‘Feminist Mobilisation’ and Moral Economy in Post-Soviet Societies: Evidence from the CIS-8

‘Feminist Mobilisation’ and Moral Economy in Post-Soviet Societies: Evidence from the CIS-8 | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article ‘Feminist Mobilisation’ and Moral Economy in Post-Soviet Societies: Evidence from the CIS-8 Zuhriddin Juraev, Boburmirzo Khursanaliyev, Makhfuzakhon Shamsieva, and 1 more This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-8475847/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Under Review Version 1 posted 10 You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Across much of the world, women’s integration into paid labour has been assumed to foster feminist consciousness and political mobilisation. Yet in post-Soviet societies, high levels of women’s labour force participation coexist with weak or suppressed feminist activism. This study presents a comparative interpretive-descriptive analysis of eight post-Soviet states between 2015 and 2019. Using indicators of urbanisation, female labour force participation, fertility, and an ordinal (0–2) measure of feminist mobilisation, the analysis identifies a systematic decoupling between structural modernisation and feminist political outcomes. The findings indicate that neither modernisation nor economic participation reliably predicts feminist mobilisation. The evidence supports the view that women’s labour is embedded in moral economies that frame work as duty rather than entitlement, and that feminist advocacy is often constrained by state regulation and repression. The study advances a theoretical framework linking moral economy and state power to gendered political outcomes, interpreting “feminist absence” as an institutionally produced condition rather than a transitional lag. Women’s labour Feminist mobilisation Moral economy Post-Soviet societies Modernization theory Figures Figure 1 Figure 2 1. Introduction Across much of the world, women’s integration into paid labour has been seen as a foundational pathway to political consciousness and feminist mobilisation. Classical modernisation and liberal feminist theories have long assumed that urbanisation, labour-market participation, and economic independence erode traditional gender hierarchies and facilitate rights-based collective action (e.g., Offe, 1991 ; Inglehart & Norris, 2003 ). From this perspective, women’s work functions not only as an economic phenomenon but also as a catalyst for feminist political engagement and citizenship (Walby, 2023 ). Yet this assumption is at odds with the realities of many post-socialist societies. Across the former Soviet region, women have participated extensively in paid labour for decades, often at levels comparable to or exceeding those in industrialised economies (Ghodsee, 2004 ; Bingham, 2017 ). Despite this, feminist political mobilisation remains uneven, fragile, or absent. High female labour participation coexists with limited feminist organisation, weak advocacy, and, in some cases, the active suppression of gender-based claims (Pető, 2024 ; Korolczuk et al., 2025 ). This paper examines this tension by analysing the relationship between women’s labour participation, structural modernisation, and feminist mobilisation across eight post-Soviet states: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Russia, and Uzbekistan. These are referred to here as the post-Soviet comparison set (CIS-8), a conventional regional shorthand rather than a formal membership category. Instead of asking when feminist consciousness will emerge as a delayed outcome of modernisation, the study poses a more fundamental question: why does women’s labour not consistently generate feminist political consciousness where theory predicts it should? The post-Soviet region offers a particularly instructive context within semi-authoritarian and post-socialist settings, where women’s mass labour participation began as a state-managed project rather than a feminist achievement. Under Soviet rule, paid labour was presented as a social obligation and patriotic duty, rather than as an expression of rights (Molyneux, 1985 ; Ghodsee, 2004 ). After the collapse of state socialism, these moral frameworks persisted even as political regimes, market institutions, and civil societies diverged (Korolczuk, 2016 ; Bingham, 2017 ). In this paper, “feminist mobilisation” refers to publicly organised collective action advancing claims of gender equality and women’s rights. The analysis treats such mobilisation as an empirical and comparative phenomenon, rather than as a normative or ideological stance. Consequently, post-Soviet societies combine three features that complicate conventional feminist theories: widespread female labour participation, heterogeneous levels of modernization, and diverse regimes of political control. This combination enables a comparative analysis of how women’s economic participation translates – or fails to translate – into feminist mobilization under varying moral, institutional, and political conditions (McAdam & Tarrow, 2018 ; Walby, 2023 ). Empirically, the paper documents a persistent mismatch between indicators of modernization and outcomes of feminist mobilization. Using comparative descriptive data from 2015–2019, it shows that neither urbanisation nor women’s labour force participation reliably predicts feminist activism. Highly urbanised countries such as Russia and Belarus exhibit low mobilization, while moderately modernised cases such as the Kyrgyz Republic and Georgia sustain visible feminist movements. Others, including Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan, combine high female labour participation with near-total feminist silence (Kataeva et al., 2023 ; Stewart, Grabe, and Zheng, 2024 ). Theoretically, this mismatch cannot be explained by modernization alone. The study instead proposes a framework that highlights the moral economies of women’s labour and state regulation of advocacy as mediating mechanisms. In some contexts, women’s work is morally framed as duty rather than entitlement, limiting its capacity to generate rights-based claims (Booth, 1994 ; McDowell et al., 2005 ; Sayer, 2007 ). In others, feminist mobilisation is constrained by legal repression and moral policing within authoritarian gender regimes (Koch, 2013 ; Walby, 2023 ). By integrating comparative descriptive evidence with a typology of feminist outcomes, the paper makes three contributions. First, it challenges the universalist assumption that women’s economic participation automatically leads to feminist mobilisation. Second, it demonstrates how moral and political orders shape the meanings and consequences of women’s labour. Third, it develops a comparative framework for understanding feminist absence not as a transitional lag, but as a structural feature of post-socialist moral economies. 2. Modernization, Moral Economy and Limits of Feminist Mobilization A central assumption in classical and liberal feminist theory is that women’s integration into paid labour constitutes a foundational pathway to political consciousness and collective mobilisation. Within modernisation frameworks, urbanisation, industrial employment, and women’s labour-force participation are expected to erode traditional gender roles, expand social networks, and facilitate rights-based claims (Inglehart & Norris, 2003 ; Offe, 1991 ). From this perspective, women’s economic participation should generate feminist consciousness as a by-product of structural transformation (Walby, 2023 ). This assumption has guided extensive empirical research linking women’s labour-market participation to political engagement, legal reform, and feminist organisation, particularly in Western and late-industrialising contexts (Paxton et al., 2007; Weldon, 2011). Yet the presumed linear relationship between labour participation and feminist mobilisation has increasingly been questioned, especially in societies where women’s work has long been normalised without corresponding political emancipation (Ghodsee, 2004 ; Korolczuk, 2016 ). The post-Soviet context presents a significant challenge to this labour–consciousness assumption. Under Soviet and post-Soviet regimes, women’s mass participation in paid labour was not the result of feminist struggle but a state-directed economic imperative rooted in socialist moral ideology (Molyneux, 1985 ; Ghodsee, 2004 ). Consequently, labour participation did not necessarily have emancipatory meanings. It was presented as patriotic duty and social contribution, rather than as individual rights or feminist agency. This historically moralised framing of women’s labour raises questions about the universality of modernization-based feminist trajectories (Bingham, 2017 ; Miazhevich, 2025 ). A substantial body of literature examines post-socialist gender relations through “transition” paradigms, emphasising the restructuring of labour markets, welfare systems, and family norms following the collapse of state socialism (Einhorn, 1993 ; Gal & Kligman, 2000 ). Much of this scholarship documents the persistence of high female labour participation alongside the retraditionalisation of gender roles, the erosion of social protections, and the reassertion of patriarchal norms. While these works reveal important continuities and inequalities, they often interpret weak feminist mobilisation as either a delayed outcome of incomplete transition or a residual cultural legacy (Salmenniemi, 2019 ; Salmenniemi et al., 2025 ). In this view, feminist consciousness is expected to emerge once democratic institutions and civil society “mature”. This paper diverges from transitional narratives by treating the absence of feminist mobilization not as a delay or deficit, but as a structurally produced outcome, in line with scholarship that foregrounds vernacular feminist forms and the contextual specificity of claims-making (Korolczuk et al., 2025 ; Miazhevich, 2025 ). Instead of asking when feminism will “arrive,” the analysis examines why women’s labour participation does not generate feminist mobilization under specific moral and political conditions. To address this question, the paper draws on the concept of moral economy to understand how women’s labour is socially framed and politically regulated. Moral economy approaches emphasise that economic practices are always embedded in moral norms – expectations about duty, obligation, and justice – that shape how work is valued and politicised (Booth, 1994 ; Sayer, 2007 ). From this perspective, the meanings attached to labour can either enable or suppress political agency. In many post-Soviet contexts, women’s labour is moralised as an extension of familial obligation and national contribution. Paid work is not presented as a site of empowerment but as a marker of respectability and moral worth (Bingham, 2017 ; Ghodsee, 2004 ). Under these conditions, labour participation does not challenge gender hierarchies; rather, it reproduces them through a logic of obligation rather than entitlement. This helps explain why high labour participation coexists with weak feminist mobilisation in countries such as Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan, where feminist advocacy is often delegitimised as socially disruptive or culturally alien (Miazhevich, 2025 ). The moral-economy pathway thus accounts for depoliticisation – contexts in which feminist agency is absorbed into moralised roles of duty and care. However, it cannot, on its own, explain cases of active suppression. In highly urbanised and economically modernised states such as Russia and Belarus, feminist initiatives are constrained not only by moral consensus but also by political closure. Since the 2010s, governments have restricted feminist activism through registration laws, stigmatisation, and surveillance. While Koch ( 2013 ) highlights the methodological and ethical challenges of studying such closed contexts, her observation underscores that repression itself shapes what becomes visible to researchers. In these cases, feminist consciousness may exist, but its public articulation is limited by coercive state regulation. Mechanism logic. Two distinct causal pathways link women’s labour to low feminist mobilisation. Along the moral-economy pathway, labour framed as duty renders claims for rights illegitimate, reducing the social resonance of feminist frames and discouraging collective action. Along the repression pathway, organisational and legal constraints increase the costs and risks of activism, resulting in low visible mobilisation even where feminist consciousness persists privately. Distinguishing between these mechanisms clarifies how normative and institutional forces interact to shape feminist political outcomes. Walby’s ( 2023 ) concept of authoritarian gender regimes offers a theoretical framework for integrating these mechanisms. While it does not directly describe CIS cases, it provides a basis for analysing how modern institutions combine coercive and moral regulation to reproduce gendered power. Pető’s ( 2024 ) notion of epistemic governance similarly addresses the moral-political disciplining of feminist discourse under illiberal rule. Distinguishing between moral depoliticisation and political suppression enables feminist absence to be understood not as uniform silence, but as the result of historically distinct modes of containment – moral economy and authoritarian governance – that shape mobilisation capacity in different ways. Integrating insights from modernisation theory, moral-economy analysis, and research on state repression, this framework specifies the conceptual architecture underlying the study’s contributions. It links structural modernisation to moral and institutional mediation, identifies the moral economy as a mechanism of depoliticisation, and distinguishes it from coercive suppression. Together, these mechanisms explain how feminist absence is produced and sustained under post-socialist conditions, providing the analytical foundation for the typology developed in the Findings section. 3. Comparative Design, Data, and Coding Strategy This study uses a comparative interpretive design to examine how women’s economic participation and feminist political mobilisation intersect across eight post-Soviet states (CIS-8). Instead of testing causal hypotheses or estimating statistical models, the research describes and interprets a recurring paradox: the persistence of high women’s labour force participation alongside weak or suppressed feminist activism. The analysis is based on the premise that, in post-socialist and semi-authoritarian contexts, the relationship between labour and feminist consciousness cannot be meaningfully captured through quantitative correlations alone. Interpretation is grounded in triangulated textual and documentary evidence, including official NGO registration lists, ‘foreign agent’ designations, changes to association laws, and documented feminist protest or advocacy events between 2015 and 2019. 