Feminist Review

Issue 39: Shifting Territories: Feminism and Europe

The Feminist Review Collective

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781134920532
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Feminismus & feministische Theorie

The 1990s are proving to be a time, quite literally, of shifting territories in Europe - East and West. Both the revolutions in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the breaking of economic boundaries in 1992 are creating a new Europe; a Europe in which old questions have to be re-asked and old assumptions revaluated. This Feminist Review special issue, Shifting Territories explores these political changes in all their complexity, and in particular looks at how these changes will affect women and feminism. Feminist Review employs its unique perspective to ask such pertinent questions as: how can we make sense of these major transformations? How should we respond to them? What part should feminists play in the new world order? Is it so 'new'?
With articles covering the relationship between nationalism and feminism, the women's movement in Eastern Europe, feminism and the crisis of socialism, this Feminist Review special issue explores these shifting territories and tries to make sense of the reverberations affecting all our lives.

WOMEN IN ACTION:
COUNTRY BY COUNTRY

THE SOVIET UNION

Feminist Review No 39, Winter 1991

In this section we have included two important documents of the new women's movement which emerged in the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s. The first is the Declaration from the founder members' meeting of the Independent Women's Democratic Initiative, known by the acronym NEZHDI; in Russian this means ‘DO NOT WAIT!’ The meeting to launch NEZHDI was held on 24 July 1990, and was attended by more than seventy women from five cities in the USSR. The interview which follows helps to place this initiative in context. It is with Anastasya Posadskaya who took a central role in drafting the NEZHDI manifesto. She talked to Maxine Molyneux last September while she was staying in London, about NEZHDI and about the problems and opportunities women are facing in the Soviet Union today. Cynthia Cockburn introduces the second document, the concluding statement of the First Independent Women's Forum of the Soviet Union, held in the town ofDubna, on 29–31 March this year.

Feminist Manifesto: ‘Democracy without women is no democracy!’

Declaration from the Founder Members' Meeting of the Association

INDEPENDENT WOMEN'S DEMOCRATIC INITIATIVE

We, the participants in the seminar ‘Women in Politics and Politics for Women’, recognizing that the process of social renewal cannot be truly democratic without an active, independent women's movement, have taken the decision to establish the association Independent Women's Democratic Initiative—NEZHDI.

NEZHDI is an association of independent, democratically run women's groups, societies and individual women, coming together with the aim of providing moral support, advice and other help to members of the association, and also joint action in solving problems of general interest.

NEZHDI acts as an independent women's platform,

NEZHDI is the transformation of women from passive recipients of favours and tips into active, self-reliant creators of their own Iives,

NEZHDI is the creation by women of a spiritual environment of co-operation, solidarity and creativity the overcoming of bitterness, aggression and mutual alienation.

Tasks of the association

1 Economic independence via mutual aid

NEZHDI believes that a woman's economic independence is the foundation of her dignity in society and family. By conjuring up the horrors of approaching unemployment, attempts are being made to get us to return to the home, ‘protected’ by allowances and part-time work. But this is only part of the truth. Along with these ‘rights’ we also acquire obligations, the greatest of which is unpaid housework instead of paid work, the obligation to submit to economic dependence on husband and state.

NEZHDI is for the raising of family values in society, for women as well as men having more opportunities for high-quality leisure, for contact with family and friends, for bringing up children. But we believe in a strong and economically independent family, whose fate depends on the productive labour of its members, and not on the charity of the state. We are against society hypocritically using its failure to establish family values as a reason for forcing women out of the sphere of paid and visible labour into unpaid and invisible labour,

NEZHDI considers that the past seventy years of socialism have propagated one of the most dangerous myths—the myth that women have been over-emancipated. How can one speak of the liberation of one sex if in our society the individual, the family, the town and the republic have not been emancipated? Or has the state been only half totalitarian, only for men? NEZHDI is convinced that in reality there has been no emancipation, that there is a patriarchy which is expressed at the level of social production: women's professions and occupations are the least prestigious, the worst paid, women's work is to carry out orders, routine, heavy and uncreative; even in ‘female’ occupations the directors are men. In the new sectors of the economy-joint ventures, firms, corporations—at best we are graciously invited to be secretaries, translators, etc. The widely advertised reduction of the administrative apparatus in ministries and Institutions has been in more than 80 per cent of the the cases carried out at the expense of women! We can only ask a rhetorical question: how many of those people were the ones

who took the decision, the ones who really controlled things? And the remaining high-ranking man discovered a fine consolation for the reduction in the number of their subordinates: they divided those people's salaries among themselves,

NEZHDI considers that our government statistics more readily conceal the true situation of women than reveal it. This is particularly intolerable now in a period of transition to the market, We are in favour of the market, we recognize that our present difficulties are the reward for years of incompetent and criminal administration, But we want to know what price women will pay for the curing of society's problems, We want to know, so that we can act, NEZHDI supports the full and systematic publication of all social statistics affecting the situation of women.

