With the disintegration of state socialism, which pushed the formation of economic inequality and the development of nationalist ideologies, the process of socialist emancipation began to be reversed. In the 1990s women were disproportionately ousted from the labor market and the public sphere in general. With the goals of “national renaissance”, “gender normalization” or returning women to their “true vocation” in view, women’s roles in the post-Soviet region were redefined through the concepts of sexuality and nurture. Women became domesticated sexual objects. At the same time as the care of the young (and the elderly) was passed into the female hands (from state agencies), the sexualization and objectification of women’s bodies was glorified by liberal media as a freedom of choice; sexual trafficking and prostitution were often viewed in terms of women’s free choice as well. Some Belarusian political movements and parties, using the slogans of «demographic security» and «Christian morality», projected female bodies as the body of the nation, endangered and in need of protection by men. This initiated a discourse on banning abortion, limiting women’s rights to choose, and returning to a more traditional family model.
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