3.1. Comparative Logic The eight selected countries – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Russia, and Uzbekistan – share a common Soviet institutional legacy, yet differ markedly in political regime type, civil society regulation, and moral discourse on gender. This shared historical foundation provides a coherent basis for comparison while allowing the study to trace how different political and moral orders mediate feminist mobilisation. The design follows a most-similar systems logic: by holding key background conditions relatively constant, it becomes possible to examine how variation in political closure and moral economy corresponds to divergent feminist outcomes. 3.2. Data and Analytical Materials The analysis is based on a small but triangulated evidence base. Structural indicators – female labour force participation, urbanisation, and fertility – were obtained from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators (WDI) for 2015–2019. Both structural indicators and mobilisation scores are aggregated for 2015–2019, the overlapping period available across data sources, to capture pre-pandemic stability and avoid distortions from later protest cycles or pandemic-era policy changes. These measures are used not as predictive variables but as contextual markers of modernisation. They provide a baseline view of women’s economic incorporation against which observed patterns of feminist mobilisation can be interpreted. All datasets and coding decisions are summarised in the Appendix (Table A1 ), which lists indicator sources, mobilisation scores, and country-level evidence references. To assess feminist activism, we collected qualitative evidence from NGO registries, secondary academic literature, human rights reports, and documented protest or advocacy events. Reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and local gender rights organisations were cross-checked with scholarly analyses (e.g., Ghodsee, 2004 ; Bingham, 2017 ; Pető, 2024 ) to ensure consistency in identifying both periods of activism and episodes of repression. Because feminist activism in the region is often episodic and informal, we constructed a simple interpretive scale to differentiate degrees of mobilization rather than to measure them precisely. First, countries with no sustained feminist organisations and clear evidence of repression were classified as cases of absent or suppressed mobilization. Second, countries with short-lived campaigns or intermittent advocacy were classified as emerging or episodic. Third, countries exhibiting recurring activism or stable feminist organisations were classified as sustained. This scale functions less as a metric than as a heuristic device, clarifying cross-national contrasts without implying linear progression or developmental sequencing. 3.3. Interpretive and Ethical Considerations In constructing these classifications, we treated the absence of visible activism not as evidence of a lack of feminist consciousness, but as a potential indicator of political or moral constraint. In several contexts, notably Russia and Belarus, organisations have been deregistered, monitored, or designated as “foreign agents.” In such cases, we interpret suppression as evidence of constrained mobilisation capacity rather than apathy. This interpretive stance reflects feminist methodological commitments to recognising both visible and silenced forms of agency under authoritarian constraint. It also follows insights from feminist research in authoritarian settings, which emphasise treating silences and informal practices as data rather than omissions (Koch, 2013 ; Stewart et al., 2024 ). Given uneven access to primary data and the fluidity of feminist organising, the analysis emphasises transparency and reproducibility over precision. Each country-level assessment is based on multiple publicly verifiable sources, and coding decisions are documented to allow reinterpretation as new evidence emerges. The aim is not to exhaustively quantify mobilisation, but to build a comparative account of how women’s economic participation interacts with distinct moral and political orders. 3.4. Analytical Orientation The analysis proceeds inductively. Descriptive comparisons across the eight cases reveal consistent disjunctions between modernisation indicators and feminist activism. These observations are then synthesised into a typology of feminist consciousness outcomes, distinguishing contexts of moral depoliticisation, political suppression, and adaptive mobilisation. This interpretive framework links the empirical patterns to the study’s theoretical claim that moral economies and authoritarian regulation jointly shape the boundaries of feminist possibility in post-Soviet societies. 4. Findings This section presents the empirical patterns linking structural modernization, women’s labour participation, and feminist mobilization across the CIS-8. The analysis is descriptive and comparative, documenting systematic mismatches between modernization indicators and feminist political outcomes that motivate the explanatory framework developed in the subsequent discussion. 4.1. Structural Modernisation and Feminist Mobilisation Figure 1 shows the relationship between structural modernization and feminist mobilization across eight post-Soviet states from 2015 to 2019. Structural modernization is represented by urbanization rates, while feminist mobilization is measured with an ordinal indicator ranging from 0 (absent or suppressed) to 2 (sustained). Classical modernization theory predicts a positive association between urbanisation and feminist political mobilisation, represented by the red dashed line in the given visual plot. However, the observed cases consistently deviate from this expectation. Highly urbanised countries such as the Russian Federation and Belarus exhibit persistently low levels of feminist mobilisation, despite advanced structural conditions. By contrast, Georgia and the Kyrgyz Republic display sustained feminist mobilisation despite only moderate levels of urbanisation. Several cases cluster in a zone of low mobilization regardless of the level of modernization. In particular, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan combine intermediate urbanization with an absence of feminist mobilization, indicating that structural modernization alone does not account for cross-national variation in feminist political outcomes across the region. This divergence reflects what Stewart et al. ( 2024 ) described as adaptive feminist activism in constrained settings, where mobilization relies on informal networks rather than institutional strength. Similarly, Bingham ( 2017 ) showed that such activism often survives under the radar of state oversight, sustained by moral legitimacy rather than formal recognition. 4.2. Women’s Labour Participation and the Decoupling Pattern Figure 2 clarifies that the paradox observed in the previous visual plot is not caused by low levels of women’s economic participation. This plot compares female labour force participation rates with feminist mobilisation scores across the CIS-8, with countries ordered by participation level. Female labour force participation remains relatively high in all cases, generally ranging from approximately 48 to 65 percent. Despite this, feminist mobilisation varies sharply. Countries such as Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, and the Russian Federation combine substantial female labour participation with absent or suppressed feminist mobilisation. In contrast, Georgia and the Kyrgyz Republic show sustained mobilisation despite more modest labour participation rates. This pattern indicates a decoupling between women’s participation in the labour market and the emergence of feminist political mobilisation. Women’s labour, while widespread across the region, does not uniformly translate into collective gender-based political consciousness. This decoupling echoes Ghodsee ( 2004 ), who showed that post-socialist women’s work was moralised as duty rather than politicised as rights-based action, limiting its capacity to produce feminist consciousness. 4.3. Structural Conditions and Reproductive Burden Table 1 presents descriptive indicators of women’s labour participation, urbanisation, fertility, and feminist mobilisation across the CIS-8. The table confirms that relatively high female labour force participation is a common regional characteristic rather than an exceptional condition. However, fertility rates vary substantially, reflecting differences in reproductive and care burdens. Countries such as the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan have higher fertility rates alongside significant female labour participation, suggesting a “double burden” in which women’s economic activity coexists with extensive care responsibilities. In these contexts, high labour participation does not correspond to higher levels of feminist mobilization. Conversely, low-fertility cases such as Belarus and the Russian Federation also display low mobilization, indicating that reduced reproductive burden alone is insufficient to generate feminist political action. Taken together, these descriptive patterns suggest that neither modernization, women’s labour participation, nor fertility in isolation explains variation in feminist mobilization outcomes across the CIS-8. As McDowell et al. ( 2005 ) and Robinson ( 2006 ) noted, the moral economies of care and respectability often sustain gendered obligations even when structural barriers recede. Table 1 Structural Conditions, Women’s Labor, and Feminist Mobilization in the CIS-8 Country Female LFP (%) Urbanization (%) Fertility Rate Mobilization (0–2) Armenia 52.5 63.3 1.6 1 Azerbaijan 63.1 56.4 1.8 0 Belarus 54 79.5 1.5 0 Georgia 48.2 59.5 1.9 2 Kazakhstan 64.5 57.7 2.9 1 Kyrgyz Republic 48.5 36.9 3.3 2 Russian Fed. 55.1 74.8 1.6 0 Uzbekistan 52.4 50.4 2.6 0 Note: Female labour force participation and urbanisation are period averages (2015–2019). Feminist mobilisation is measured on an ordinal scale (0–2). 4.4. Typology of Feminist Consciousness Outcomes To synthesise the empirical patterns documented above, Table 2 presents an analytical typology of feminist consciousness outcomes across the CIS-8. Four distinct configurations are identified. First, the Mobilisation Anomaly category (Georgia and the Kyrgyz Republic) captures cases where sustained feminist mobilisation occurs despite moderate levels of structural modernisation. Second, the Moral Economy Trap (Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan) describes contexts characterised by high female labour participation and fertility, in which state-led gender norms and moral-economic arrangements constrain feminist advocacy. Third, the Repression Trap (Russian Federation and Belarus) identifies highly urbanised cases where feminist mobilisation is limited through active state regulation and suppression. Finally, Hybrid or Emerging cases (Armenia and Kazakhstan) display episodic or partial mobilisation within continuing structural and normative constraints. The fourfold typology aligns with broader feminist theorising on moral and political constraint. The Moral Economy Trap parallels Ghodsee ( 2004 ) and Korolczuk ( 2016 ), who described how NGOisation and duty-centred labour ethics depoliticise feminist action. The Repression Trap corresponds to Pető’s ( 2024 ) concept of epistemic governance, in which moral and administrative controls suppress feminist discourse. The Mobilisation Anomaly cases illustrate the capacity for informal and morally legitimate activism to persist despite limited structural advantage (see also Stewart et al., 2024 ; Bingham, 2017 ). Table 2 Typology of Feminist Consciousness Outcomes in the CIS-8 Type Countries Characteristics Mobilization Anomaly Kyrgyz Republic, Georgia Sustained feminist mobilization despite moderate levels of structural modernization. Moral Economy Trap Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan High female labor participation and fertility, but state-led gender norms and moral economies constrain feminist advocacy. Repression Trap Russian Federation, Belarus High urbanization and women’s labor participation accompanied by active state suppression of feminist mobilization. Hybrid / Emerging Armenia, Kazakhstan Transitional cases with trace or episodic mobilization, still constrained by traditional norms or state frameworks. Note: Analytic typology is derived from patterns observed in Table 1 and Figs. 1 – 2 ; categories are descriptive and specific to each period. The typology is descriptive but analytically grounded in the interplay of structural, moral, and political conditions observed across cases. It is intended to organise empirical regularities rather than impose fixed or universal classifications, and it provides a structured foundation for the explanatory analysis developed in the following section. Together, these results suggest that women’s labour participation and structural modernisation are insufficient to account for variation in feminist mobilisation across the CIS-8. In the discussion, we develop an explanatory framework for this decoupling, focusing on moral economies, state regulation, and repression. Overall, the findings indicate that modernization and women’s labour participation are insufficient conditions for feminist mobilization. Instead, the interaction of moral framing, institutional regulation, and repression appears to shape feminist outcomes, consistent with moral-economy perspectives (e.g. Sayer, 2007 ; Walby, 2023 ). 5. Discussion The findings reveal a systematic decoupling between structural modernization and feminist mobilization, prompting a reconsideration of how feminist consciousness is embedded within moral and institutional contexts. This study aimed to investigate a persistent anomaly in post-Soviet gender trajectories: the absence or stagnation of feminist political mobilization despite relatively high levels of women’s labour force participation and structural modernization. The descriptive results show that neither urbanisation nor women’s economic activity, individually or combined, sufficiently explains cross-national variation in feminist mobilization across the CIS-8. This section interprets these findings by placing them within broader debates on modernization, moral economy, and state power, using the typology as an organising framework. Specifically, it analyses these mismatches through the perspectives of feminist moral economy (Booth, 1994 ; Sayer, 2007 ) and authoritarian gender regime theory (Walby, 2023 ), thereby situating the CIS-8 within comparative debates on gendered modernization. Classical modernization theory posits that structural transformation – urbanisation, industrialisation, and women’s integration into the labour market – creates the social foundations for feminist consciousness and political mobilisation. The empirical patterns observed in Fig. 1 challenge this linear assumption. Highly urbanised cases such as the Russian Federation and Belarus exhibit persistently low feminist mobilisation, while countries with more modest levels of modernisation, such as Georgia and the Kyrgyz Republic, display sustained mobilisation. These patterns suggest that modernisation does not operate as a uniform or autonomous driver of feminist political outcomes. Instead, its effects are mediated by political institutions, normative frameworks, and historical legacies that shape how women’s labour and social roles are interpreted and regulated. Modernisation, in this sense, may provide structural capacity without guaranteeing political articulation: it can expand the material and institutional bases for participation while leaving open the question of how those capacities are mobilised or constrained. As Fraser (2016) and Walby ( 2023 ) argue, structural modernisation can expand women’s economic roles while also generating institutional arrangements that reproduce control, pointing to multiple gender-regime trajectories rather than a linear path towards emancipation. Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan exemplify what this study terms the “Moral Economy Trap”. In these contexts, women’s labour force participation is substantial and socially normalised, yet feminist mobilisation remains absent. The descriptive evidence suggests that women’s work is embedded in moral-economic arrangements that frame labour as familial duty, social contribution, or national responsibility, rather than as a basis for rights-based claims. This dynamic mirrors what Ghodsee ( 2004 ) describes as “feminism-by-design”, whereby women’s work is valorised within moralised, state-led frameworks but stripped of oppositional potential. This also reflects global debates on the depoliticisation of women’s work within welfare and development regimes (Robinson, 2006 ; Fraser, 2016). High fertility rates in these cases further reinforce a “double burden” structure, in which women’s participation in paid labour coexists with extensive reproductive and care obligations. Under such conditions, labour does not function as a source of autonomy or political leverage but as an extension of moral obligation. Feminist advocacy, when it emerges, is often delegitimised as socially disruptive or ideologically foreign, limiting its capacity to develop into sustained mobilisation. Importantly, the absence of mobilisation in these cases should not be read as a lack of women’s agency or awareness. Rather, it reflects institutional and normative constraints that channel women’s labour into non-political forms of participation – a process consistent with Korolczuk’s ( 2016 ) account of neoliberal and moral co-optation in post-socialist activism. The Russian Federation and Belarus represent a distinct configuration, described here as the “Repression Trap”. These countries combine high levels of urbanisation and women’s labour force participation with low feminist mobilisation, not solely due to moral-economic framing but because of active state intervention. In these contexts, feminist organisations and advocacy initiatives have faced legal restrictions, deregistration, and stigmatisation, with documented intensification during the 2015–2019 period analysed here (building on trends visible since the early 2010s). Treating suppressed mobilisation as evidence of constrained capacity rather than simple absence underscores the tension between structural modernisation and political closure. These cases exemplify Walby’s ( 2023 ) authoritarian gender regimes, in which coercive and moral control intersect to regulate feminist discourse. Feminist consciousness may exist latently, but its public articulation is curtailed by regulatory and coercive mechanisms. These cases highlight that modernisation can coexist with – and under certain conditions, may even be accompanied by – sophisticated forms of political control that limit independent civil society mobilisation, including gender-based advocacy. They also resonate with what Pető ( 2024 ) terms “epistemic governance”: the moral-political disciplining of feminist knowledge and organisation under illiberal rule. The Kyrgyz Republic and Georgia stand out as “mobilisation anomalies”, exhibiting sustained feminist mobilisation despite only moderate levels of modernisation and, in the case of Kyrgyzstan, high fertility. These cases suggest that feminist mobilisation can arise under structurally constrained conditions when competitive political environments or civil society ecosystems allow collective action. The Kyrgyz Republic’s more frequent regime turnover and episodic political openings, for example, have periodically expanded the space for organising compared to neighbouring contexts. In both settings, feminist networks have taken advantage of partial political openings and transnational linkages, reflecting forms of “adaptive activism” documented by Stewart, Grabe, and Zheng ( 2024 ). Armenia and Kazakhstan occupy “Hybrid or Emerging” positions, characterised by episodic or limited mobilisation that has not consolidated into sustained feminist movements. These trajectories indicate that feminist consciousness is neither absent nor fully institutionalised, remaining contingent on evolving political and normative conditions. They underscore that feminist mobilisation is shaped less by structural modernisation itself than by the interaction of labour regimes, state power, and moral-economic norms. Their ambivalent trajectories also align with Salmenniemi’s ( 2019 ) account of how post-socialist activism may shift into therapeutic, civic, or service-oriented forms rather than explicitly feminist claims-making (see also Salmenniemi et al., 2025 ). Overall, these findings contribute to feminist and gender-historical scholarship by showing that women’s participation in the labour force does not universally result in feminist political consciousness. In post-socialist contexts, labour has been state-managed and morally regulated, challenging the Eurocentric assumption that moving from “hearth to factory” is inherently liberating. By emphasising moral economies and repression alongside modernisation, this study offers a framework for analysing feminist outcomes where women’s work is widespread but politically depoliticised. The typology developed here offers a comparative framework applicable beyond the CIS, particularly to other semi-authoritarian or post-socialist contexts. It demonstrates how post-socialist societies generate diverse forms of feminist (non-)mobilisation, shaped by the moral legitimation of labour and the institutionalisation of repression. This analysis contributes to debates in feminist political economy by clarifying how moral economies of duty intersect with repressive institutions to shape the potential for feminist agency (Kaufmann, 2022 ; Walby, 2023 ). This study is descriptive and comparative. The ordinal mobilisation measure cannot fully capture the diversity of feminist expression, especially informal or private forms of consciousness, and the analysis does not claim causal inference. Instead, it identifies patterned mismatches that require theoretical explanation. Future research could extend this framework through longitudinal analysis, subnational comparisons, or qualitative fieldwork to explore how moral economies and state regulation evolve over time. This exploratory, interpretive study relies on secondary, publicly available sources rather than original field data, limiting the precision of measuring feminist mobilisation across cases. The ordinal indicator captures visible, sustained mobilisation but may underrepresent informal, localised, or digital feminist activity. The analysis covers 2015–2019 and excludes subsequent political or social changes. These limitations reflect the challenges of studying constrained civic environments but do not negate the comparative patterns identified. Future research using longitudinal or field-based data could enhance understanding of the interaction between moral economies and repression over time. These findings prompt further theoretical reflection on how power, through moral and institutional forms, shapes both the visibility and definition of feminist mobilisation in post-socialist contexts. 6. Conclusion Building on the interpretive findings outlined above, this conclusion distils the broader implications of the study and its limitations. This study examined why high levels of women’s labour force participation in post-Soviet societies do not consistently lead to feminist political mobilisation. Using a comparative descriptive analysis of eight CIS countries between 2015 and 2019, it documented a persistent mismatch between structural modernisation, women’s economic participation, and feminist consciousness. The findings show that neither urbanisation nor women’s integration into the labour market sufficiently explains the variation in feminist mobilisation across the region. By combining descriptive indicators with an analytically grounded typology, the study advances a central insight: women’s labour can be widespread yet politically depoliticised. In several CIS contexts, labour is socially framed within moral economies that emphasise women’s work as familial duty or national service rather than as a basis for rights-based claims. In others, feminist mobilisation is constrained through legal regulation and administrative repression, even under conditions of advanced modernisation. These configurations challenge the linear assumptions of classical modernisation theory and underscore the importance of political and normative mediation in shaping feminist outcomes. The typology developed here – distinguishing mobilization anomalies, moral economy traps, repression traps, and hybrid trajectories – provides a comparative framework for interpreting divergent feminist outcomes under broadly similar structural conditions. Rather than viewing the absence of feminist mobilization as a deficit or anomaly, the analysis demonstrates how such outcomes are historically and institutionally produced. In this way, it contributes to feminist political economy debates on how care, labour, and moral order intersect to define women’s political possibilities (e. g. Sayer, 2007 ; Fraser, 2016; Walby, 2023 ). Beyond the CIS-8 cases, these findings contribute to broader debates in gender history, political sociology, and development studies. They caution against universal models that equate women’s labour participation with emancipation or feminist consciousness, particularly in post-socialist and semi-authoritarian settings. In this regard, the study reframes the paradox of women’s work in post-socialist societies as a question not of progress or delay, but of how power moralises productivity and silences dissent. As Kaufmann ( 2022 ) argues, feminist agency arises not from structural opportunity alone, but from the capacity to redefine the moral and epistemic terms of economic participation. More broadly, this study highlights the need to examine how labour, care, and gender norms are morally framed and politically regulated when assessing pathways to feminist mobilisation. While interpretive and comparative in scope, the analysis necessarily has limitations that should be acknowledged. The ordinal measure of feminist mobilisation cannot capture the full diversity of gendered consciousness, particularly informal or private forms of dissent. Future research could extend this framework through longitudinal analysis, subnational comparison, or qualitative inquiry into everyday practices of gendered labour and care. Nonetheless, by making the absence of feminist mobilisation empirically visible and analytically tractable, this study offers a grounded perspective on why women’s entry into the formal workforce – long considered an engine of emancipation – often remains, in much of the post-Soviet space, a site of moral obligation and state-managed stability rather than political transformation. Declarations Disclosure of interest The authors report there are no competing interests to declare. Data Availability Statement Raw and derived data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Quantitative indicators are publicly accessible via the World Bank’s World Development Indicators (2015–2019). Qualitative materials were compiled from open NGO and human rights sources cited in the manuscript. Ethics Statement This research did not involve human participants, interviews, or experiments requiring ethical approval. All analysed data were sourced from publicly available secondary materials, such as international databases, NGO registries, and published reports. Ethical considerations centred on responsibly interpreting materials from politically sensitive contexts. Care was taken to avoid identifying individuals or organisations where feminist activism might face state surveillance or repression. Funding Statement This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. Author Contribution Z.J. designed the study and wrote the main manuscript text. B.K. compiled and analysed the data and prepared the figures and tables. M.Sh. contributed to the literature review and regional context. Sh.O. assisted with data verification and manuscript revision. All authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript. References Bingham N (2017) Gendering Civil Society: The State of Women’s NGOs in the Former Soviet Region. Women’s Stud 46(5):478–494. https://doi.org/10.1080/00497878.2017.1324445 Booth WJ (1994) On the Idea of the Moral Economy. Am Polit Sci Rev 88(3):653–667. 10.2307/2944801 Einhorn B (1993) Cinderella goes to market (pp. 156 – 57). Verso, London Gal S, Kligman G (2000) The Politics of Gender after Socialism: A Comparative-Historical Essay. Princeton University Press, Princeton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400843008 Ghodsee K (2004) Feminism-by-design: emerging capitalisms, cultural feminism, and women’s nongovernmental organizations in postsocialist Eastern Europe. Signs: J Women Cult Soc 29(3):727–753. https://doi.org/10.1086/380631 Inglehart R, Norris P (2003) Rising tide: Gender equality and cultural change around the world. Cambridge University Press Kataeva Z, Durrani N, Izekenova Z, Rakhimzhanova A (2023) Evolution of gender research in the social sciences in post-Soviet countries: A bibliometric analysis. Scientometrics 128(3):1639–1666. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04619-9 Kaufmann L (2022) Feminist Epistemology and Business Ethics. Bus Ethics Q 32(4):546–572. 10.1017/beq.2021.33 Koch N (2013) Introduction–Field methods in ‘closed contexts’: undertaking research in authoritarian states and places. Area 45(4):390–395. