Description: Phillips follows 11 activists over the course of several years to document the unexpected effects that social activism has produced for women: increasing social inequality and "differentiationin the form of new cultural criteria for productive citizenship and new definitions of the rights and needs of various categories of citizens.
Review Quotes:
"The author includes material on the role of NGOs in Eastern European transitional states, the rise of antifeminist maternalism in the reworked national images of new ideology, and the deterioration in women's material status. --CHOICE"-- J. Zimmerman, emerita, University of Pittsburgh, July 2009
"The book is a valuable contribution to Ukrainian social studies and an excellent resource for those who wish to learn more about the relationships between citizenship, national ideology, the nongovernmental sector, gender, and social stratification in post-Soviet Ukraine. Despite the focus of the book on adverse social transformations, it is written with good humor and provides a deeply nuanced, vivid and compelling story, which is a pleasure to read."--Harvard Ukrainian Studies
"The book's conclusions are particularly interesting as they contribute not only to the literature on post-Soviet transition and democratization, but also to the role of civil society and the impact that international organizations have on these processes....This title also makes a valuable contribution to women's studies.April 2012"--Slavonice and East European Review
"The profiles of the activists are the most compelling parts of the book. Frequent quotes from the interviews bring the women alive as they struggle to survive through turbulent times.Vol. 26.3 May/June 2009"--Sonia Jaffee Robbins, co-founder, Network of East-West Women
". . . a fascinating collage of information about post-socialist Ukraine . . . .Vol. 68.3 July 2009"--Anne White, University of Bath
"Women's Social Activism in the New Ukraine will appeal to anyone interested in women's activism, nongovernmental organizations and efforts to build civil society. The book provides a fascinating look at the complicated transition to a post-socialist society. September 12, 2010"--Daily News, Bowling Green, KY
"Women's Social Activism in the New Ukraine is a compelling, accessible book that should be read by scholars, activists, and policy makers alike."--American Ethnologist
"Sarah Phillips offers a compelling analysis of women's social activism and the different paths it has taken in post-Soviet Ukraine."--SEER
"Hopefully, Phillip's engaging study will move political sociologists with an interest in . . . meso-level structures, as well as political scientists who study administrative and legislative aspects of social welfare, to join anthropologists in a productive dialogue on these and other issues, expanding the new field of post-communist social welfare studies.May 2010"--PoLAR
"A pioneering work in the study of Ukrainian femininity and feminism [that] makes an important contribution to feminist scholarship, to the still underdone scholarship on Ukrainian women, and to comparative studies of Eastern European women."--Marian Rubchak, Valparaiso University