Thanks to British colleagues from universities, local governments and trade unions we had a possibility to voice the needs of women of Ukraine and importance of feminist analysis of situation on the ground in context of recovery and reconstruction of Ukraine. They organized a conference “Another Ukraine is possible” on 17th of June. Unlike the British government, as well as international NGOs who control the resources that should be directed to support feminist movement in Ukraine, they gave the mic to us.
Oksana Potapova was speaking about the need to decentralize the knowledge production. While we, Ukrainians highly appreciate that a huge work continues to be carried on the shoulders of our western sympathetic comrades, many decisions are agreed without a single try to ask if Ukrainians want to share this work. Our voices and our will keep being neglected.
Oksana states that in order to organize international campaign to help Ukraine, there should be victims — injured, helpless and numb. And the role of victims is to accept support and be grateful, instead of proactively demanding specific treatment and particular approaches to organize your assistance. Not saying about framing a common future. But also we should bring to the agenda the third “R”: besides the need of Recovery and Reconstructions, there is Resilience.
Resilience is mainly dependent on invisible work of people involved in immediate response to each of new attack, involved in reorganization of everyday life process: whether it is living in evacuation or struggling with electricity shut downs.
British speakers expressed disturbance about the agreements of providing funds for recovery of Ukraine. EU provides loans on conditions coined for the needs of EU and not taking into account the context of de-developed social infrastructures and — how ridiculous this reminder should sound — ongoing full scale war.
Yuliya Yurchenko spoke about the needs of developing existing industrial productions in Ukraine instead of bringing Europeans goods to Ukrainian markets and loans for Ukraine to buy these goods. As she knows from the construction workers, we do have warehouses full of building materials, but somehow it is not possible to sell them, although the demand on it is really exists. The unemployment issue has the similar nature: the lack of consistent regulatory processes.
Yuliya also highlighted the importance of feminist analysis, as it brings the light on invisible sectors of economy: “Growth statistics exclude the part of the work — the work that just doesn’t payed for. If you don’t pay for the work, it’s labeled as unproductive labor”. She states that we need wage lead growth, but analysis of grow must be comprehensive and sensitive.
Creating work places and social infrastructure for those 12 mln who left Ukraine is crucial for bringing them back. Her worst nightmare is that they will not return, but who will come to Ukraine is other refugees from EU who will be hired as construction workers with humiliating working conditions because for them is the only way to survive.
Why it is important to include grassroots initiatives is that because they are the fist who know the needs and complexity of contexts. So Yulia emphasize that brining trade unions to the negotiations and policy making is the obvious thing to be done. I also added that we need cooperation between different movements — like feminist and workers. In civil society sector we see the same neocolonial treatment: western donors come to us with their own best practices and experts, not giving us a chance to develop our own, based on the local knowledge, approaches. Having similar problems in our fields and sharing the same ideas of self-organized resistance, we can fight for better Ukraine even during the war.
