Gender Mainstreaming in Post-Soviet Ukraine: Application and Applicability

Gender Mainstreaming: A Five‐Country Examination

“…). In so doing, the principal investigator began by analyzing each case study separately (Hankivsky ; Hankivsky and Christofferson ; Hankivsky and Salnykova ) before moving on to a more integrated analysis presented in this study. The integrated process involved combining data from all the case studies to identify key similarities, differences, concerns, and unexpected outcomes.…”

“…Another key point that was made in all contexts, was the importance of engagement with civil society to ensure, as Bacchi and Eveline (, 13) have argued elsewhere, “coalitions of engagement” and “deep listening.” As one state official puts it, in Ukraine the lack of knowledge within government makes this type of work absolutely necessary: “[t]here is a need of cooperation between the state that now has to work on gender and the NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] that know how” (cited in Hankivsky and Salnykova , 334). In Australia, the concern was that women's or equality‐seeking groups had virtually disappeared, thus building such relationships was virtually impossible.…”

“…Second, training has to demonstrate that GM has value in all government work. For instance, those who are charged with GBA responsibilities within the Canadian federal government have noted that “training has to show the improvements to policy work and most importantly has to provide rewards for those who come to training and then are expected to carry out the work,” and “if you want buy in for GBA—you have to present it in a way that people are going to see how it's good for them.” This has specific challenges in Ukraine, a country marked by corruption, because at the governmental level “there are no material benefits from gender promotion therefore there is no interest among officials” (university instructor, cited in Hankivsky and Salnykova , 329).…”

“…In Ukraine, this was a central issue articulated as problem of international donors and organizations imposing a “Western” model of GM in a non‐Western context. As a Ukrainian researcher explained, “there is a standard approach to all of this without exploring the specifics of the Ukrainian situation” (cited in Hankivsky and Salnykova , 326). One perceived factor that is overlooked is the gendered experiences of men.…”

“…One perceived factor that is overlooked is the gendered experiences of men. For example, a Ukrainian researcher noted that within “foreign” frameworks of GM, there is too much focus on women and even resistance to extending GM to men, even though “it is now men, who are more discriminated against, there is more unemployment among men, more sickness, reduced quality of life and life expectancy” (cited in Hankivsky and Salnykova , 334). For all the participants in Ukraine, the need to create a GM strategy more appropriate to the Ukrainian context was continually emphasized.…”