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12044 Korolczuk E (2016) Neoliberalism and feminist organizing: from NGO-ization of resistance to resistance against neoliberalism. In: Eszter, Kováts (eds) Tamás Bereczky (translator), Solidarity in Struggle – Feminist Perspectives on Neoliberalism in East-Central Europe. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Budapest, pp 32–53 Korolczuk E, Graff A, Kantola J (2025) Gender danger. Mapping a decade of research on anti-gender politics. J Gend Stud 34(5):621–640. https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2025.2489584 McAdam D, Tarrow S (2018) The political context of social movements. In: David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule, Hanspeter Kriesi, Holly J. McCammon (Eds.), The Wiley Blackwell companion to social movements , 17–42. John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119168577.ch1 McDowell L, Ray K, Perrons D, Fagan C, Ward K (2005) Women’s paid work and moral economies of care. Social Cult Geogr 6(2):219–235. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649360500074642 Miazhevich G (2025) Russian ‘De/Fault’ Feminism, or the Phenomenon of Post-Soviet Post-Feminism. Europe-Asia Stud 77(9):1478–1497. https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2025.2549813 Molyneux M (1985) Family Reform in Socialist States: The Hidden Agenda1. Feminist Rev 21(1):47–64. https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.1985.28 Nancy Fraser (2016) Contradictions of Capital and Care. New Left Review , vol. 100, no. 99, manchesteropenhive.com, p. 117. https://doi.org/10.64590/nt2 Offe C (1991) [Review of The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. , by G. Esping-Andersen]. American Journal of Sociology , 96 (6), 1555–1557. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2781919 Pető A (2024) Four reasons why Gender Studies has changed because of illiberal attacks, and why it matters. Berliner Blätter 88:111–115. https://doi.org/10.18452/27986 Robinson F (2006) Beyond labour rights: The ethics of care and women’s work in the global economy. Int Feminist J Politics 8(3):321–342. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616740600792871 Salmenniemi S (2019) Therapeutic politics: critique and contestation in the post-political conjuncture. Social Mov Stud 18(4):408–424. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2019.1590692 Salmenniemi S, Perheentupa I, Ylöstalo H (2025) Political Imagination and Social Change. Sociol Res Online 30(2):345–362. https://doi.org/10.1177/13607804251334020 Sayer A (2007) Moral Economy as Critique. New Polit Econ 12(2):261–270. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563460701303008 Stewart AJ, Grabe S, Zheng W (2024) Women’s movement activism in authoritarian states: Lessons from the Global Feminisms Project. Signs: J Women Cult Soc 49(2):385–409. https://doi.org/10.1086/726643 Walby S (2023) Authoritarianism, violence, and varieties of gender regimes: Violence as an institutional domain. Women's Stud Int forum 98:102677. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2023.102677 Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Supplementary Files feministconsciousnesscis920102024.csv Appendix.docx Cite Share Download PDF Status: Under Review Version 1 posted Editorial decision: Revision requested 26 Mar, 2026 Reviews received at journal 23 Mar, 2026 Reviews received at journal 17 Mar, 2026 Reviewers agreed at journal 26 Feb, 2026 Reviewers agreed at journal 24 Feb, 2026 Reviewers invited by journal 23 Feb, 2026 Editor invited by journal 05 Feb, 2026 Editor assigned by journal 31 Dec, 2025 Submission checks completed at journal 31 Dec, 2025 First submitted to journal 29 Dec, 2025 You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. 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Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-8475847","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Research Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":596304714,"identity":"8a06b3e2-6077-4b37-9adf-4a611744b5cc","order_by":0,"name":"Zuhriddin Juraev","email":"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAZAAAAAyAQMAAABI0h/eAAAABlBMVEX///8AAABVwtN+AAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAAA0klEQVRIiWNgGAWjYDCCA0DEU8Emx9gA4RsQqeUMnzFpWhh42+QSoTqI0MJ3/IzhgbdtZunNs3sMGH7UMBibNxDQInkmx+DgnHNpuY1zzhgw9hxjMJM5QECLwYG0hMM8ZcdyG2fkGDDwNjDYSBBymMH5Z0AtbP/TGYFaGP8SpeVG8oHDPG1sCSAtzEBbzAhqkbzx+MDBOWfYDBtnpBUcljkmYUxQC9/5xOYPbyrY5A1nJG98+KbGxnAGIS1wYNgAjiOCdiABeRLUjoJRMApGwQgDAM6XQrkIEzjyAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC","orcid":"","institution":"Chonnam National University","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"Zuhriddin","middleName":"","lastName":"Juraev","suffix":""},{"id":596304715,"identity":"db071982-4f55-41bd-8507-d34a36c967ea","order_by":1,"name":"Boburmirzo Khursanaliyev","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"Kokand University","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Boburmirzo","middleName":"","lastName":"Khursanaliyev","suffix":""},{"id":596304716,"identity":"c89fe060-e037-4cfd-89e7-3d61fc60ce74","order_by":2,"name":"Makhfuzakhon Shamsieva","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"Fergana State University","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Makhfuzakhon","middleName":"","lastName":"Shamsieva","suffix":""},{"id":596304717,"identity":"d5c716c6-873d-423d-9c46-189037d5c4ed","order_by":3,"name":"Shakhodatkhon Okhunjonova","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"Fergana State University","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Shakhodatkhon","middleName":"","lastName":"Okhunjonova","suffix":""}],"badges":[],"createdAt":"2025-12-29 21:08:15","currentVersionCode":1,"declarations":"","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8475847/v1","doiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-8475847/v1","draftVersion":[],"editorialEvents":[],"editorialNote":"","failedWorkflow":false,"files":[{"id":103508287,"identity":"f23fa5e6-0a2f-4103-9911-1cefa90cc2a4","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-02-26 13:48:05","extension":"png","order_by":1,"title":"Figure 1","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":143997,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eModernisation Paradox in the CIS-8 (2015–2019)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eNote: Urbanisation (%) serves as a proxy for structural modernisation; feminist mobilisation is measured on an ordinal scale (0–2). The dashed line indicates the expectation derived from classical modernisation theory.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"floatimage1.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8475847/v1/275b476102e795227825038c.png"},{"id":103495536,"identity":"415f8542-b14f-4110-a5ec-8c95724c1624","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-02-26 11:03:51","extension":"png","order_by":2,"title":"Figure 2","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":133551,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eFemale Labour Participation and Feminist Mobilisation in the CIS-8\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eNote: Bars show average female labour force participation (ages 15+); points indicate the feminist mobilisation score (0–2). Period averages, 2015–2019\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"floatimage2.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8475847/v1/c2711f9056b34e15637abfaa.png"},{"id":103510142,"identity":"5738a2e7-b196-4544-9421-2304390090d1","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-02-26 14:04:35","extension":"pdf","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":948918,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"manuscript.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8475847/v1/33865cd4-03c1-4136-9a1d-e72f63ee0093.pdf"},{"id":103495538,"identity":"f14c4d6f-323e-41f9-b12f-4dde0da89e1d","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-02-26 11:03:51","extension":"csv","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"supplement","size":3176,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"feministconsciousnesscis920102024.csv","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8475847/v1/fd6ce1ce68e0d39dc3e6bcf7.csv"},{"id":103508046,"identity":"12c2fff9-9eb6-4c3c-b2a9-a234dc53216a","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-02-26 13:47:00","extension":"docx","order_by":2,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"supplement","size":23668,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Appendix.docx","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8475847/v1/d2b25512703138a1c33c4786.docx"}],"financialInterests":"No competing interests reported.","formattedTitle":"‘Feminist Mobilisation’ and Moral Economy in Post-Soviet Societies: Evidence from the CIS-8","fulltext":[{"header":"1. Introduction","content":"\u003cp\u003eAcross much of the world, women\u0026rsquo;s integration into paid labour has been seen as a foundational pathway to political consciousness and feminist mobilisation. Classical modernisation and liberal feminist theories have long assumed that urbanisation, labour-market participation, and economic independence erode traditional gender hierarchies and facilitate rights-based collective action (e.g., Offe, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR17\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1991\u003c/span\u003e; Inglehart \u0026amp; Norris, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR6\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2003\u003c/span\u003e). From this perspective, women\u0026rsquo;s work functions not only as an economic phenomenon but also as a catalyst for feminist political engagement and citizenship (Walby, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eYet this assumption is at odds with the realities of many post-socialist societies. Across the former Soviet region, women have participated extensively in paid labour for decades, often at levels comparable to or exceeding those in industrialised economies (Ghodsee, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR5\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2004\u003c/span\u003e; Bingham, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR1\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e). Despite this, feminist political mobilisation remains uneven, fragile, or absent. High female labour participation coexists with limited feminist organisation, weak advocacy, and, in some cases, the active suppression of gender-based claims (Pető, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR18\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e; Korolczuk et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR11\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis paper examines this tension by analysing the relationship between women\u0026rsquo;s labour participation, structural modernisation, and feminist mobilisation across eight post-Soviet states: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Russia, and Uzbekistan. These are referred to here as the post-Soviet comparison set (CIS-8), a conventional regional shorthand rather than a formal membership category. Instead of asking when feminist consciousness will emerge as a delayed outcome of modernisation, the study poses a more fundamental question: why does women\u0026rsquo;s labour not consistently generate feminist political consciousness where theory predicts it should?\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe post-Soviet region offers a particularly instructive context within semi-authoritarian and post-socialist settings, where women\u0026rsquo;s mass labour participation began as a state-managed project rather than a feminist achievement. Under Soviet rule, paid labour was presented as a social obligation and patriotic duty, rather than as an expression of rights (Molyneux, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR15\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1985\u003c/span\u003e; Ghodsee, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR5\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2004\u003c/span\u003e). After the collapse of state socialism, these moral frameworks persisted even as political regimes, market institutions, and civil societies diverged (Korolczuk, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR10\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e; Bingham, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR1\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e). In this paper, \u0026ldquo;feminist mobilisation\u0026rdquo; refers to publicly organised collective action advancing claims of gender equality and women\u0026rsquo;s rights. The analysis treats such mobilisation as an empirical and comparative phenomenon, rather than as a normative or ideological stance. Consequently, post-Soviet societies combine three features that complicate conventional feminist theories: widespread female labour participation, heterogeneous levels of modernization, and diverse regimes of political control. This combination enables a comparative analysis of how women\u0026rsquo;s economic participation translates \u0026ndash; or fails to translate \u0026ndash; into feminist mobilization under varying moral, institutional, and political conditions (McAdam \u0026amp; Tarrow, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR12\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e; Walby, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eEmpirically, the paper documents a persistent mismatch between indicators of modernization and outcomes of feminist mobilization. Using comparative descriptive data from 2015\u0026ndash;2019, it shows that neither urbanisation nor women\u0026rsquo;s labour force participation reliably predicts feminist activism. Highly urbanised countries such as Russia and Belarus exhibit low mobilization, while moderately modernised cases such as the Kyrgyz Republic and Georgia sustain visible feminist movements. Others, including Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan, combine high female labour participation with near-total feminist silence (Kataeva et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR7\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e; Stewart, Grabe, and Zheng, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR23\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eTheoretically, this mismatch cannot be explained by modernization alone. The study instead proposes a framework that highlights the moral economies of women\u0026rsquo;s labour and state regulation of advocacy as mediating mechanisms. In some contexts, women\u0026rsquo;s work is morally framed as duty rather than entitlement, limiting its capacity to generate rights-based claims (Booth, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR2\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1994\u003c/span\u003e; McDowell et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR13\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2005\u003c/span\u003e; Sayer, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR22\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2007\u003c/span\u003e). In others, feminist mobilisation is constrained by legal repression and moral policing within authoritarian gender regimes (Koch, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR9\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e; Walby, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eBy integrating comparative descriptive evidence with a typology of feminist outcomes, the paper makes three contributions. First, it challenges the universalist assumption that women\u0026rsquo;s economic participation automatically leads to feminist mobilisation. Second, it demonstrates how moral and political orders shape the meanings and consequences of women\u0026rsquo;s labour. Third, it develops a comparative framework for understanding feminist absence not as a transitional lag, but as a structural feature of post-socialist moral economies.