Features of the formation and development of the masculine region: on the example of Donbas in the second half of the19th – first third of the 20th century

Abstract

The article analyzes the reasons for the formation and long-term preservation of masculinity in Donbas in the second half of the 19th – the first third of the 20th century. The research was conducted on the basis of gender methodology, which involves the analysis of the gender factor in determining the status of a person in society, and with the use of historical-genetic, historical-typological and historical-systemic methods of scientific research. The choice of this historically formed industrial region as an object of study was due to the existence of a number of differences in the definition of gender roles in comparison with the all-Ukrainian practice. In the course of the research, it was established that the decisive factor that determined the formation and long-term preservation of masculinity in Donbas was the nature of the region’s economic development. In the post-reform period, the dominant branch of the economy here was agriculture with its traditional patriarchal structure. The intensive industrial development of the region, which began at the end of the 19th century, contributed to the emergence of economic sectors with the predominant involvement of men: coal, metallurgy. This led to the fact that men still had a dominant role in economic and socio-political life, while women’s sphere of activity was exclusively domestic. This situation did not change until almost the beginning of the 1930s, when the party-state bodies, interested in involving women in production, created conditions for their liberation from the household and involvement in public work. However, all this was not able to destroy the masculinity of the region, women were not able to occupy an equal place with men in social and political life during the period under study.