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Since 1 October 2023, Ukrainian women aged 18-60 working in the medical field have been required to appear before a military commission in order to register for possible service in the army. The summons concerns doctors, nurses, midwives, dentists and pharmacists. Although not all of them will be called up, they must now envisage such a possibility. Exemptions are only available to pregnant women, women on maternity leave, single mothers, mothers of large families, mothers caring for disabled children and wives of Ukrainian military personnel.
Some Ukrainian feminists believe that equality in mobilisation should be taken even further and that women should be conscripted into the army on the same basis as men, as in Israel.
A woman’s duty to serve
According to Hanna Hrycenko, a Ukrainian sociologist at the Gender Research Institute (Інститут Гендерних Програм), “this is a view you can often hear from women fighting in the Ukrainian army”. She says that “the ‘civilian’ feminists are more reticent on this subject. They point out that a country at war not only needs soldiers, but also women to look after children. Not to mention the fact that women play a key role in all kinds of voluntary initiatives.”
“Just a few years ago – when the war was confined to the east of the country – Ukrainian feminists were opposed to giving women a greater role in the army, out of pacifism. They changed their minds as soon as missiles started falling on their heads”, quips Hrycenko. “It’s hard to even hear this kind of opinion today.”
Oksana Potapova and Irina Dedusheva are authors of “Five Theses on Feminism and Militarism” in the journal “Gender in Details”. In it, they note that while Western anti-militarism (including its feminist version) is laudable in its intention, it is completely unsuited to the situation in some colonised countries.
War crimes against women
Russian soldiers are putting Ukrainian women through hell.
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