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"2. Modernization, Moral Economy and Limits of Feminist Mobilization","content":"\u003cp\u003eA central assumption in classical and liberal feminist theory is that women\u0026rsquo;s integration into paid labour constitutes a foundational pathway to political consciousness and collective mobilisation. Within modernisation frameworks, urbanisation, industrial employment, and women\u0026rsquo;s labour-force participation are expected to erode traditional gender roles, expand social networks, and facilitate rights-based claims (Inglehart \u0026amp; Norris, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR6\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2003\u003c/span\u003e; Offe, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR17\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1991\u003c/span\u003e). From this perspective, women\u0026rsquo;s economic participation should generate feminist consciousness as a by-product of structural transformation (Walby, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e). This assumption has guided extensive empirical research linking women\u0026rsquo;s labour-market participation to political engagement, legal reform, and feminist organisation, particularly in Western and late-industrialising contexts (Paxton et al., 2007; Weldon, 2011). Yet the presumed linear relationship between labour participation and feminist mobilisation has increasingly been questioned, especially in societies where women\u0026rsquo;s work has long been normalised without corresponding political emancipation (Ghodsee, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR5\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2004\u003c/span\u003e; Korolczuk, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR10\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe post-Soviet context presents a significant challenge to this labour\u0026ndash;consciousness assumption. Under Soviet and post-Soviet regimes, women\u0026rsquo;s mass participation in paid labour was not the result of feminist struggle but a state-directed economic imperative rooted in socialist moral ideology (Molyneux, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR15\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1985\u003c/span\u003e; Ghodsee, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR5\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2004\u003c/span\u003e). Consequently, labour participation did not necessarily have emancipatory meanings. It was presented as patriotic duty and social contribution, rather than as individual rights or feminist agency. This historically moralised framing of women\u0026rsquo;s labour raises questions about the universality of modernization-based feminist trajectories (Bingham, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR1\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e; Miazhevich, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR14\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eA substantial body of literature examines post-socialist gender relations through \u0026ldquo;transition\u0026rdquo; paradigms, emphasising the restructuring of labour markets, welfare systems, and family norms following the collapse of state socialism (Einhorn, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR3\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1993\u003c/span\u003e; Gal \u0026amp; Kligman, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR4\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2000\u003c/span\u003e). Much of this scholarship documents the persistence of high female labour participation alongside the retraditionalisation of gender roles, the erosion of social protections, and the reassertion of patriarchal norms. While these works reveal important continuities and inequalities, they often interpret weak feminist mobilisation as either a delayed outcome of incomplete transition or a residual cultural legacy (Salmenniemi, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR20\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e; Salmenniemi et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR21\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e). In this view, feminist consciousness is expected to emerge once democratic institutions and civil society \u0026ldquo;mature\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis paper diverges from transitional narratives by treating the absence of feminist mobilization not as a delay or deficit, but as a structurally produced outcome, in line with scholarship that foregrounds vernacular feminist forms and the contextual specificity of claims-making (Korolczuk et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR11\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e; Miazhevich, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR14\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e). Instead of asking when feminism will \u0026ldquo;arrive,\u0026rdquo; the analysis examines why women\u0026rsquo;s labour participation does not generate feminist mobilization under specific moral and political conditions. To address this question, the paper draws on the concept of moral economy to understand how women\u0026rsquo;s labour is socially framed and politically regulated. Moral economy approaches emphasise that economic practices are always embedded in moral norms \u0026ndash; expectations about duty, obligation, and justice \u0026ndash; that shape how work is valued and politicised (Booth, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR2\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1994\u003c/span\u003e; Sayer, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR22\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2007\u003c/span\u003e). From this perspective, the meanings attached to labour can either enable or suppress political agency.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn many post-Soviet contexts, women\u0026rsquo;s labour is moralised as an extension of familial obligation and national contribution. Paid work is not presented as a site of empowerment but as a marker of respectability and moral worth (Bingham, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR1\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e; Ghodsee, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR5\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2004\u003c/span\u003e). Under these conditions, labour participation does not challenge gender hierarchies; rather, it reproduces them through a logic of obligation rather than entitlement. This helps explain why high labour participation coexists with weak feminist mobilisation in countries such as Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan, where feminist advocacy is often delegitimised as socially disruptive or culturally alien (Miazhevich, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR14\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe \u003cem\u003emoral-economy\u003c/em\u003e pathway thus accounts for depoliticisation \u0026ndash; contexts in which feminist agency is absorbed into moralised roles of duty and care. However, it cannot, on its own, explain cases of active suppression. In highly urbanised and economically modernised states such as Russia and Belarus, feminist initiatives are constrained not only by moral consensus but also by political closure. Since the 2010s, governments have restricted feminist activism through registration laws, stigmatisation, and surveillance. While Koch (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR9\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e) highlights the methodological and ethical challenges of studying such closed contexts, her observation underscores that repression itself shapes what becomes visible to researchers. In these cases, feminist consciousness may exist, but its public articulation is limited by coercive state regulation.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eMechanism logic. Two distinct causal pathways link women\u0026rsquo;s labour to low feminist mobilisation. Along the moral-economy pathway, labour framed as duty renders claims for rights illegitimate, reducing the social resonance of feminist frames and discouraging collective action. Along the repression pathway, organisational and legal constraints increase the costs and risks of activism, resulting in low visible mobilisation even where feminist consciousness persists privately. Distinguishing between these mechanisms clarifies how normative and institutional forces interact to shape feminist political outcomes.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWalby\u0026rsquo;s (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e) concept of authoritarian gender regimes offers a theoretical framework for integrating these mechanisms. While it does not directly describe CIS cases, it provides a basis for analysing how modern institutions combine coercive and moral regulation to reproduce gendered power. Pető\u0026rsquo;s (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR18\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e) notion of epistemic governance similarly addresses the moral-political disciplining of feminist discourse under illiberal rule. Distinguishing between moral depoliticisation and political suppression enables feminist absence to be understood not as uniform silence, but as the result of historically distinct modes of containment \u0026ndash; moral economy and authoritarian governance \u0026ndash; that shape mobilisation capacity in different ways.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIntegrating insights from modernisation theory, moral-economy analysis, and research on state repression, this framework specifies the conceptual architecture underlying the study\u0026rsquo;s contributions. It links structural modernisation to moral and institutional mediation, identifies the moral economy as a mechanism of depoliticisation, and distinguishes it from coercive suppression. Together, these mechanisms explain how feminist absence is produced and sustained under post-socialist conditions, providing the analytical foundation for the typology developed in the Findings section.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"3. Comparative Design, Data, and Coding Strategy","content":"\u003cp\u003eThis study uses a comparative interpretive design to examine how women\u0026rsquo;s economic participation and feminist political mobilisation intersect across eight post-Soviet states (CIS-8). Instead of testing causal hypotheses or estimating statistical models, the research describes and interprets a recurring paradox: the persistence of high women\u0026rsquo;s labour force participation alongside weak or suppressed feminist activism. The analysis is based on the premise that, in post-socialist and semi-authoritarian contexts, the relationship between labour and feminist consciousness cannot be meaningfully captured through quantitative correlations alone. Interpretation is grounded in triangulated textual and documentary evidence, including official NGO registration lists, \u0026lsquo;foreign agent\u0026rsquo; designations, changes to association laws, and documented feminist protest or advocacy events between 2015 and 2019.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec4\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003e3.1. Comparative Logic\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe eight selected countries \u0026ndash; Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Russia, and Uzbekistan \u0026ndash; share a common Soviet institutional legacy, yet differ markedly in political regime type, civil society regulation, and moral discourse on gender. This shared historical foundation provides a coherent basis for comparison while allowing the study to trace how different political and moral orders mediate feminist mobilisation. The design follows a most-similar systems logic: by holding key background conditions relatively constant, it becomes possible to examine how variation in political closure and moral economy corresponds to divergent feminist outcomes.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec5\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003e3.2. Data and Analytical Materials\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe analysis is based on a small but triangulated evidence base. Structural indicators \u0026ndash; female labour force participation, urbanisation, and fertility \u0026ndash; were obtained from the World Bank\u0026rsquo;s World Development Indicators (WDI) for 2015\u0026ndash;2019. Both structural indicators and mobilisation scores are aggregated for 2015\u0026ndash;2019, the overlapping period available across data sources, to capture pre-pandemic stability and avoid distortions from later protest cycles or pandemic-era policy changes. These measures are used not as predictive variables but as contextual markers of modernisation. They provide a baseline view of women\u0026rsquo;s economic incorporation against which observed patterns of feminist mobilisation can be interpreted. All datasets and coding decisions are summarised in the Appendix (Table \u003cspan refid=\"Tab3\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003eA1\u003c/span\u003e), which lists indicator sources, mobilisation scores, and country-level evidence references.