Among the association's tasks are:

• the provision of legal, advisory and financial support to women's organizations whose aim is women's independence;

• the organization of business and management schools for women and assertiveness training courses [courses in psychological and social steadfastness];

• the organization of campaigns against the preferential sacking of women in the reorganization of industry and the reduction of staff;

• solidarity and also financial and legal support for members of the association who find themselves in a crisis;

• the establishment of an insurance fund to support women living in poverty;

• the exertion of pressure on the new economic structures 10 stop or prevent discrimination against women;

• the mandatory inclusion of women on a proportional basis in both state and local schemes for professional training and retraining of specialists;

• the revision of pay scales and wage rates in ‘women's’ occupations, according to the quality of the work.

2 Social and political tasks

‘Puppet-women’ in representative organs of power and ‘iron ladies’ in the director's chair, women elected by no one but appointed by one or other state institution, obedient to the will of the bosses and always ready to carry out any directive issued from on high—thus has a negative image been created of the woman director, the woman political leader. They have built an invisible and unappealing barrier for women as candidates in the reformed soviets, ets, which every female candidate felt and which allowed only a handful of individuals to win.

For decades the political system shamelessly used female

qualities such as discipline, conscientiousness, women's emotional nature, their readiness to suffer together and offer assistance, expecting nothing in return. We formed the majority of those engaged in so-called public work, many of us were rank-and-file members of the Party and of various public organizations. Even during the period of perestroika, the stillborn organism of the women's councils [zhensovety] was formed from our ranks, under the nominal leadership of the State Committee of Soviet Women, which no one had elected. However, we were permitted to share the thing men value most—power. The central feature of that power, which has brought the country to the brink of economic and social catastrophe, is its domination by a militaristic consciousness, the urge to use force to resolve all social conflicts, the infringement of the interests of the individual in the service, allegedly, of the public interest. In such an environment, the men who created it destroy themselves under the constant pressure of incompetence and mutual conflict.

Yes, we lost the elections. Yes, today we are outsiders in high politics and local politics. At present the vast majority of those who formulate and discuss political issues and take the decisions over our heads and on our behalf are men.

But this is not perestroika's last word. NEZHDI considers politics to be a matter for women as well. There are thousands of our female compatriots who are well qualified and ought in future to enter the institutions of power—women who exercise the highest degree of responsibility towards the people who elected them, and possessing a political culture rooted in competence, openness, goodwill and commitment to the interests of the individual.

NEZHDI will support those female political leaders who uphold the values of humanity.

NEZHDI will support women's democratic political clubs and organizations.

NEZHDI will facilitate the organization of schools for women in political leadership,

NEZHDI will advocate the involvement of independent women's organizations in issues of military politics: for social security for servicemen and their families—soldiers and their mothers and fathers should not have to pay for the incompetence of their generals. For the transfer to a professional army—a professional army is cheaper than a nonprofessional, as professionals make fewer mistakes for which we have to pay. Better 600 competent generals than 6,000 Mukashovs [incompetent leaders]! Let us have a woman as minister of defence in the RSFSR! There must be a conversion not only in words, but in deed—and that includes a conversion of ideology.

The association advocates a democratically elected committee to observe the Declaration forbidding all forms of discrimination against women and to implement the UN Nairobi guidelines, Women in the USSR ought to know what sort of report the government makes about their situation to international organizations and who produces these reports.

NEZHDI is opposed to a one-sided protectionism that demeans women, and it will support a policy of equal opportunities,

NEZHDI is convinced that no one will help women if we cannot help ourselves. We have been organized ‘from above’ for so long, have we really lost the ability to do it ourselves and for ourselves?

