MaJaC Colloquium: Dr. Olga Matveieva: Wartime Civic Engagement, Technology, and Gender (In)Equality: Insights from the Ukrainian Case

In May, the MaJaC Colloquium goes into its second round! On May 21, we welcome Dr. Olga Matveieva, who will speak about ‘Wartime Civic Engagement, Technology, and Gender (In)Equality: Insights from the Ukrainian Case’.

The protracted war dismantles states and societies with their “action arenas”, described by Elinor Ostrom. The effectiveness of state institutions is decreasing, while the capacity of civil society weakens, and its resources become exhausted. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, I have observed a society compelled to reconsider and equip itself under the pressure of various set of factors – a process I question through the nexus of civic engagement, technology, and gender dynamics. Action arenas, as I interpret them in a conflict setting in the digital era, emerge from collective effort, shaped by formal institutional frameworks and enriched by civic technologies and other tools that civic actors employ to enhance the efficacy of deliberative collective action. My analysis is grounded in semi-structured interviews with female and LGBTIQ+ activists, thematic mappings of digital platforms, and continuous study of Ukraine’s civic activism and its socio-political implications for the society. This gives rise to questions such as: Нow does a diverse society at crisis renegotiate and co-organize its response, and is gender equality upheld in this reorganization?

The data indicate a shift: an overburdened „welfare state“ is transforming into a „state of shared burden,“ where civil society is compelled to engage in the informal co-production of services in response to the weakness of formal institutions. Technologies underpin the transformation of the „arena” of such engagement and collective action, drawing in increasingly broader circles of participants eager to contribute. The shift toward greater institutional flexibility and acceptance of informality enables underrepresented groups to assume more visible roles within the restructured hierarchy of power. It becomes significantly easier for women to transcend the societal roles prescribe for them, just as it becomes easier to amplify the voices of LGBTQIA+ by spotlighting their contributions to defence and humanitarian efforts. The transparency of digital campaigns enables civil society organizations to more effectively highlight these efforts in a safer environment, advocating for gender equality in a country still marked by strong remnants of a patriarchal order.

Nevertheless, these advancements are gender-uneven – inequality in access to digital technologies and deeply entrenched biases carried over from physical action arenas into digital spaces of interaction, restrict inclusivity and generate tensions, which I have documented in near-frontline zones in Ukraine. The rise of feminist civic initiatives reveals this dual reality: the activism of vulnerable groups seeks to respond to external collective challenges and, in doing so, address the persistence of internal inequalities.

Building on this, I raise the following questions: How can technologies foster equitable civic engagement? Can they bring lasting changes to rooted gender norms? And what barriers still stand in the way? My work applies a gender lens to the interaction between civic activism and technology use, as well as the resulting democratic evolution of civil society, exploring invisible boundaries and opportunities for greater gender equality.

Olga Matveieva is a PSI research fellow at the Marie Jahoda Center for International Gender Studies at Ruhr-University Bochum and associate professor in Public Administration at Dnipro University of Technology. She investigates the processes of democratic transformation in Eastern Europe through a gender lens, focusing on collaborative governance and civic engagement. Her work emphasizes the role of civil society organizations and their networks in co-producing public services within the digital sphere, while exploring how digital tools and crisis-responsive grassroots feminist initiatives influence inclusivity and equality, reshape governance structures, enabling new forms of engagement and influencing the relationship between state and society.

The English-speaking event starts at 18:15 in room EG 14 at Universitätsstraße 105. The room is wheelchair-accessible. If you need assistance, please contact alina.adrian@rub.de.