Dilemmas in private/public discourse: Contexts for gender-based violence against women in Lithuania

Abstract

Relations between women and men have long been ordered around the public/private dichotomy as the basic arrangement of social existence. Public and private are ideologically determined as well as socially constructed categories reflected in the activities ascribed to women and men, images of femininity and masculinity, gender relationships and the existing normative order. Post-Soviet transformations in Lithuania brought with them shifts in the private/public dichotomy, as well as in gender identities and representations through which the Soviet gender regime was constituted. The way gender was organized under socialism figures importantly in all aspects of family interaction and organization during the last decade of democratization. The way gender equality was legislated served to reinforce the significance of gender difference even while ostensibly undermining it. The discussion of the retraditionalization process, including gender naturalization and family “privatization”, discloses its implications for gender relations, family life, and gender-based violence within it.