3 Information

One of the foundations of patriarchy, men's power, is the monopoly on information. Therefore NEZHDI intends to set up a Women's Information Bureau (ZHIB) which would collect and disseminate information about:

• women's movements, groups and organizations;

• the situation of women in various countries, regions, social and political structures;

• academic research and publications on women's issues;

• conferences, seminars, symposia and also information which will help women acquire the essential knowledge to integrate themselves into the process of social renewal and the stabilization of the country during the transition to a market economy.

Information will be collected and stored in a computerized data bank. ZHIB will publish a bulletin for the association's members, arrange for the sale of information to nonmembers of the association and publish a newspaper, Woman and Democracy.

4 Research support for the association's work

NEZHDI considers that one of the reasons for the lamentable situation of women has been the long-standing belief that the ‘woman question’ had been solved, which made it impossible for systematic and unprejudiced research to be conducted into existing problems.

An independent women's movement must be able to depend on independent research. The association supports the setting up of centres of research, education and information on women's (gender) issues; it will develop links with equivalent centres abroad and facilitate the exchange of students and scholarship holders.

The Center for Gender Studies, which has joined the association, will undertake research to monitor the situation of women around the country, summarize the experience of other countries, make its data base available and prepare a report for the association's anual conference.

In this way we confirm our intention to be subjects and not objects in the transformation of society, to participate on equal terms in the construction of the country's democratic future. We, the participants in the founding meeting of the NEZHDI association, call on the entire independent women's movement, groups, organizations and individual women to join the association and prepare for its first conference early in 1991.

Note

Feminist Review is grateful to Linda Edmondson for translating the NEZHDI document.

INTERVIEW WITH ANASTASYA POSADSKAYA (25 September 1990)

Maxine Molyneux

Feminist Review No 39, Winter 1991

Anastasya Posadskaya has been centrally involved in several initiatives within the emerging women's movement in the USSR. She was a founder member of the LOTOS group (which stands for ‘liberation from social stereotypes’), whose members have campaigned, among other things, against the re-domestication of women and for a greater awareness of gender inequalities in Soviet society.

In 1989, she helped to establish the first Centre for Gender Studies in the USSR, which is based in the Institute for Social and Economic Problems of the Population of the Moscow Academy of Sciences. In that year she wrote, with two other women from the Centre, Natalya Zakharova and Natalya Rimachevskaya, a critical feminist analysis of women's subordination in the USSR. Following its publication in the party journal Kommunist, she and her co-authors were invited to submit a position paper for policy on women to the Congress of People's Deputies, the executive equivalent of the former Supreme Soviet. They were subsequently invited to play an advisory role in the committee which has responsibility for formulating policy with regard to women, the Committee for the Protection of Maternity, Childhood and the Family. Anastasya Posadskaya has now been appointed Director of the Centre for Gender Studies.

MM Socialism has always been identified With ideas of women's emancipation, and many feminists, both socialist and liberal, have been inspired by elements of Marxist theory even if they were critical of its class reductionism. The collapse of the ‘Soviet model’ has made three things clear; first that no socialist alternative to capitalism can be said to exist any longer; secondly, that the vast majority of people in both ‘East’ and ‘West’ reject what they think of as socialism, and thirdly that most women who lived under communist-party rule considered that the

Anastasia Posadskaya (left) and Maxine Molyneux

gains of formal equality and full-time employment were outweighed by the severe strains of living under a system that did not work. In this light, what would you say as a feminist to those who claim that socialism failed, and in particular failed women?

AP There are very different views on this depending on whether you are from the West or from the so-called socialist countries. The Western view tends to be that there are different kinds of socialism and that what we experienced was either not socialism or was a distorted form. In the West socialism usually means socialist values—good values, an alternative to capitalism...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Full Title
• CONTENTS
• Copyright
• Editorial: Shifting Territories: Feminisms and Europe
• Between Hope and Helplessness: Women in the GDR after the ‘Turning Point’
• Where Have All the Women Gone? Women and the Women's Movement in East Central Europe
• The End of Socialism in Europe: A New Challenge for Socialist Feminism?
• The Second ‘No’: Women in Hungary
• The Citizenship Debate: Women, Ethnic Processes and the State
• Fortress Europe and Migrant Women
• Racial Equality and ‘1992’
• Questioning Perestroika: A Socialist-feminist Interrogation
• Postmodernism and its Discontents
• FEMINISTS AND SOCIALISM
• WOMEN IN ACTION: COUNTRY BY COUNTRY
• REPORTS
• REVIEWS
• Letter
• Noticeboard