the Federation focuses on the positive image of Ukraine in the modern world.
Preparation of the large-scale and important in the global context forum in Lviv was coordinated by International Institute of Education, Culture and Relations with Diaspora of the Lviv Polytechnic National University (IIEC). “For me, the director of the institute, responsible for international Ukrainian community this forum is very important,” Iryna Kliuchkovska, director of IIEC told The Day. “Ukrainian woman in the world is a phenomenon because not only she has managed to preserve her national identity for several generations, but also managed to find ways of organization and becoming, first, a fighter for Ukraine’s independence, and later entering international structures, thus, assuming the representative functions – become Ukraine’s lobbyist. That is why, we consider the Forum in Lviv a factor in the consolidation of women’s organizations.”
It is important that Ukrainian women from different countries, of different age and professions, born in Ukraine and far from it found common language. By the way, all of them came to Lviv at their own expense, all – in embroidered shirts or dresses. They asked: “Don’t take pictures of me but of my dress instead. I bought it in Ukraine.”
One of the main events of the Lviv Forum was the scientific practical conference “Ukrainian women’s movement in modern world and Ukraine.” Among the topics discussed at the conference there were an issue of representation of Ukrainian women’s organizations in international structures, consolidation of Ukrainian women’s organizations in Ukraine and abroad, Ukrainian women’s movement as a factor of gender equality.
Iryna Kliuchkovska in her speech “Ukrainian peasant woman in the fight against poverty: the context of modern reality” spoke about a series of numbers that show the degradation and depopulation of Ukrainian villages: “According to statistics 9,000 out of 29,000 villages in Ukraine degrade and die out. The birth rate in the last decade went down from 13.7 per a thousand of population to 9.4 and the mortality rate went up from 14.4 to 20.5.” Kliuchkovska also stated that, according to a study of the Horshenin Institute of Management Problems, 29 percent of peasants believe that their villages develop, 36 percent – that their villages stopped in the development, and 24 percent – that their villages degrade.
Peasants’ greatest concerns are growing prices for food and basic necessities, increasing cost of energy, low income, constant rise in prices, and, thus, not only inaccessibility of medicine but of medical service as well. It all happens in the situation when the official wages in Ukrainian agriculture are the lowest among all the economy sectors. All in all in Ukraine, according to different estimates, 60 to 75 percent of peasants are unemployed and survive only thanks to using pension money, supplementary earnings in cities, and individual farming. “In villages a thousand of employed support 820 unemployed, 36.8 percent of peasants are in poverty,” provided the disappointing statistics Kliuchkovska.
“The work load of a milkmaid is one ton per day, pig tender – 2.5 tons per day, and while working at grain collection a peasant woman has to move up to 20 tons. According to the study, conducted by Kateryna Yakuba 15 years ago, it turns out that a Ukrainian peasant woman slaves 15 hours 24 minutes a day,” concluded Kliuchkovska. She stated that, as a result, there is a fatal lack of time for taking care of children: on working days a peasant woman has only 16 minutes for them, and on weekends – 31 minutes.
As for personal care, cultural development, leisure, and recreation, they are out of question because there is neither time, nor money for relaxation. “Ninety percent of Ukrainian peasant women say that they don’t want their children to stay in village and work there,” this was a disappointing conclusion Kliuchkovska made and suggested to the WFUWO management to put the extremely painful issue of Ukrainian peasant women before the UN and in the future to ask for a grant for a complex thorough research, aiming at “offering adequate solutions to prevent the complete degradation of Ukrainian villages.”
Currently, the organizers and participants of the Forum are preparing a resolution on its results, although, we can say that overcoming communication gap between women’s organization of Ukraine and Diaspora still requires great efforts of the whole community.
IMPRESSIONS
Olha DANYLIAK, first deputy chairman of the World Federation of Ukrainian Women’s Organizations, Canada:
“Last year for the first time we invited representatives of women’s organizations from Ukraine for a meeting in Przemysl. At that meeting we decided to discuss what kind of cooperation we can have, as each country has its own needs. The needs in Diaspora are different than the needs in Ukraine, but our task is to help one another. The current problem in Diaspora is that the so-called fourth and fifth generations do not know Ukrainian. Thus, we have to become bilingual; otherwise we will not be able to attract them to us. We also have problems with the forth emigration wave. We hoped they would become our revival, but they have different interests – employment, assistance to families in Ukraine, or receiving proof of their education. Women in Ukraine have other concerns. Therefore, with the help of such gatherings we are trying to establish a dialogue to hear each other.”
Lilia CHYKALSKA, head of Ukrainian Women Union in Estonia:
“I was born in Brody. For over 20 years now I’ve been living with my husband in Estonia. There are 28,000 Ukrainians of the population of one and a half million people. We, like any other minority in Estonia, are supported. In particular, there are round table discussions held under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture, to which the representatives of the Union are also invited. Estonia is also one of a few countries that provide financial support for noncommercial minority organizations. These funds are small – about 3,000 euros per year, but it’s enough to keep our premises. We also receive financing for specific projects. We have the ability to communicate with members of Estonia Parliament. We submit our proposals to the Ministry of Culture on organizing various events and they are taken into account. There are 120 women members in our organization. The well-known Estonian artist Yaryna Ilo is one of our activists. Our spiritual leader is Myroslava Buchko, who was repressed and for a long time served a sentence in Mordovia. The main focus of our activity is preserving traditions, bringing up children, supporting young people, participation in social life of Estonia, work for Ukraine’s positive image in the world, and contacts with Ukraine.
“At the Lviv festival I found several people interested in implementing my project. What kind of project is that? Every year in Estonia by NGOs initiative the so-called tolokas (joint community work) when people clean some territory, plant trees, and do other important things in public areas. There is also a kind of tolokas, which can be called brainstorming sessions, when interested people come together and think about what can be done to make our lives and lives of our families better. Actually, I’d love to implement the same idea on Ukrainian soil.”
Marianna ZAIATS, head of Ukrainian Women Union in the US:
“My parents found each other and got married in Canada, where I was born. Later they moved to America, where I met my future husband – also a Ukrainian. Our organization, Ukrainian Women Union of the US, celebrated its 85th anniversary last year. At the present moment there are 2,500 women members in it. We try to continue the work, started by our mothers, and also enlist our daughters for the public work. It is quite difficult because they are already different from us. We often see cases when Ukrainian born women understand Ukrainian but can not speak it. There are also those, who don’t understand Ukrainian at all. We try to involve into cooperation also the representatives of the fourth emigration wave, those who came to America in the early 1990s. Our big pride is the Ukrainian Museum in New York, located near the UN office. We recently celebrated its 35th anniversary. We have developed social care. The organization keeps contact with the burns unit at the 8th Lviv Hospital and takes care of rest homes for elderly people. We help orphans. The organization granted 300 scholarships to Ukraine. However, we do not focus on financial support, we are tied to Ukraine in heart.”