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eTo assess feminist activism, we collected qualitative evidence from NGO registries, secondary academic literature, human rights reports, and documented protest or advocacy events. Reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and local gender rights organisations were cross-checked with scholarly analyses (e.g., Ghodsee, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR5\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2004\u003c/span\u003e; Bingham, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR1\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e; Pető, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR18\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e) to ensure consistency in identifying both periods of activism and episodes of repression.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eBecause feminist activism in the region is often episodic and informal, we constructed a simple interpretive scale to differentiate degrees of mobilization rather than to measure them precisely. First, countries with no sustained feminist organisations and clear evidence of repression were classified as cases of absent or suppressed mobilization. Second, countries with short-lived campaigns or intermittent advocacy were classified as emerging or episodic. Third, countries exhibiting recurring activism or stable feminist organisations were classified as sustained. This scale functions less as a metric than as a heuristic device, clarifying cross-national contrasts without implying linear progression or developmental sequencing.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec6\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003e3.3. Interpretive and Ethical Considerations\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn constructing these classifications, we treated the absence of visible activism not as evidence of a lack of feminist consciousness, but as a potential indicator of political or moral constraint. In several contexts, notably Russia and Belarus, organisations have been deregistered, monitored, or designated as \u0026ldquo;foreign agents.\u0026rdquo; In such cases, we interpret suppression as evidence of constrained mobilisation capacity rather than apathy. This interpretive stance reflects feminist methodological commitments to recognising both visible and silenced forms of agency under authoritarian constraint. It also follows insights from feminist research in authoritarian settings, which emphasise treating silences and informal practices as data rather than omissions (Koch, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR9\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e; Stewart et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR23\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eGiven uneven access to primary data and the fluidity of feminist organising, the analysis emphasises transparency and reproducibility over precision. Each country-level assessment is based on multiple publicly verifiable sources, and coding decisions are documented to allow reinterpretation as new evidence emerges. The aim is not to exhaustively quantify mobilisation, but to build a comparative account of how women\u0026rsquo;s economic participation interacts with distinct moral and political orders.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec7\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003e3.4. Analytical Orientation\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe analysis proceeds inductively. Descriptive comparisons across the eight cases reveal consistent disjunctions between modernisation indicators and feminist activism. These observations are then synthesised into a typology of feminist consciousness outcomes, distinguishing contexts of moral depoliticisation, political suppression, and adaptive mobilisation. This interpretive framework links the empirical patterns to the study\u0026rsquo;s theoretical claim that moral economies and authoritarian regulation jointly shape the boundaries of feminist possibility in post-Soviet societies.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"4. Findings","content":"\u003cp\u003eThis section presents the empirical patterns linking structural modernization, women\u0026rsquo;s labour participation, and feminist mobilization across the CIS-8. The analysis is descriptive and comparative, documenting systematic mismatches between modernization indicators and feminist political outcomes that motivate the explanatory framework developed in the subsequent discussion.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec9\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\n \u003ch2\u003e4.1. Structural Modernisation and Feminist Mobilisation\u003c/h2\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eFigure \u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e shows the relationship between structural modernization and feminist mobilization across eight post-Soviet states from 2015 to 2019. Structural modernization is represented by urbanization rates, while feminist mobilization is measured with an ordinal indicator ranging from 0 (absent or suppressed) to 2 (sustained).\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eClassical modernization theory predicts a positive association between urbanisation and feminist political mobilisation, represented by the red dashed line in the given visual plot. However, the observed cases consistently deviate from this expectation. Highly urbanised countries such as the Russian Federation and Belarus exhibit persistently low levels of feminist mobilisation, despite advanced structural conditions. By contrast, Georgia and the Kyrgyz Republic display sustained feminist mobilisation despite only moderate levels of urbanisation.\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eSeveral cases cluster in a zone of low mobilization regardless of the level of modernization. In particular, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan combine intermediate urbanization with an absence of feminist mobilization, indicating that structural modernization alone does not account for cross-national variation in feminist political outcomes across the region. This divergence reflects what Stewart et al. (\u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e) described as adaptive feminist activism in constrained settings, where mobilization relies on informal networks rather than institutional strength. Similarly, Bingham (\u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e) showed that such activism often survives under the radar of state oversight, sustained by moral legitimacy rather than formal recognition.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec10\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\n \u003ch2\u003e4.2. Women\u0026rsquo;s Labour Participation and the Decoupling Pattern\u003c/h2\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eFigure \u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e clarifies that the paradox observed in the previous visual plot is not caused by low levels of women\u0026rsquo;s economic participation. This plot compares female labour force participation rates with feminist mobilisation scores across the CIS-8, with countries ordered by participation level. Female labour force participation remains relatively high in all cases, generally ranging from approximately 48 to 65 percent. Despite this, feminist mobilisation varies sharply. Countries such as Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, and the Russian Federation combine substantial female labour participation with absent or suppressed feminist mobilisation. In contrast, Georgia and the Kyrgyz Republic show sustained mobilisation despite more modest labour participation rates. This pattern indicates a decoupling between women\u0026rsquo;s participation in the labour market and the emergence of feminist political mobilisation. Women\u0026rsquo;s labour, while widespread across the region, does not uniformly translate into collective gender-based political consciousness. This decoupling echoes Ghodsee (\u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2004\u003c/span\u003e), who showed that post-socialist women\u0026rsquo;s work was moralised as duty rather than politicised as rights-based action, limiting its capacity to produce feminist consciousness.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec11\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\n \u003ch2\u003e4.3. Structural Conditions and Reproductive Burden\u003c/h2\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTable \u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e presents descriptive indicators of women\u0026rsquo;s labour participation, urbanisation, fertility, and feminist mobilisation across the CIS-8. The table confirms that relatively high female labour force participation is a common regional characteristic rather than an exceptional condition. However, fertility rates vary substantially, reflecting differences in reproductive and care burdens.\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eCountries such as the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan have higher fertility rates alongside significant female labour participation, suggesting a \u0026ldquo;double burden\u0026rdquo; in which women\u0026rsquo;s economic activity coexists with extensive care responsibilities. In these contexts, high labour participation does not correspond to higher levels of feminist mobilization. Conversely, low-fertility cases such as Belarus and the Russian Federation also display low mobilization, indicating that reduced reproductive burden alone is insufficient to generate feminist political action. Taken together, these descriptive patterns suggest that neither modernization, women\u0026rsquo;s labour participation, nor fertility in isolation explains variation in feminist mobilization outcomes across the CIS-8. As McDowell et al. (\u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2005\u003c/span\u003e) and Robinson (\u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2006\u003c/span\u003e) noted, the moral economies of care and respectability often sustain gendered obligations even when structural barriers recede.\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003ctable id=\"Tab1\" border=\"1\"\u003e\n \u003ccaption language=\"En\"\u003e\n \u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 1\u003c/div\u003e\n \u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eStructural Conditions, Women\u0026rsquo;s Labor, and Feminist Mobilization in the CIS-8\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/div\u003e\n \u003c/caption\u003e\n \u003ccolgroup cols=\"5\"\u003e\u003c/colgroup\u003e\n \u003cthead\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eCountry\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/th\u003e\n \u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eFemale LFP (%)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/th\u003e\n \u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eUrbanization (%)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/th\u003e\n \u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eFertility Rate\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/th\u003e\n \u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eMobilization (0\u0026ndash;2)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/th\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003c/thead\u003e\n \u003ctbody\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eArmenia\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e52.5\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"char\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e63.3\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"char\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1.6\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"char\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAzerbaijan\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e63.1\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"char\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e56.4\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"char\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1.8\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"char\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e0\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eBelarus\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e54\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"char\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e79.5\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"char\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1.5\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"char\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e0\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eGeorgia\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e48.2\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"char\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e59.5\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"char\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1.9\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"char\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eKazakhstan\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e64.5\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"char\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e57.7\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"char\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e2.9\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"char\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eKyrgyz Republic\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e48.5\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"char\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e36.9\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"char\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e3.3\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"char\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eRussian Fed.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e55.1\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"char\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e74.8\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"char\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1.6\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"char\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e0\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eUzbekistan\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e52.4\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"char\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e50.4\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"char\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e2.6\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"char\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e0\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003c/tbody\u003e\n \u003ctfoot\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd colspan=\"5\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eNote: Female labour force participation and urbanisation are period averages (2015\u0026ndash;2019). Feminist mobilisation is measured on an ordinal scale (0\u0026ndash;2).