At the time, Ukrainians found themselves living in two foreign empires: the Russian Empire and the Habsburg Empire. For many of the women leading the push for greater social equality, women’s rights were indivisible from national rights. They sought to be free as women and as Ukrainians. The early decades of Ukraine’s feminist awakening are difficult to trace due to restrictions imposed by the czarist authorities banning the use of the Ukrainian language in print and prohibiting the staging of plays or lectures in Ukrainian. Indeed, the first comprehensive history of the women’s movement in Ukraine did not appear until 1988 with the publication of Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak’s “Feminists Despite Themselves” in the United States.
