Women's Movements in the Global Era by Basu Amrita;

Author:Basu, Amrita;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Westview Press

Conclusion

Women’s organizing in Russia—particularly on a feminist basis—faces serious obstacles in the foreseeable future. While some of the obstacles are particular to women’s organizations, such as a hostile societal reaction to feminist ideals, many are common to other social movements in Russian civil society today. Regardless of the kind of movement, independent activists in Russia face serious resource-mobilization challenges, including having to choose between a meager and unreliable existence as an NGO with sporadic foreign funding or a more stable existence as a state-supported organization dependent on government approval. Foreign funding encourages many pathologies, including unstable organizational agendas and diversion from developing domestic constituencies.

The trajectory of the women’s crisis center movement outlined above illustrates many aspects of the challenges facing Russian women’s mobilization in general. An initial blossoming of organizations in the 1990s, many supported by Western donors, ended when foreign donors moved programs elsewhere in the world or on to different issues in Russian society. What seemed at one point to be a growing women’s movement has stalled in recent years, leading many feminists to look for sustainable careers outside the activist realm. In a country where individual charitable donations are extremely rare and political participation by citizens is extraordinarily low—never mind the general hostility to feminism—the prospects for the growth of a mass-supported women’s movement are exceedingly slim.

Yet some activists persist heroically in their missions and do manage to attain small victories through sheer persistence. Gender studies programs, which did not exist until the 1990s, are now alive and well in many universities around Russia, inspiring a new generation of feminists. Perhaps this is where hope lies: in the gradual development of activists and changing of societal norms on an incremental, individual basis.

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