\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003c/tfoot\u003e\n \u003c/table\u003e\n \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec12\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\n \u003ch2\u003e4.4. Typology of Feminist Consciousness Outcomes\u003c/h2\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTo synthesise the empirical patterns documented above, Table \u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e presents an analytical typology of feminist consciousness outcomes across the CIS-8. Four distinct configurations are identified. First, the Mobilisation Anomaly category (Georgia and the Kyrgyz Republic) captures cases where sustained feminist mobilisation occurs despite moderate levels of structural modernisation. Second, the Moral Economy Trap (Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan) describes contexts characterised by high female labour participation and fertility, in which state-led gender norms and moral-economic arrangements constrain feminist advocacy. Third, the Repression Trap (Russian Federation and Belarus) identifies highly urbanised cases where feminist mobilisation is limited through active state regulation and suppression. Finally, Hybrid or Emerging cases (Armenia and Kazakhstan) display episodic or partial mobilisation within continuing structural and normative constraints.\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eThe fourfold typology aligns with broader feminist theorising on moral and political constraint. The Moral Economy Trap parallels Ghodsee (\u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2004\u003c/span\u003e) and Korolczuk (\u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e), who described how \u003cem\u003eNGOisation\u003c/em\u003e and duty-centred labour ethics depoliticise feminist action. The Repression Trap corresponds to Pető\u0026rsquo;s (\u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e) concept of epistemic governance, in which moral and administrative controls suppress feminist discourse. The Mobilisation Anomaly cases illustrate the capacity for informal and morally legitimate activism to persist despite limited structural advantage (see also Stewart et al., \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e; Bingham, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\n \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003ctable id=\"Tab2\" border=\"1\"\u003e\n \u003ccaption language=\"En\"\u003e\n \u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 2\u003c/div\u003e\n \u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTypology of Feminist Consciousness Outcomes in the CIS-8\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/div\u003e\n \u003c/caption\u003e\n \u003ccolgroup cols=\"3\"\u003e\u003c/colgroup\u003e\n \u003cthead\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eType\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/th\u003e\n \u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eCountries\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/th\u003e\n \u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eCharacteristics\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/th\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003c/thead\u003e\n \u003ctbody\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eMobilization Anomaly\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eKyrgyz Republic, Georgia\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eSustained feminist mobilization despite moderate levels of structural modernization.\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eMoral Economy Trap\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eUzbekistan, Azerbaijan\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eHigh female labor participation and fertility, but state-led gender norms and moral economies constrain feminist advocacy.\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eRepression Trap\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eRussian Federation, Belarus\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eHigh urbanization and women\u0026rsquo;s labor participation accompanied by active state suppression of feminist mobilization.\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eHybrid / Emerging\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eArmenia, Kazakhstan\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTransitional cases with trace or episodic mobilization, still constrained by traditional norms or state frameworks.\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003c/tbody\u003e\n \u003ctfoot\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd colspan=\"3\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eNote: Analytic typology is derived from patterns observed in\u003c/em\u003e Table \u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e \u003cem\u003eand\u003c/em\u003e Figs. \u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e\u0026ndash;\u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e; \u003cem\u003ecategories are descriptive and specific to each period.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003c/tfoot\u003e\n \u003c/table\u003e\n \u003c/div\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eThe typology is descriptive but analytically grounded in the interplay of structural, moral, and political conditions observed across cases. It is intended to organise empirical regularities rather than impose fixed or universal classifications, and it provides a structured foundation for the explanatory analysis developed in the following section. Together, these results suggest that women\u0026rsquo;s labour participation and structural modernisation are insufficient to account for variation in feminist mobilisation across the CIS-8. In the discussion, we develop an explanatory framework for this decoupling, focusing on moral economies, state regulation, and repression.\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eOverall, the findings indicate that modernization and women\u0026rsquo;s labour participation are insufficient conditions for feminist mobilization. Instead, the interaction of moral framing, institutional regulation, and repression appears to shape feminist outcomes, consistent with moral-economy perspectives (e.g. Sayer, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2007\u003c/span\u003e; Walby, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"5. Discussion","content":"\u003cp\u003eThe findings reveal a systematic decoupling between structural modernization and feminist mobilization, prompting a reconsideration of how feminist consciousness is embedded within moral and institutional contexts. This study aimed to investigate a persistent anomaly in post-Soviet gender trajectories: the absence or stagnation of feminist political mobilization despite relatively high levels of women\u0026rsquo;s labour force participation and structural modernization. The descriptive results show that neither urbanisation nor women\u0026rsquo;s economic activity, individually or combined, sufficiently explains cross-national variation in feminist mobilization across the CIS-8. This section interprets these findings by placing them within broader debates on modernization, moral economy, and state power, using the typology as an organising framework. Specifically, it analyses these mismatches through the perspectives of feminist moral economy (Booth, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR2\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1994\u003c/span\u003e; Sayer, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR22\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2007\u003c/span\u003e) and authoritarian gender regime theory (Walby, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e), thereby situating the CIS-8 within comparative debates on gendered modernization.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eClassical modernization theory posits that structural transformation \u0026ndash; urbanisation, industrialisation, and women\u0026rsquo;s integration into the labour market \u0026ndash; creates the social foundations for feminist consciousness and political mobilisation. The empirical patterns observed in Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig1\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e challenge this linear assumption. Highly urbanised cases such as the Russian Federation and Belarus exhibit persistently low feminist mobilisation, while countries with more modest levels of modernisation, such as Georgia and the Kyrgyz Republic, display sustained mobilisation. These patterns suggest that modernisation does not operate as a uniform or autonomous driver of feminist political outcomes.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eInstead, its effects are mediated by political institutions, normative frameworks, and historical legacies that shape how women\u0026rsquo;s labour and social roles are interpreted and regulated. Modernisation, in this sense, may provide structural capacity without guaranteeing political articulation: it can expand the material and institutional bases for participation while leaving open the question of how those capacities are mobilised or constrained. As Fraser (2016) and Walby (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e) argue, structural modernisation can expand women\u0026rsquo;s economic roles while also generating institutional arrangements that reproduce control, pointing to multiple gender-regime trajectories rather than a linear path towards emancipation.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eUzbekistan and Azerbaijan exemplify what this study terms the \u0026ldquo;Moral Economy Trap\u0026rdquo;. In these contexts, women\u0026rsquo;s labour force participation is substantial and socially normalised, yet feminist mobilisation remains absent. The descriptive evidence suggests that women\u0026rsquo;s work is embedded in moral-economic arrangements that frame labour as familial duty, social contribution, or national responsibility, rather than as a basis for rights-based claims. This dynamic mirrors what Ghodsee (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR5\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2004\u003c/span\u003e) describes as \u0026ldquo;feminism-by-design\u0026rdquo;, whereby women\u0026rsquo;s work is valorised within moralised, state-led frameworks but stripped of oppositional potential. This also reflects global debates on the depoliticisation of women\u0026rsquo;s work within welfare and development regimes (Robinson, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2006\u003c/span\u003e; Fraser, 2016). High fertility rates in these cases further reinforce a \u0026ldquo;double burden\u0026rdquo; structure, in which women\u0026rsquo;s participation in paid labour coexists with extensive reproductive and care obligations.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eUnder such conditions, labour does not function as a source of autonomy or political leverage but as an extension of moral obligation. Feminist advocacy, when it emerges, is often delegitimised as socially disruptive or ideologically foreign, limiting its capacity to develop into sustained mobilisation. Importantly, the absence of mobilisation in these cases should not be read as a lack of women\u0026rsquo;s agency or awareness. Rather, it reflects institutional and normative constraints that channel women\u0026rsquo;s labour into non-political forms of participation \u0026ndash; a process consistent with Korolczuk\u0026rsquo;s (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR10\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e) account of neoliberal and moral co-optation in post-socialist activism.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe Russian Federation and Belarus represent a distinct configuration, described here as the \u0026ldquo;Repression Trap\u0026rdquo;. These countries combine high levels of urbanisation and women\u0026rsquo;s labour force participation with low feminist mobilisation, not solely due to moral-economic framing but because of active state intervention. In these contexts, feminist organisations and advocacy initiatives have faced legal restrictions, deregistration, and stigmatisation, with documented intensification during the 2015\u0026ndash;2019 period analysed here (building on trends visible since the early 2010s). Treating suppressed mobilisation as evidence of constrained capacity rather than simple absence underscores the tension between structural modernisation and political closure. These cases exemplify Walby\u0026rsquo;s (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e) authoritarian gender regimes, in which coercive and moral control intersect to regulate feminist discourse. Feminist consciousness may exist latently, but its public articulation is curtailed by regulatory and coercive mechanisms. These cases highlight that modernisation can coexist with \u0026ndash; and under certain conditions, may even be accompanied by \u0026ndash; sophisticated forms of political control that limit independent civil society mobilisation, including gender-based advocacy. They also resonate with what Pető (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR18\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e) terms \u0026ldquo;epistemic governance\u0026rdquo;: the moral-political disciplining of feminist knowledge and organisation under illiberal rule.