Empowering Women in Russia: Activism, Aid, and NGOs

Julie Hemment's engrossing study traces the development encounter through
interactions between international foundations and Russian women's groups during a
decade of national collapse. Prohibited from organizing independently under state
socialism, women's groups became a focus of attention in the mid-1990s for
foundations eager to promote participatory democracy, but the version of civil
society that has emerged (the "third sector") is far from what Russian
activists envisioned and what donor agencies promised. Drawing on ethnographic
methods and Participatory Action Research, Hemment tells the story of her
introduction to and growing collaboration with members of the group Zhenskii Svet
(Women's Light) in the provincial city of Tver'.