Kis, O. (2012). Zhinka v tradytsiinii ukrainskii kulturi (druha polovyna XIX – pochatok XX st. [Woman in traditional Ukrainian culture (second half of the 19th – early 20th century)] (2nd ed.). Institute of Ethnology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
This monograph represents a complex historical and ethnographic study of the everyday lives of Ukrainian peasant women in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The gender approach to traditional Ukrainian culture is applied for the first time in Ukrainian scholarship. The book offers a thorough critical overview of the development of the feminist paradigm in social and cultural anthropology; the origins and main trends of research on women within the framework of Ukrainian studies are discussed as well. This study reveals basic legal, socio-economic, and demographic contexts of a peasant woman’s life. The author explores the roots and key constituents of the traditional stereotype of femininity as an essential part of the Ukrainian peasantry’s worldview. The study focuses on principal functions, rights, and responsibilities of women at various stages of the life span (little girl, young girl, woman, old woman). The peculiarities of gender socialization receive special attention. The specific features of the women’s social roles– normative (young girl, wife, mother, housewife), and marked (widow, single mother, witch) – in the context of the peasant family and rural community are examined in depth. The study reveals the complex and controversial aspects of everyday women’s lives which heretofore have been silenced or overlooked. Based upon the analysis of various sources (ethnographic materials, folklore, historical documents, legislation, statistics, demographic data etc.) this book contributes to a more accurate and thorough understanding of the Ukrainian popular notion of womanhood, as well as the diversity in a woman’s status in a peasant family and the rural community.