State Transformation And Violence Against Women In Postcommunist Russia

Download or read book State Transformation and Violence Against Women in Postcommunist Russia written by Janet Elise Johnson and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My dissertation examines the Russian state's response to sexual and domestic violence and the women's movements that have arisen to challenge both the state's inaction and the violence itself. My project is grounded in a 1999, eight-month research trip to Moscow and the provincial cities of Saratov and Orel, Russia, where I gathered data through participant observation. Transition theory argues that the liberalization of institutions and practices holds great promise for all people, including women, who may not be immediately incorporated as equal citizens but will have the political opportunity to fight for their inclusion. In contrast, feminist democratic theory finds that democratic liberalism, notably through its distinction between public and private spheres, institutionalizes its own obstacles to women's inclusion. Bridging these two theories, I use the issues of violence specific to women--woman battery, familiar rape, and sexual harassment--to examine the obstacles and opportunities for women created in postcommunism. I find that while the transition has created some political opportunity for women's movements, its greater impact has been the privatization of these forms of violence against women as outside the responsibility of the criminal-legal system. While there are policies that promise to protect (male-)citizens from violence in general, there are only limited promises for the violence that is specific to women. As the right to live free from bodily harm is both fundamental and necessary for political participation, the transition threatens to institutionalize the exclusion of women. As part of the growing body of literature on the Russian transition, my project injects a necessary concern for the role of activism, especially women's activism, in democratization and challenges transition theory to move beyond baseline procedures of democracy to take account of the inclusion and exclusion of citizens. Russia's transition from institutions antithetical to liberal democracy to those more democratic is a "natural experiment" that can highlight how democratic institutions facilitate and obstruct the citizenship of women.