It has often been suggested that one of the main reasons why Yulia Tymoshenko is able to generate such venomous opposition among her expanding list of rivals is the fact that she is a woman. You could argue that the Prime Minster’s policies and pretensions are more than enough on their own to provoke hostility, but the fact remains that no other politician in Ukrainian history has ever been as adept at uniting the political classes against them. Bitter enemies have repeatedly sought alliances just to thwart her. The first Orange coalition, the failed 2006 coalition and the current Orange incarnation have all been ruptured on the rock of opposition to her ascendancy. Could it really all be rooted in plain old gender bias?
Soviet gender dogmas
It is not hard to imagine where such a sentiment might come from. Most of Mrs. Tymoshenko’s governmental colleagues are men raised under the Soviet system, where they were the beneficiaries of an upbringing that taught them to open doors politely and light ladies’ cigarettes but appears to have left them singularly unprepared to cope with the ordeal of taking orders from a woman. The female of the Soviet species was expected to do her bit in the factory, raise as many kids as she could in-between shifts and, possibly, play a musical instrument or embroider trinkets for local bigwigs. She was most certainly not meant to lead.
The end result of such thinking is a political landscape which continues to be dominated by party-reared dinosaurs and a culture of insider trading that would, ideally, be off limits to all meddling women and outsiders in general. Mrs. Tymoshenko has certainly not made it any easier for the old guard to swallow her dominance. While female politicians in the West have traditionally donned trouser suits and toned down the glamour, the Prime Minister has gone in completely the opposite direction, parading her turbo-charged femininity like a badge of honour.
Such a state of affairs has produced a consensus among some of Ukraine’s political elite that this is all somehow rather unfair and should be stopped. Mrs. Tymoshenko, runs the conceit, is not playing by the rules of the game. She is a maverick, an aberration. If only she could be removed, then everything could go back to normal. Luckily, such talk is no longer particularly relevant. While she may well personify the move away from the old school way of doing things, she is by no means a one-woman army. All across Ukraine ladies are dominating in the workplace to such an extent that it is surely only a matter of time before Ukraine is recognised as a world leader in female empowerment.
Dominating the workplace
At first glance Ukraine’s economy remains very much a man’s world, at least when it comes to boardroom meetings and billionaire league tables. However, while the country’s big businesses are still almost exclusively managed by males, anyone who has ever visited a Ukrainian office will confirm that behind the big bosses stands an array of female employees who utterly outnumber their male middle management colleagues. As a foreigner I used to believe that this phenomenon was largely due to the quite understandable propensity among many middle-aged expat managers for hiring attractive young girls over their male counterparts, but closer scrutiny reveals that the same pattern is repeated among the vast majority of Ukrainian-managed companies. Indeed, most offices in today’s Ukraine are so over-populated by women that you could be forgiven for thinking there was a war on somewhere and all the men folk had been sent off to fight.
The coming matriarchy
In the next five to ten years we will surely see this undercurrent sweep many men from the top positions in the country’s leading industries. What makes this all the more remarkable is the fact that it has occurred without any kind of feminist fanfare in a society where the prevailing perception of gender roles would not look out of place in the pipe and slippers world of a 1950s good housekeeping magazine. The whole concept of feminism never really caught on behind the Iron Curtain, and since the 1991 collapse the female population has shown almost no interest whatsoever in liberating themselves along Western lines. There have been no quotas or pressure groups, but the female takeover of the workplace has continued apace regardless. It often seems that Ukraine’s women have simply found it easier to come to grips with the realities of the post-Soviet world, and they have done so in a manner which puts many of their countrymen to shame.
While it is too early to herald the arrival of a true Ukrainian matriarchy, it is about time the achievements of the country’s women were openly celebrated. After all, in a country with such a resoundingly dull and negative international image, the growing dominance of women in the workplace is a PR gift that could transform perceptions of Ukraine overnight.
