WOMEN, NATION, AND THE GENERATION GAP: DIASPORIC ACTIVISM OF THE UKRAINIAN NATIONAL WOMEN’S LEAGUE OF AMERICA IN THE POST-COLD WAR ERA By Iryna Koshulap Submitted to the Central European University Department of Gender Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervisor: Professor Allaine Cerwonka CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2013 Statement I hereby state that the thesis contains no materials accepted for any other degrees in any other institutions. The thesis contains no materials previously written and/or published by another person, except where appropriate acknowledgment is made in the form of bibliographical reference. Budapest, June 7, 2013 Iryna Koshulap CEU eTD Collection ©2013. Iryna Koshulap. All rights reserved. ii Abstract The present study examines a co-formative relationship between the diasporic and women‘s activism of the Ukrainian National Women‘s League of America at the time of Ukraine‘s independence. Founded in 1925, this voluntary-based non-profit organization of Ukrainian migrant women and women of Ukrainian descent has carried out philanthropic, educational, and cultural activities along with political protests and lobbying, taking a recognized place among organizations of the Ukrainian diaspora in the United States. Having been a women‘s organization in the Ukrainian diaspora and an ethnic organization in American and international women‘s movements from its inception, the UNWLA often considered its participation in international women‘s forums instrumental in promoting the cause of Ukraine‘s sovereignty. Instead of withdrawing from this arena in the early years of Ukraine‘s independence, however, the UNWLA started to adopt the women‘s rights and equality discourses for generating relations with the state and non-state actors in Ukraine and for conceptualizing a vision for the organization‘s future. Drawing on fieldwork findings from the New York City branches of the organization, I argue that the current shift in the UNWLA‘s relation to women‘s rights movement has been triggered not only by the changes in the political status of their homeland, but also by the generational shift in the UNWLA membership as well as by the growing currency of women‘s rights discourses in the international politics. This study considers the tensions that arise from the diversity of views and backgrounds of women within one organization and the discourses on the Ukrainian woman which are used to create a shared frame for the CEU eTD Collection UNWLA‘s work. The primary tension in the diasporic women‘s activism, however, lies between their action for homeland, which is informed by thorough understanding of gendered position of women in the nation, and the lack of explicit attention to their own position within the diasporic community and the family. iii Engaging with the ―stubbornly genderless‖ (Morawska 2011, 1029) interdisciplinary field of diaspora studies, the present study aims to contribute to the scholarly effort to foreground experience of women in diasporas. Instead of simply adding women, however, this research follows the diasporic women‘s networks in the international, North American, and Ukrainian women‘s movements to argue for the need to conceptualize the (self)positioning of diasporas in relation to the growing significance of transnational advocacy networks, non-governmental organizations and global social movements. In addition, this study contributes to the literature on women‘s movements, which has been interested in the ability of women to organize around their gender identity and to combine national or other struggles with issues of women‘s empowerment. The tensions between the national and women‘s rights causes in women‘s activism in the diaspora and the ways in which they are reconciled in everyday practices of the organization bring an important angle to the previous discussions. CEU eTD Collection iv Acknowledgements I will not be original in opening my dissertation acknowledgement section with words of gratitude to my supervisor, but I truly want to say a big thank you to Professor Allaine Cerwonka for all the words of encouragement and all the patience that it took her to see me through this project. I will always value your advice and will be eternally intimidated by your superb interpersonal skills, in other words, I am really glad to have had you along on this path all these years! There is also a good reason to be grateful to my Department of Gender Studies, for it takes a village to raise a young scholar, and that task is twice as challenging if the village has to be reflective about the hierarchies, power, and disciplining that it might be (re)producing and embodying. My ―intellectual biography‖ would not look the same without my professors Elissa Helms, Francisca de Haan, Éva Fodor, Susan Zimmermann, Jasmina Lukic, Erzsébet Barát, and all those others who make this department into such a fine academic environment. I was lucky to be on this road with wonderful peers and colleagues who deserve special thanks – Irina for all the writing tips that always worked, Zuska for helping me practice my English at the time of my fieldwork among Ukrainians in New York, Nicole for liking my cooking, Mihai for the convincing (if unintentional) lesson about backing up dissertation files, and Nebojsa for challenging questions and friendly advice. There are many people who helped me through different stages of this project in an important way. I will always be indebted to Martha Kichorowska-Kebalo and her family for welcoming me in their house which always felt like home. Martha‘s library and feedback on CEU eTD Collection my work undoubtedly helped my thoughts to develop, and so did her previous research on women‘s movement in Ukraine and its diaspora abundantly cited in this thesis. I also feel deep gratitude to Prof. Irene Silverblatt for the opportunity to work on this study in its early stages at the Department of Cultural Anthropology of Duke University and for her genuine v interest in my research as confirmed by the numerous meetings and hours of my stories from the field and contemplations about their meanings. This thesis and my academic world would not be the same without the visiting fellowship with the Department of History at the Pennsylvania State University. For this and much more I am grateful to Professors Nan Woodruff and Catherine Wanner who made that invitation possible. I also want to give a due recognition to the Central European University Budapest Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the Ukrainian National Women‘s League of America for providing financial support for this research. I am much obliged to many individual people as well, who offered me free room and board at different times during this project. I am grateful to all the UNWLA members who welcomed me to their circle and shared their life stories, thoughts, and advice! There are too many names to be listed here (and no way of doing that without violating the attempted anonymity of this study) but I truly enjoyed all your company and I hope that some of your cheerful persistence rubbed on me a little bit, too. Before I get carried away and start thanking Maggie the Dog for getting me to some needed walks and Buddy the Cat for leaving his meowing in the background of my audio field-notes, there are a few people whose support and friendship I would like to acknowledge here, like Rhoda Morgan who turned out to be my best non-Ukrainian New York associate, Cynthia Cole who I suspect will read this dissertation even though she does not have to, and Evan Strock who has patiently helped me with grammar and vocabulary points. CEU eTD Collection Last but by far not least, my dear family deserves every word of gratitude for their continuous support in every step of this project. This thesis, I dedicate to you – my mama, tato and brother Yura. vi Abbreviations CEDAW – Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women CSW – U.N. Committee on the Status of Women DP – Displaced People ECOSOC – United Nations Economic and Social Council ICW – International Council of Women IWD – International Women‘s Day IHRC – Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota NCW/USA – National Council of Women of the United States of America UCU – Ukrainian Catholic University UNWLA – Ukrainian National Women‘s League of America U.N. – United Nations WFUWO – World Federation of Ukrainian Women‘s Organizations WIDF – Women‘s International Democratic Federation WWII – World War II Notes on Transcription The references to the Ukrainian language sources cited in this dissertation appear in Latin transcription following the Library of Congress Romanization rules without the use of the ligature sign and simplification of the signs ï and ĭ to ―i‖. The same rules are followed when a transcription of a Ukrainian word appears in the text next to its English equivalent, e.g. Branch (viddil). The English spelling the Ukrainian family names of pre-1991 immigrants CEU eTD Collection sometimes diverges from currently accepted transcription rules and I use them in their accepted official English spelling whenever I am familiar with it. In those instances where I could only find a Ukrainian version of the name, I transliterate it following the Library of Congress rules. All the geographic names are used in their accepted international spelling. vii Table of Contents STATEMENT ....................................................................................................................................................