Women's participation in military conflicts: a case study of ukraine

Women's Participation in Military Conflicts: a Case Study of Ukraine Women‘s participation in military conflicts is one of the phenomena of international politics, that is discussed in various academic discussions. It is often said that war is a matter for men and women are victims of war or perform insignificant and non-physical functions. This is commonly referred to as traditional or conventional thinking, that suggests that gender is an expression of power relations and war or its consequences are usually understood through a masculine trajectory. Yet historically in wars women have played many different roles, named different motivations to join and either contributed to the empowerment of stereotypes or broke them with their personal examples. The object of this research is Ukraine where a part of the society, as well as women and their organizations took an active part in the struggle for the preservation of the country after the beginning of the conflict with Russia in 2014. The case of Ukraine was chosen for the study because it is a significant conflict on a European scale and close to us. It is also important that the conflict in Ukraine is a new one in the 21st century. It makes possible to understand how participation in war looks like here and now. In addition, analysis of women’s participation in the Ukrainian war are very limited because the collection of empirical data in war zones is difficult, so this study aims to supplement the existing literature on the Ukrainian conflict and provide an empirical analysis of women’s participation. The main goal of this study is to investigate the participation of women in the Ukrainian war and to understand why they joined the war, what roles they played and what the situation is due to traditional stereotypes. To achieve the set goal, interviews (in Russian) are conducted with women who took part in military operations on the pro-Ukrainian side. A total of 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted with women involved in the Ukrainian war and 5 with other external observers (journalist, 2 Lithuanian photographers, a representative of the Lithuanian Blue - Yellow organization and the Ukrainian Women's Guard). In total, this thesis is based on data collected during 25 interviews and secondary sources. The study was conducted in 2019 December - 2020 May. Ukrainian women said that one of the main motives to join military conflict is the desire to defend country and the future. Another interesting finding of this study is the fact that although Ukrainian society is traditional, women involved in war were not inclined to view the existence of stereotypes as a motive for joining the war. The categories of women's roles did not differ from the general context and global research, as it was seen that the main roles they held remained essentially the same - as a doctor, chef or working in headquarters and administration. On the other hand, Ukrainian women have not confirmed the basic conventional thesis that women are victims of war. It raises questions about the survey sample and the specificity of the profiles of the selected respondents. Perhaps the women who were interviewed did not want to expose this side of the war or did not actually experience it. Furthermore, in assessing the contribution of this study to the issue of women in war, most women did not attach particular importance to them in speaking or evaluating their roles because they either felt that the role was not important in defending the country or found it difficult to name. In general, in the context of war the roles overlap greatly. In conclusion, based on this study there can be two recommendations for future analysis: a) expand the sample of participants to construct more groups and categories; b) increase survey variables. For example, it could help to add more research questions and make more complex analysis