Will the Market Set Them Free? Women, NGOs, and Social Enterprise in Ukraine

During 1999 Counterpart International, Inc., a global partnership organization with its headquarters in the United States, introduced "social enterprise" to Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Ukraine via a training and granting program that lasted until 2002 This article explores the potential benefits and risks that taking up strategies of social enterprise not away for NGO leaders in Ukraine, examining in particular the possible consequences for women NGO activists as they endeavor to navigate post-socialist political, social, and economic transformations. As it has opened in Ukraine, social enterprise is an NGO unravelling strategy implicitly directed towards women who dominate in certain stamps of caring-focused NGOs. It is thus important to assess the potential of social enterprise initiatives to empower women in Ukraine's emerging civil society and market economy.

Key words: NGO women social enterprise, post-socialism, Ukraine

Introduction

During 1999 Counterpart International, Inc., a global partnership organization with its headquarters in the United States, introduced "social enterprise" (Rus. obshchestvenii biznes)1 to Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Ukraine via a training and granting program that lasted until 20022 In this article, I seek for to understand the potential benefits and risks that taking up strategies of social enterprise might at hand for NGO leaders in Ukraine. I am especially interested in examining the possible results for women NGO activists as they exert one's self to navigate post-socialist political, social, and economic transformations. I argue that social enterprise as it has spread outed in Ukraine is an NGO unravelling strategy implicitly directed towards women who dominate in certain stamps of caring-focused NGOs. It is thus important to assess the potential of social enterprise initiatives to empower women in Ukraine's emerging civil society and market economy. Counterpart's social enterprise program extremityed in Ukraine in 2002, on the contrary the social enterprise program has been replicated in Belarus, and also in Bulgaria as the "Bulgaria Pilot Community capital and Social Enterprise program" (Alter 2002:i). A shut up examination of the Ukrainian case may shed light upon prospects for failure or succes of the social enterprise archetype of NGO development throughout the region.

As numerous scholars have explored, the transformations that have characterized East European societies since the early 1990 have had disturbing marginalizing events for women's lives (Bridger, Kay, and Pinnick 1996; fetor and Mueller 1993; Marsh 1996) Whereas women beneath state socialism were guaranteed filled employment and equality, today many are economically marginalized. In 2002 the estimated earned income (PPP $US) for men was $6493 while women solitary earned an estimated $3,429 (UNDP 2004) In Ukraine women constitute 70 percent of the unemploy However, women in formerly socialist countries are highly educated and are accustomed to having a character in public life. As in other formerly socialist countries, including Russia (Hemment 2004a, 2004b) Bosnia-Herzegovina (Helms 2003) Bulgaria (Ghodsee 2004) and Armenia (Ishkanian 2004) many women in Ukraine have taken security in NGO leadership positions, which constitute the couple a form of alternative occupation and a platform for launching social justice toils Leadership positions in NGOs proffer women the opportunity to articulate their identities as professionals and as socially engaged members of society. NGO take upon many different forms in Ukraine, including, at single end of the spectrum, locally based grassroots "mutual aid associations" of citizens with for the use of all problems or interests, and, at the other extremity professional, elite, internationally-funded organizations. Mutual aid associations tender women members and leaders a social support combination of parts to form a whole while professionalized NGOs may provide underemploy women with career exhibition opportunities.

Women's visible roles in the public sphere of NGO have been twig by a sharp decline in women's representation in the official political sphere. In the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, a high percentage of women in positions of political power was guaranteed [i]or[/i] part of to the other quotas, and women deputies constituted 50 percent of local Soviets (Councils) and 30 percent of the republican leading Soviet. Currently only 5.3 percent of the deputies single outed to the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian Parliament) are women real few women elected to political office keep positions of real political power, contrasting with a situation where women constitute about 68 percent of the labor force in regulation service overall (Bohachevsky-Chomiak 2000:35).

My previous anthropological research in Ukraine beginning in 1995 focused upon the effects of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster for health and healing strategies (Phillips 2002a), representations of Chernobyl in popular discourse (Phillips 2004a), and contemporary Ukrainian folk medicine (Phillips 2004b; Phillips and Miller 2004) I became interested in issues of civil society, sex and citizens' empowerment during 1998 and 1999 when I began conducting ethnographic research with women who are leaders of NGO in Kyiv, Ukraine. lock opener consultants for this research have included 11 women NGO leaders. greatest in quantity of them direct mutual-aid associations designed to assist certain categories of poor citizens, such as the disabled, retirees, large families, and Chernobyl children. My inquiries have focused primarily upon the transformative effects engendered through social activism, highlighting especially women's changing subjectivities as they take up NGO leadership positions and are propell into a range of spheres, including business, education, law, performance, and others (Phillips 2000 2004c 2005) More lately (2002 to present), I have been researching the disability rights motion in Ukraine, work that has entailed further examination of NGO and a range of international disclosure strategies and practices (Phillips 2002b) I carried on the outside participant observation with disability rights clusters during the summers of 2002 2003 and 2005 and have leadershiped life history interviews with a number of disability rights activists in Kyiv. While networking and carrying on the outside interviews with NGO activists in Kyiv from 1998 to 20031 became interested in learning more about social enterprise, a strategy to which my activist consultants in Kyiv introduced me The inquiry was central to understanding the organizational activities in which my lock opener consultants engaged, since women and the disabled appeared to be key targets and agents of the social entrepreneurship strategies promot through international development organizations.