Social change, gender and violence: post-communist and war affected societies
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This is an ambitious and thoroughly argued text that explores the complex relationship between violence against women, gender identity and social structure in the context of rapid economic, political and social change in four former communist countries: Bulgaria, Hungary, Macedonia and Serbia. How this is further complicated by ethnic conflict and war in Serbia and Macedonia is also considered. Nikolic´-Ristanovic´ draws on extensive secondary (quantitative) data and on primary data from interviews to illustrate how macro changes brought about by the transition from a centralized to a market economy impact on the everyday lives of women and men, family relations and violence against women, particularly domestic violence and sex trafficking. The first two chapters provide background with extensive detail of macroeconomic changes and how these are mirrored in altered patterns of employment and income for women and men across the social spectrum. The conclusion is that women are likely to have been left in poverty with little social or political capital and where the safety net of many social benefits has been removed. This, Nikolic´-Ristanovic´ maintains, increases ‘women’s vulnerability to violence’, a phrase consistently used throughout the book. I would contend that while women’s socioeconomic position does render women less powerful and diminishes their ability to avoid or leave violent men, women are vulnerable to violence because of what men do. To talk of women’s vulnerability hints at ‘blaming the victim’ since the focus is placed on women, obscuring the ways in which women resist, and removing the emphasis and responsibility from men as doers of violence. How radical economic transition has brought political and cultural change is examined in the third chapter in relation to symbolic, and actual gender roles and identities. Here, the work of Connell (1993, 1995a, 1995b, 2001) on masculinities/femininities and Messerchmidt (1993, 1995, 1997) on capitalist patriarchy is used to link structure, agency and subjectivity. With the arrival of capitalism and democracy, there has been a reappearance of hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity in contrast to the more egalitarian socialist gender roles (at least in the public sphere). The author argues that the emergence of multiple, marginalized masculinities have led to a crisis in masculinity, which correlates to an increase in violence against women, with
feminist review 76 2004 c 2004 Feminist Review. 0141-7789/04 $15 www.feminist-review.com (127–144)
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an implicit assumption here of causality. The dominant explanatory framework for men’s violence appears to be reactive theories (Gelles, 1987, 1997; Straus et al., 1988) where men’s frustration and sense of inadequacy in attaining normative masculinity along with status incompatibility between heterosexual partners is argued as the cause of men’s violence. This is a much rejected theory by many feminists and while Connell maintains that the key structures of gender relations are labour, power and cathe
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