Analytical material by Olena Strelnyk, Doctor of Sociological Sciences: “Between tradition and change: conceptions of gender roles in the Ukrainian family”

Conceptions of “who is responsible for what” in the family change slowly and unevenly, reflecting deeper social transformations — from changes in the labour market to political crises and war. In Ukraine these conceptions were shaped by various factors: the Soviet model of compulsory female employment and the so-called gender contract of the “working mother”, the post-Soviet economic and socio-political ruptures and, ultimately, the full-scale war. Against this background it is important to understand how sociocultural attitudes towards the gender roles of women and men inside and outside the family are changing, how durable those changes are, and whether they really indicate movement towards greater gender equality. In this material I reflect on how attitudes towards the distribution of family roles between women and men changed between 2000 and 2024, what the gender and generational features of those attitudes are, and what is happening to them during the full-scale war.

Read about this in the analytical material by Olena Strelnyk, Doctor of Sociological Sciences.