WOMEN’S MOVEMENT IN GALICIA IN THE 1920s – 1930s: HOW UKRAINIAN WOMEN BRIDGED THE CIVILIZATIONAL DIVIDE BETWEEN CITY AND COUNTRYSIDE

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to elucidate the women’s movement in Galicia, focusing on its efforts to expand women’s rights and improve the cultural, socio-economic, and living conditions of the Ukrainian women. A chief focus is on the issue of the way the movement helped bridge the civilizational gap between the urban and rural everyday life of the Ukrainian women. Therefore, the study highlights the communication channels that fostered connections between women who lived in urban and rural areas (e.g., participation in women’s organizations, vocational training courses, summer “vacation” trips, and employment in cities and towns). The research methodology is grounded on the principle of historicism and employs both general and specialized scientific methods, with an emphasis on comparative historical analysis. A key source for this study is the women’s press of the 1920s–1930s. Although such sources are often subjective, emotional, and sometimes imprecise, being subject to a certain arbitrariness of interpretation, they provide a valuable repository of factual information, which has been analyzed in the study. The scientific novelty of the study consists in the use of the periodicals such as “Women’s Fate”, “Nova Khata”, “Nyva”, as well as memoir literature to analyze – for the first time in the Ukrainian historical science – the women’s movement in interwar Galicia in the context of everyday life and efforts to overcome the civilizational divide between city and countryside. The study also explores the cooperation between female movement leaders and peasant women. The findings contribute to future research in the areas of everyday rural life in Galicia, urban studies, and the history of the women’s movement. Conclusions. The analysis of interwar Galician women’s magazines reveals the specific character of the women’s movement during this period and illustrates how its leaders engaged with the worldview of peasant women. They created communication channels that helped to narrow the gap between urban and rural life. When these two worlds intersected, women gained both positive and negative experiences. Nevertheless, these encounters gradually diminished the civilizational divide, elevated educational, cultural, and social standards in rural Galicia, and contributed to women’s emancipation while resisting the assimilation policies of the Polish authorities. Internal and external misogyny, passivity, and the lack of unity among women sometimes hindered cooperation. At the same time, everyday practices of mutual support between urban intellectuals and rural women were common. These practices of a mutual support included sharing knowledge about the body and self-care, home and child-care, as well as providing access to education, vocational training, and opportunities for creative expression through participation in women's societies, courses, and circles.

Key words: Galicia, women’s movement, city, village, women, civilizational distance, everyday life.