Damaged houses and buildings lining the road to the training camp showed how the war consumed the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv. There, a woman named Hanna, 34, displayed pictures of unexploded munitions and mines on a blackboard.
In class, she explained to those present about minefield hazards and how they are marked. A woman participating in the training asked if she could take her three-year-old son to the park. “Don’t walk in the bush — it’s better not to walk there,” Hanna said. She advised the woman not to leave the paved and hole-free areas.
Hanna, who asked that her last name not be used, is part of a growing contingent of women trained to clear mines. It is a work that, until a few years ago, was part of a list of hundreds of activities that Ukrainian women were prohibited from doing. In six months of war, they have become a ubiquitous force, challenging traditional stereotypes about their role in post-Soviet society.
More and more women are joining the military, including in combat positions, leading volunteer and fundraising efforts. And, with men still making up the majority of combatants, they are taking on additional roles in civilian life.
In Mariupol, Hanna joined a Swiss mine clearance foundation two years ago. After the Russian invasion, he abandoned the southern port city. Now he is working in cities like Chernihiv — from which Russian troops have already withdrawn — to protect cities and towns devastated by the conflict from landmines.
“Society’s view of women is very paternalistic,” says sociologist Anna Kvit, who specializes in gender studies. “With this war, the independent role of women not only grew but became more visible.”
The change has been taking place for some time, she says. Since 2014, with the annexation of Crimea, women have taken on more new roles, accelerating the transformations in the defense and security sectors that eventually reached the wider society. “The resistance came, and probably still comes, from the idea that the army and war are not places for women.”
Legislation enacted in 2018 gave women the same legal status as men in the Armed Forces, spurring a broader movement for inclusive labor reforms.
The new laws overturned a ban on women holding any of 450 occupations in the country, a ban inherited from the Soviet era — when certain jobs were seen as harmful to reproductive health. In addition to mine clearance, the list included roles such as long-distance truck driver, welder, and firefighter.
Hanna Maliar, deputy defense minister, says that today there are more than 50,000 Ukrainians in the Armed Forces and that their participation has grown a lot since the war started. With men aged 18 to 60 banned from leaving the country to fight Russia, women have been volunteering to drive vehicles from other countries.
“When the war started, I wondered how I could help,” says Yevgenyia Ustinova, 39, who belongs to one of these groups. At a stop in Lviv, she described a two-day round trip she took between Kiev and Poland to pick up a truck.
The drivers have been very well received, according to Maria Stetsiuk, 35. But skeptics occasionally arise, like the policeman who approached her as she was on her way to Dnipro asking why she was driving and didn’t have a husband. “I never imagined I’d be doing something like this. But nowadays everyone is doing what they can, men and women.”
The war that has challenged perceptions about gender and expanded opportunities for women is also having a brutal and disproportionate effect on their lives. While they tend not to die in combat, they are among the people most affected by displacement: an analysis by UN Women and CARE International found that conflict has placed too much burden on them, having to care for children alone, and has exacerbated gender inequalities.
Iuliia Serdiuk, 31, was seriously injured in shelling that weeks ago hit Orikhiv in the Zaporijia region, with Ukrainian forces fighting to repel Russian troops. On May 8, her son asked her to hold his hand while he skated down a lane. “Suddenly there was an explosion and we started running,” she says.
She shielded the boy with her own body, and shrapnel wounded her in the ribs and liver and cut her spine in half. Iuliia can no longer walk, she was taken by train to a hospital in Lviv, where she is undergoing rehabilitation.
She hopes to be transferred out of the country to receive more advanced assistance, but one day she wants to return home, even though Orikhiv has been destroyed — her son’s school has disappeared, the city center has been demolished.
