ABSTRACT
SINCE THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION, HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS HAVE EXpressed considerable concern about post-Soviet women.1
Arguably, this is because most glasnost-era discussions of the Soviet Union’s democratization paid little attention to its impact on women.2 But this is not the only reason. Despite considerable effort on the part of international women’s rights programs, the region’s nongovernmental organizations for women are themselves new, inexperienced, and relatively weak. They are finding it difficult to cope with the demands of the current transition, which has exacerbated previous social, political, and economic problems and created new ones like unemployment, inflation, and homelessness.
