Social problems of women in the USSR (based on the material of Ukrainian dissident journalism)

Abstract

The article analyzes the journalism of Ukrainian women dissidents in terms of raising social problems of women in the USSR. It is established that the speeches, essays, and documents demonstrate the conflict between two ideological discourses: Soviet patriarchal masculine and feminine within the opposition dissident information flow. It is revealed that the legally enshrined “equality” in society resulted in a directly proportional negative effect for women: women’s disenfranchisement. Through manipulation, distortion, and stereotyping in the media, the Soviet official regime restricted women’s social roles, rights, and freedoms, including freedom of choice, decent wages, the penitentiary system’s inability to meet women’s needs, gender conflict in the judicial system, deprivation of maternal rights, and the emergence of so-called “criminal/political orphans,” and prohibited them from expressing their national identity. At the same time, the texts under study offer “unofficial” stereotypes of women as fighters, intellectuals, etc. the journalism of N. Svitlychna and N. Strokataya reflects the information of the world community about the dissidents’ struggle for the rights of all women in Soviet society, as well as for their own, the struggle against the restriction of their own human rights and the lack of proper legal protection, bullying and psychological experiments during the investigation and unjust sentences.