ANALYSIS: Gender issues hijacked by "party of power" (03/17/02)

ANALYSIS

Gender issues hijacked by "party of power"

by Taras Kuzio
RFE/RL Newsline

The authorities have manifested a clear policy to only allow one women's and one "green" party linked to the "party of power" to participate in the upcoming parliamentary elections on March 31. The Party of Greens of Ukraine (PZU) and Women for the Future are both financed by Vasyl Khmelnytskyi, No. 3 on the PZU's election list and the director of the Zaporizhstal plant, who has close ties to First Lady Liudmyla Kuchma.

In February, the Central Election Commission annulled its previous decision to register the alternative Women of Ukraine party and the Raiduha (Rainbow) green election bloc, and forced Larysa Skoryk's Women for the Future of Children party to re-register as the All Ukrainian Party of Interethnic Understanding.

In the late Soviet era, fixed quotas ensured that one-half of the seats in local councils and a third of the seats in Ukraine's Supreme Soviet (on Council) were allocated to women. In Ukraine's three Parliaments elected in 1990, 1994 and 1998, female representation initially declined but then slightly increased from 2.9 to 4.6 to its current 8 percent. But it still lags far behind that of the Soviet and Gorbachev eras. Nevertheless, women's issues continue to remain marginal to the concerns of mainstream politicians in Ukraine.

In the March 1998 parliamentary elections, only one party - the All Ukrainian Party Women's Initiative - campaigned on a gender platform. Its result of 0.58 percent of the vote placed it 22nd on the list of 30 blocs and parties competing in that ballot.

In contrast, Women for the Future, one of two election groups in the current election campaign with a gender platform, has scored far more impressive results in opinion polls, which have averaged between 6 and 7 percent. These figures suggest that the group will easily pass the 4 percent voting barrier to qualify for the distribution of 225 seats contested under a proportional system. According to a January poll by the Ukrainian Institute for Social Studies, 10 percent of women and 2 percent of men will vote for Women for the Future.

Of Ukraine's 130 registered political parties, five are devoted to women's issues. Women's Initiative, registered in October 1997, is the oldest of the five. It is also the only party based outside Kyiv, in Kharkiv. Three others are also small parties - the Women's Party of Ukraine (registered in March 1997), the Women's Peoples Party United (September 1998) and the Solidarity with Women Party (December 1999).

Women for the Future's rise to third place in popularity among the 36 election blocs and parties has been meteoric. Its registration on March 30 of last year was suspiciously just one day before the deadline for parties to be registered for the March 31 parliamentary elections of 2002. Within less than a year, Women for the Future has managed to attract 360,000 members in 500 branches - an impressive figure when compared to the Communist Party's 140,000 members.

Women for the Future is led by individuals with ties to the former Soviet Ukrainian nomenklatura and to Leonid Kuchma when he was prime minister in 1992-1993. According to Alexandra Hrycak, a Western expert on gender issues in Ukraine, the ideology of Women for the Future is Soviet and not in tune with gender issues and the women's rights movement in the West. Women for the Future does not oppose the Soviet era stereotype of the female role in politics being confined to areas such as maternal and child-welfare issues. As Zerkalo Nedeli/Dzerkalo Tyzhnia reported, Women for the Future "has no new ideology behind it either."

Valentyna Dovzhenko, the head of Women for the Future, also heads the All-Ukrainian Voluntary Fund of Hope and Good, as well as the State Committee of Family and Youth Affairs, which formerly was a ministry, and the parliamentary Committee on Family and Youth. The head of the controlling committee of the Fund of Hope and Good and the president of another NGO, the National Fund for the Social Defense of Mothers and Children, is Mrs. Kuchma. The Fund of Hope and Good was established by the Soviet-era Union of Ukrainian Women led by Maria Orlyk, a leading member of Women for the Future.

The reason that the Women for the Future Party has managed to become so popular so quickly is its access to "administrative resources." Administrative resources, or closeness to centers of power, such as the executive, ensure high popularity and victory in Ukraine's elections. Independent, and thereby genuine, women's parties, such as the four women's parties other than the Women for the Future, stand little chance in elections when Women for the Future has executive support and, more importantly, the backing of Ukraine's first lady.

Women for the Future was created especially to ensure that another pro-presidential faction would exist in the next Parliament. Therefore, it will play the same role as the greens in the 1998 elections, who were able to win 5.43 percent of the vote by targeting floating voters, the undecided and those disillusioned with party politics. In this sense, Women for the Future campaigns on a platform of hostility to the very idea of the usefulness of party politics.

The platform of Women for the Future and its traditional campaigning style appeals to women age 30-40 and centers on such issues as women's rights, health (e.g., breast cancer) and domestic violence. Women for the Future's closeness to Ukraine's first lady has also drawn comparisons to the Yugoslav United Party of the Left led by Slobodan Milosevic's wife, Mira Markovic.

Members of Women for the Future have been defined as "albinos" by the weekly Zerkalo Nedeli/Dzerkalo Tyzhnia because they are devoid of any ideological platform. The party's popularity has not grown because of advertising or rousing speeches in defense of women's rights; on the contrary, party members have instead traveled around Ukraine distributing material assistance at schools, military bases and factories. In the Sumy and Kharkiv oblasts, foodstuffs have been distributed free of charge. In every raion in Chernivtsi Oblast, "Photos for Mother" events were undertaken in schools, kindergartens, libraries and cultural clubs - during which free photos were taken of children standing next to Women for the Future party symbols. Afterward, presents were distributed free of charge to needy families.

According to the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, a third of the distribution of free assistance by election blocs in Ukraine is undertaken by Women for the Future. Grandiose concerts by Ukrainian and Russian pop stars in towns and villages throughout Ukraine organized by the party have cost some $100,000, according to Zerkalo Nedeli/Dzerkalo Tyzhnia. Yet, the party is vague about its sources for the funds to finance the high cost of running such a brash campaign.

Women for the Future is likely to enter the next Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada. But the Soviet ideological influence on the party will likely mean that it will not advance women's rights in the sense understood by women's movements in the West. Instead, Ukraine will obtain another pro-presidential faction in Parliament that differs little from other oligarchic factions led by the opposite gender.

Taras Kuzio is a research associate at the Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of Toronto.

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