Gender Relations in the Private Sphere: Post-Soviet Transformations of Family and Intimacy (Introduction)

Abstract

Introduction to a thematic issue of the same title. As gender studies emerged and became institutionalized in the post-Soviet countries in the 1990s, their understanding of the private broadened. Nevertheless, scholars of gender have so far paid more attention to public gender roles and images. This issue aims to fill that gap. Globalization increases the significance of the private sphere: market-driven consumerism and the individualization and pluralization of lifestyles constitute the private in opposition to the public. Post-Soviet capitalism increases the significance of the private even further: the private sphere is experienced as a refuge from the threats of the public sphere, and new private practices are combined with styles of behavior inherited from communist times.