Curriculum Modules>
Contemporary Women's Movement in Ukraine: Comparative Perspectives

a. Cognitive

• Students will become familiar with feminist and gender theories of women’s subjectivity, concepts and theories related to women’s movements, and women’s movements’ psychoanalytic foundations.
• Students will develop an awareness of national and cultural context in which the women’s movement was formed in Ukraine, obstacles and possibilities to its existence, and differences between Ukraine and other cultural contexts (e.g., the U.S.).
• Students will be able to understand a variety of political participation models and their relationships to gender (using the example of Ukraine as a post-Communist state), and the main types and orientations of activities of women’s organizations in Ukraine.
• Students will develop an understanding of ideology and democratic values of women’s resources affecting policy, equality and discrimination in society, and will be able to analyze the meaning of women’s initiatives to affect civil and political life.
• Students will be able to analyze the possibilities of institutionalized forms of women’s organizations in contemporary Ukrainian society (women’s parties and trade-union organizations in Ukraine) and feminist activism as a network of “grassroots” activities, oriented toward educational work that is based on non-socialist ideology and produces a new type of women’s subjectivity in particular, rather than universal as in Soviet times (stemming from the logic of “eternal femininity”).

b. Affective

• Students will acquire more knowledge about democratic society and gender equality perspectives.
• Students will gain an increased awareness of cross-cultural differences in the phenomenon of women’s movements and gender power structures.
• Students will better understand the value of women’s civil and political participation in decision-making processes and feminist consciousness raising.
• Students will better understand the meaning of basic concepts such as: “the personal is political,” “the gender gap,” “the logic of impossible requirement,” and “the principles of social change” in contemporary Ukrainian political and social discourse.

c . Behavioral

• Students will be able to outline what social-psychological processes accompany a social movement’s projects (personal or collective/group identities, etc.).
• Students will be able to articulate the gendered forms of awareness of society and citizenship in everyday life.
• Students will be able to utilize theoretical reflections on gender forms of identities and subjectivities in their professional and personal life.