Chapter 4 Political vs. Personal: Gender-Role Formation in the Works of Ukrainian Female Children’s Writers in the 1930s
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Abstract
The controversial nature of Ukrainian children’s literature written by women writers in the 1930s is determined by the role of the Bolshevik ideology in supporting gender stereotypes and the authors’ attempts to deconstruct the values promoted by the state propaganda. This chapter explores ambiguity in the works of Natalia Zabila and Oksana Ivanenko: superficially aligning with the ideological focus on men, their narratives are in fact dominated by female characters with gender roles different from stereotypical ones. The depictions of boyhood, determined by militaristic or industrial motifs, affirm the male characters’ accountability to the collective. Girls are, by contrast, given more freedom and are often portrayed as independent or able to maintain self-sufficiency. Despite the official equality of the sexes, the socio-cultural discrimination against women in the Soviet Union led women writers to create their own space of creative freedom in texts for children.