You're reading: Despite discrimination, Ukrainian women enlist in army

It’s not easy being a woman in Ukraine’s military.

While the U.S. army is becoming more open to women – with a recent rule change freeing up thousands of front-line jobs for them starting this year – their Ukrainian counterparts experience a lot more restrictions when it comes to serving their country in uniform.

Soldiering is seen as a man’s job in Ukraine. So, even if a woman has all the proper qualifications for a certain military position, she can’t serve in that capacity. For this reason, 15 former and current servicewomen protested outside the Defense Ministry on Jan. 21 over what they called were restrictions to hold leading positions. They brought with them cooking tools as a symbol that they don’t want to do menial jobs like cooking and cleaning in the army.

For instance, Ukrainian women are not allowed to serve as sappers, military drivers, photographers or chemical warfare specialists. In all, there are at least 500 professions women are forbidden to take under the country’s unreformed Soviet-era labor code.

Despite this, many women have actually managed to find jobs in the military and continue to serve their country. Over 30,000 women hold various positions in the armed forces, according to the latest statistics provided by the Defense Ministry. At least, 14,500 are listed as combat personnel, while some 938 women have already served in the war zone in the Donbas.

Maria Berlinska, who used to serve with the Aidar Battalion and now heads the Ukrainian Center for Aerial Reconnaissance, however, said that the situation with female fighters needs to be improved.

Many women in the army don’t serve on an official basis, so they are not eligible for benefits and official payment for their work. This is one of the main findings presented by the Invisible Battalion social research project, which was carried out with the help of the Ukrainian Women’s Fund.

The group studied women in combat and found that they often perform the same duties as male combat troops, but are not registered as such, and officially hold other positions.

“And so women who fight often don’t get certain benefits and social coverage, and their salaries are much lower than the ones male soldiers get,” Berlinska, who also coordinated the project, said. Women join volunteer battalions more often than regular army units to avoid restrictions, according to her.

However, traditional attitudes in society still make many people uncomfortable with the idea of women fighting.

Lyudmyla Males, a sociologist and an associate professor at Taras Shevchenko National University, believes the reason is that the army is seen by most men as a quintessence of masculinity: “That’s why men often try to defend their symbolically important place (in the army). Some of them may fear that women are trying to encroach on their positions.”

But the expert also believes it won’t be effective to have combat roles that remain exclusively for men.

“This eventually leads to a violation of human rights,” Males says, adding that opportunities should be open to both men and women, based on their professional skills first, rather than gender.

Lyudmyla Kovalchuk, the vice-president of women’s rights organization La Strada Ukraine, told the Kyiv Post that any legislation that “makes gender inequalities legal” needs to be changed.

And many female fighters share her view.

Valeria Burlakova has been in the army since December 2014. Now she’s serving in Donetsk Oblast with the 93rd brigade. She says she has never experienced any discrimination from her comrades – the problems come with the bureaucracy.

“There’s been nothing like ‘you can’t do it’ or you ‘won’t go there,’” Burlakova told the Kyiv Post. “But we do have to change the list of jobs available to women, because in fact we have women gunners who have been registered as medical workers.”

Burlakova, who’s been fighting in one of the hottest spots of Ukraine’s Donbas – the village of Pisky near Donetsk airport – says she doesn’t want to have to feel “grateful” that she was allowed to enlist in the army.

“I have experience and underwent training, I can do it,” Burlakova said. “Now rumor has it that women won’t be allowed to fight on the frontlines – I don’t care, I will do everything to stay where I am now. If you can’t defend your rights (to fight), how could you defend your homeland?”

General Staff spokesman Vladislav Seleznev says that exceptions exist, adding that imprisoned Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko successfully petitioned the Defense Ministry and became the only woman to pass through the Air Force University in Kharkiv.

“The argument that women are weaker has no sense now,” said Berlinska, who has been working for a year with the Ukrainian Center for Aerial Reconnaissance. In modern warfare, she says, it’s not a question of physical strength, but rather of technology, intelligence and cooperation between artillery and reconnaissance.

“There’s no need to carry swords anymore,” Berlinska adds.

Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Goncharova can be reached at [email protected]