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe Kyrgyz Republic and Georgia stand out as \u0026ldquo;mobilisation anomalies\u0026rdquo;, exhibiting sustained feminist mobilisation despite only moderate levels of modernisation and, in the case of Kyrgyzstan, high fertility. These cases suggest that feminist mobilisation can arise under structurally constrained conditions when competitive political environments or civil society ecosystems allow collective action. The Kyrgyz Republic\u0026rsquo;s more frequent regime turnover and episodic political openings, for example, have periodically expanded the space for organising compared to neighbouring contexts. In both settings, feminist networks have taken advantage of partial political openings and transnational linkages, reflecting forms of \u0026ldquo;adaptive activism\u0026rdquo; documented by Stewart, Grabe, and Zheng (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR23\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eArmenia and Kazakhstan occupy \u0026ldquo;Hybrid or Emerging\u0026rdquo; positions, characterised by episodic or limited mobilisation that has not consolidated into sustained feminist movements. These trajectories indicate that feminist consciousness is neither absent nor fully institutionalised, remaining contingent on evolving political and normative conditions. They underscore that feminist mobilisation is shaped less by structural modernisation itself than by the interaction of labour regimes, state power, and moral-economic norms. Their ambivalent trajectories also align with Salmenniemi\u0026rsquo;s (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR20\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e) account of how post-socialist activism may shift into therapeutic, civic, or service-oriented forms rather than explicitly feminist claims-making (see also Salmenniemi et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR21\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eOverall, these findings contribute to feminist and gender-historical scholarship by showing that women\u0026rsquo;s participation in the labour force does not universally result in feminist political consciousness. In post-socialist contexts, labour has been state-managed and morally regulated, challenging the Eurocentric assumption that moving from \u0026ldquo;hearth to factory\u0026rdquo; is inherently liberating. By emphasising moral economies and repression alongside modernisation, this study offers a framework for analysing feminist outcomes where women\u0026rsquo;s work is widespread but politically depoliticised.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe typology developed here offers a comparative framework applicable beyond the CIS, particularly to other semi-authoritarian or post-socialist contexts. It demonstrates how post-socialist societies generate diverse forms of feminist (non-)mobilisation, shaped by the moral legitimation of labour and the institutionalisation of repression. This analysis contributes to debates in feminist political economy by clarifying how moral economies of duty intersect with repressive institutions to shape the potential for feminist agency (Kaufmann, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR8\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e; Walby, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis study is descriptive and comparative. The ordinal mobilisation measure cannot fully capture the diversity of feminist expression, especially informal or private forms of consciousness, and the analysis does not claim causal inference. Instead, it identifies patterned mismatches that require theoretical explanation. Future research could extend this framework through longitudinal analysis, subnational comparisons, or qualitative fieldwork to explore how moral economies and state regulation evolve over time.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis exploratory, interpretive study relies on secondary, publicly available sources rather than original field data, limiting the precision of measuring feminist mobilisation across cases. The ordinal indicator captures visible, sustained mobilisation but may underrepresent informal, localised, or digital feminist activity. The analysis covers 2015\u0026ndash;2019 and excludes subsequent political or social changes. These limitations reflect the challenges of studying constrained civic environments but do not negate the comparative patterns identified. Future research using longitudinal or field-based data could enhance understanding of the interaction between moral economies and repression over time. These findings prompt further theoretical reflection on how power, through moral and institutional forms, shapes both the visibility and definition of feminist mobilisation in post-socialist contexts.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"6. Conclusion","content":"\u003cp\u003eBuilding on the interpretive findings outlined above, this conclusion distils the broader implications of the study and its limitations. This study examined why high levels of women\u0026rsquo;s labour force participation in post-Soviet societies do not consistently lead to feminist political mobilisation. Using a comparative descriptive analysis of eight CIS countries between 2015 and 2019, it documented a persistent mismatch between structural modernisation, women\u0026rsquo;s economic participation, and feminist consciousness. The findings show that neither urbanisation nor women\u0026rsquo;s integration into the labour market sufficiently explains the variation in feminist mobilisation across the region.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eBy combining descriptive indicators with an analytically grounded typology, the study advances a central insight: women\u0026rsquo;s labour can be widespread yet politically depoliticised. In several CIS contexts, labour is socially framed within moral economies that emphasise women\u0026rsquo;s work as familial duty or national service rather than as a basis for rights-based claims. In others, feminist mobilisation is constrained through legal regulation and administrative repression, even under conditions of advanced modernisation. These configurations challenge the linear assumptions of classical modernisation theory and underscore the importance of political and normative mediation in shaping feminist outcomes.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe typology developed here \u0026ndash; distinguishing mobilization anomalies, moral economy traps, repression traps, and hybrid trajectories \u0026ndash; provides a comparative framework for interpreting divergent feminist outcomes under broadly similar structural conditions. Rather than viewing the absence of feminist mobilization as a deficit or anomaly, the analysis demonstrates how such outcomes are historically and institutionally produced. In this way, it contributes to feminist political economy debates on how care, labour, and moral order intersect to define women\u0026rsquo;s political possibilities (e. g. Sayer, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR22\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2007\u003c/span\u003e; Fraser, 2016; Walby, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eBeyond the CIS-8 cases, these findings contribute to broader debates in gender history, political sociology, and development studies. They caution against universal models that equate women\u0026rsquo;s labour participation with emancipation or feminist consciousness, particularly in post-socialist and semi-authoritarian settings. In this regard, the study reframes the paradox of women\u0026rsquo;s work in post-socialist societies as a question not of progress or delay, but of how power moralises productivity and silences dissent. As Kaufmann (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR8\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e) argues, feminist agency arises not from structural opportunity alone, but from the capacity to redefine the moral and epistemic terms of economic participation. More broadly, this study highlights the need to examine how labour, care, and gender norms are morally framed and politically regulated when assessing pathways to feminist mobilisation.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWhile interpretive and comparative in scope, the analysis necessarily has limitations that should be acknowledged. The ordinal measure of feminist mobilisation cannot capture the full diversity of gendered consciousness, particularly informal or private forms of dissent. Future research could extend this framework through longitudinal analysis, subnational comparison, or qualitative inquiry into everyday practices of gendered labour and care. Nonetheless, by making the absence of feminist mobilisation empirically visible and analytically tractable, this study offers a grounded perspective on why women\u0026rsquo;s entry into the formal workforce \u0026ndash; long considered an engine of emancipation \u0026ndash; often remains, in much of the post-Soviet space, a site of moral obligation and state-managed stability rather than political transformation.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Declarations","content":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDisclosure of interest\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe authors report there are no competing interests to declare.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eData Availability Statement\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRaw and derived data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Quantitative indicators are publicly accessible via the World Bank’s World Development Indicators (2015–2019). Qualitative materials were compiled from open NGO and human rights sources cited in the manuscript.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEthics Statement\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis research did not involve human participants, interviews, or experiments requiring ethical approval. All analysed data were sourced from publicly available secondary materials, such as international databases, NGO registries, and published reports. Ethical considerations centred on responsibly interpreting materials from politically sensitive contexts. Care was taken to avoid identifying individuals or organisations where feminist activism might face state surveillance or repression.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFunding Statement\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.\u003c/p\u003e\u003ch2\u003eAuthor Contribution\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eZ.J. designed the study and wrote the main manuscript text. B.K. compiled and analysed the data and prepared the figures and tables. M.Sh. contributed to the literature review and regional context. Sh.O. assisted with data verification and manuscript revision. All authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"References","content":"\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBingham N (2017) Gendering Civil Society: The State of Women\u0026rsquo;s NGOs in the Former Soviet Region. 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Women's Stud Int forum 98:102677. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2023.102677\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1016/j.wsif.2023.102677\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003e"}],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":true,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":false,"hideJournal":false,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":false,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":false,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":false,"email":"","identity":"sn-social-sciences","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"","title":"SN Social Sciences","twitterHandle":"","acdcEnabled":false,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"VoR Journals","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":false},"keywords":"Women’s labour, Feminist mobilisation, Moral economy, Post-Soviet societies, Modernization theory","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8475847/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-8475847/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"\u003cp\u003eAcross much of the world, women\u0026rsquo;s integration into paid labour has been assumed to foster feminist consciousness and political mobilisation. Yet in post-Soviet societies, high levels of women\u0026rsquo;s labour force participation coexist with weak or suppressed feminist activism. This study presents a comparative interpretive-descriptive analysis of eight post-Soviet states between 2015 and 2019. Using indicators of urbanisation, female labour force participation, fertility, and an ordinal (0\u0026ndash;2) measure of feminist mobilisation, the analysis identifies a systematic decoupling between structural modernisation and feminist political outcomes. The findings indicate that neither modernisation nor economic participation reliably predicts feminist mobilisation. The evidence supports the view that women\u0026rsquo;s labour is embedded in moral economies that frame work as duty rather than entitlement, and that feminist advocacy is often constrained by state regulation and repression. The study advances a theoretical framework linking moral economy and state power to gendered political outcomes, interpreting \u0026ldquo;feminist absence\u0026rdquo; as an institutionally produced condition rather than a transitional lag.\u003c/p\u003e","manuscriptTitle":"‘Feminist Mobilisation’ and Moral Economy in Post-Soviet Societies: Evidence from the CIS-8","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2026-02-26 11:03:46","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8475847/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0},{"type":"decision","content":"Revision requested","date":"2026-03-26T09:43:27+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorInvitedReview","content":"","date":"2026-03-24T01:11:05+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorInvitedReview","content":"","date":"2026-03-18T01:34:28+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"223642156425357395888698963473759157418","date":"2026-02-26T11:31:13+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"43067080550635497914481488955764927352","date":"2026-02-24T12:35:18+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewersInvited","content":"","date":"2026-02-24T03:06:38+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorInvited","content":"","date":"2026-02-05T08:45:17+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorAssigned","content":"","date":"2025-12-31T08:22:18+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"checksComplete","content":"","date":"2025-12-31T08:21:53+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"submitted","content":"SN Social Sciences","date":"2025-12-29T21:02:23+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":false,"email":"","identity":"sn-social-sciences","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"","title":"SN Social Sciences","twitterHandle":"","acdcEnabled":false,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"VoR Journals","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":false}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"59f1d8ed-aa23-44f5-9a30-da3e9bf7db06","owner":[],"postedDate":"February 26th, 2026","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"under-review","subjectAreas":[],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2026-04-20T13:10:43+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2026-02-26 11:03:46","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-8475847","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-8475847","identity":"rs-8475847","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"XKTyCvWXoU3ODBz1xrDgd","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}