Introductory remarks by Alla Rogers, August 28, 2025
Welcome everyone. We are here as part of a call to action to Hold The Light for Ukraine and for one another as individuals living together as a shared humanity on this Earth.
I am here to provide a little context about Ukrainian women and the forging of female self identity in modern-day Ukraine. Let’s now jump back in time.
In the study of anthropology and archaeology, findings show that women on the lands of modern-day Ukraine were influential figures in their communities, contributing to hunting and gathering as well as fashioning complex crafts like pottery, and textiles. Many prehistoric cultures of the region were matriarchal, organized around female lineages.
The Stone Age Inhabitants of Ukraine were Neanderthals. After Modern humans arrives around 40,000 BC, women played significant and active roles as hunters, that included big games, as skilled artisans and were revered in symbolic references to female power in ritualistic female figurines used in fertility rites and magic. In the Copper Age, 6000-2750 BC in which Ukraine enjoyed the Trypillian culture, women were heads of households and central to family and community life. Women managed agricultural work, while men hunted and tended livestock.
Later after the Trypillian culture faded around 2400 yrs ago, recently graves of female Scythian warriors were found in Ukraine buried with weapons and battle gear suggesting that women held high status combat roles similar to the Amazons the Greeks described. They adorned themselves and their horses in gold. Artifacts can be seen in Ukraine’s Vault Museum in Kyiv
Curator and artist Alla Rogers
Fast forward to ancient Kyivan Rus, 10th C AD, women on the geographic territory of today’s Ukraine enjoyed thousands of years of agency, self actualization and self determination that resulted in a cultural veneration of female power, fertility, magic, artistry and industry. In the Christian Era that ensued, all of this evolutionary knowledge was inserted into a patriarchal system that unlike Western Europe, never legally recognized women as chattel or property. They were the head of the Home. the Culture Keeper, and The Ritual Practitioner, as well as midwives and healers. In Ukrainian Medieval Rus, women owned property and they owned and contro;;ed their dowries. As widows, they did not require male guardianship. They enjoyed the right to inherit property and control it.
They had the right of refusal or negotiated consent in public, as marriages were arranged by parents. Some early female rulers of Rus, Princess Olha, introduced a systematized form of taxation rather than paying tribute. Female rulers were literate as well as fierce warriors and defenders of their nation’s interests. Princess Anna of Kyiv married King Henry I of France in 1051. She served as Queen, co-ruler and regent and their Son Phillip I became King of France. His progeny became the ruling dynasties of Europe.
During the era of the Ukrainian Hetmanate, the Kozak era that began emerging in the 15th C, and its destruction by the Russian Tsar in 1776, this para-military Kozak, Christian knighthood, founded on democratic principals with a carefully defined distribution of skills and leadership hierarchy, could not have survived without the participation and support of women. The Kozaks were a defensive force, protecting the vast open borderlands from attack and invasion. While they planned and participated in warfare away from their homes and families, women managed everything until their return.
In the Soviet era legal equality for women was proclaimed by the state with guaranteed access to education, equal pay and maternity benefits. However, women were underrepresented in top leadership positions as a clear reflection of the remaining patriarchal mindset where power was exercised.
Following Ukraine’s independence in 1991, statistics demonstrate that women’s political representation and economic equality initially declined but is steadily improving. Since 1991 women have been active and vital in national protest movements and volunteering, demonstrating a strong tradition of activism. In today’s defense against Russian occupation, more than 40,000 women serve in medical support and combat positions. There is no mandatory conscription of females in Ukraine. There is a legal requirement under law to register if you have training as a medical professional.
So what conclusions can we make from this broad brush sketch of female self identity in Ukraine?
Ukrainian women are capable, strong, resilient, intelligent and fierce. Their model throughout time has been as: the birther of life, the handmaiden of nature, the partner, the keeper of traditions, the healer, the artist, the magician, a manifestation of the Great Female in nature.