The Routledge Handbook of Gender in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia

This Handbook is the key reference for contemporary historical and political approaches to gender in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Leading scholars examine the region’s highly diverse politics, histories, cultures, ethnicities, and religions, and how these structures intersect with gender alongside class, sexuality, coloniality, and racism. Comprising 51 chapters, the Handbook is divided into six thematic parts:

Part I Conceptual debates and methodological differences

Part II Feminist and women’s movements cooperating and colliding

Part III Constructions of gender in different ideologies

Part IV Lived experiences of individuals in different regimes

Part V The ambiguous postcommunist transitions

Part VI Postcommunist policy issues

With a focus on defining debates, the collection considers how the shared experiences, especially communism, affect political forces’ organization of gender through a broad variety of topics including feminisms, ideology, violence, independence, regime transition, and public policy.

It is a foundational collection that will become invaluable to scholars and students across a range of disciplines including Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Central-Eastern European and Eurasian Studies.

Katalin Fábián is Professor of Government and Law at Lafayette College, Easton, PA USA. She edited Globalization: Perspectives from Central and Eastern Europe (Elsevier 2007) and served as the editor of Canadian-American Slavic Studies that focused on the changing international relations of Central and Eastern Europe. Her book Contemporary Women’s Movements in Hungary: Globalization, Democracy, and Gender Equality (Johns Hopkins University Press 2009) analyzes the political significance of women’s activism in Hungary. She contributed chapters to and edited Domestic Violence in Postcommunist States: Local Activism, National Policies, and Global Forces (Indiana University Press 2010). With Ioana Vlad, she edited Democratization through Social Activism: Gender and Environmental Issues in Post-Communist Societies (Tritonic Romania 2015). With Elżbieta Korolczuk, she edited and wrote chapters that appeared in Rebellious Parents: Parents’ Movements in Central-Eastern Europe and Russia (Indiana University Press 2017).

Janet Elise Johnson is a Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, USA. Her books include The Gender of Informal Politics (Palgrave 2018), Gender Violence in Russia (Indiana University Press 2009), and Living Gender after Communism (with Jean C. Robinson, Indiana University Press 2007). In the last few years, she has published articles in Slavic Review, Human Rights Review, Journal of Social Policy Studies, Politics & Gender, Perspectives on Politics, Journal of Social Policy, and Aspasia: The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women’s and Gender History as well as online in The New Yorker, The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage, and TheBoston Review. From 2008-2019, she was one of the coordinators of the monthly workshop on Gender and Transformation: Women in Europe, at New York University.

Mara Lazda is Associate Professor of History at Bronx Community College, City University of New York, USA. Her regional focus is on Latvia, with broader research interests on the intersections between gender, nationalism, and transnationalism in historical and contemporary contexts. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Baltic Studies, the International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, and Nationalities Papers. She has served as the President of the Association of Baltic Studies (2014-2016), a coordinator of the Gender and Transformation: Women in Europe workshop at New York University, and an editor for Aspasia: The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women’s and Gender History.