This paper explores the ways that women’s participation in the Ukraine crisis has been depicted by policymakers, the media and both pro- and anti-Russian factions in Ukraine, focussing on gendered notions of the heroic and heroism relating to the narratives featuring women. Although the extent of women’s activism throughout the crisis has, in general, been downplayed, the actions of certain individual women has been framed as heroic and thus made the focus of a great deal of attention from the media and the public. Such women include Nadezhda Savchenko (the Ukrainian woman pilot captured by pro-Russian forces during fighting in eastern Ukraine), Iryna Dovhan (who was publicly humiliated in Donetsk for raising funds for and delivering food to Ukrainian forces) as well as Yulia Tymoshenko (one of the leaders of the Orange Revolution and former Ukrainian Prime Minister, later imprisoned and released dramatically at the height of the Maidan protests). The narratives of these heroines is set against the more common framing of Ukrainian women as either playing subordinate roles in the equivalent of the crisis’ domestic spaces (for example, by providing food and taking on other caring responsibilities) or as purely passive – as bystanders, observers, symbols of the nation or as victims of violence and turmoil in need of rescue and protection.
