In Ukraine, an ‘Entire Generation of Women Pushed Backward’
Gender-based violence, the pay gap and more are surging.
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In my decades of reporting on women’s lives in war, there are certain patterns I’ve seen from Syria to Rwanda. Now, the same patterns are showing up in Ukraine after three years of war.
Women are dealing with more gender-based violence, rising unemployment, decreased decision-making power, greater domestic burdens, and a severe mental health crisis, according to UN Women. “The full-scale war has pushed an entire generation of Ukrainian women backwards,” the organization says.
Increased levels of rape and other forms of gender-based violence are not just occurring on the battlefield, aka soldiers invading homes and raping women. The violence is also due to the increased stress the war has placed on families. The same thing has been seen in natural disasters, whether in Iran, Pakistan, Japan or Australia.
A 2022 study in the journal Natural Disaster Science found that gender-based violence was triggered by the consequences of catastrophes, including: “unsafe or insecure housing; substance abuse; stress, trauma, grief, and loss; relationship problems; unemployment and economic pressures; complex bureaucratic processes regarding grants, insurance, and rebuilding; reduced informal and formal supports and services; restricted movement and transport options; and a changed community and a different life course.
“Less identified as an explanation for GBV in disasters,” Debra Parkinson, the study author, wrote, “is the role of patriarchy and male privilege in allowing male violence against women and children.”
In Australia’s 2019-2020 bushfires, for example, domestic violence spiked. Women were encouraged not to speak of it; instead they were told “to think of what their men had been through, how heroic they had been, how they were acting out of character, and ‘it was just the alcohol’ causing the violence, or how the men were depressed or suicidal,” Parkinson wrote in an article for Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, where she is a researcher.
In Ukraine, gender-based violence has surged 36 percent since the war began, according to UN Women. And beyond the heightened violence against women, the pay gap between men and women has drastically increased, doubling to 41 percent less than men in 2023 from 2021. Overall, the UN counts 1,869,000 women and girls internally displaced, almost 6.7 million women in need of humanitarian assistance, and more than 3,799 women and 289 girls killed, although the true death count is likely much higher, the United Nations reports. The same holds true for the count of sexualized violence. Researchers have told me over the years that for every one woman who comes forward about rape, there are about eight more who haven’t.
“Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine has created one of the most profound humanitarian crises of our time, disproportionately affecting women and girls,” said Halyna Skipalska, executive director of the Ukrainian Foundation for Public Health and Country Director of HealthRight International in Ukraine.
Right now, there are groups working to provide women with aid and care. What will be critical as the war comes to an end, however, is to include women in the peace process and recovery efforts. Without women at these tables, their — our — needs, will continue to be left behind, whether that is in terms of physical and mental health, finances, housing stability or beyond.
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Thank you for this reporting. War inevitably presses the greatest hardships on the most vulnerable.
The stress of trauma reverberates terribly. Three years is a long time to live in a war zone with no respite.