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IVANNA ROZANKOWSKY PRESIDENT OF UNWLA The Twentieth Convention of the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America is being held on the eve of our organization’s 60th year of existence and in the centennial year of the Ukrainian women’s movement. These anniversaries should give us pause to reflect on the history of the women’s movement, in which the UNWLA was intimately involved, and to become more knowledgeable about its ideology and its role in Ukrainian society. Unlike women’s movements in other countries, the Ukrainian one never had equal rights as its sole objective. It embraced goals such as raising national consciousness, improving the educational levels and economic conditions in both rural and urban areas, and participating in the struggle for freedom in Ukraine. After World I, women’s organizations were banned in the USSR and the Ukrainian women’s movement could develop and grow only in Western Ukraine and in other European countries with Ukrainian immigrant communities. World War II and the changes that took place in Europe’s political boundaries sealed the fate of women’s organizations in Ukraine and the surrounding Eastern European countries which became part of the USSR or satellites within its orbit. Because of this, the centennial of the Ukrainian women’s movement, born in the “old country”, can be commemorated only in the free world. The course of history in the past 100 years has not only decided the fate of the Ukrainian nation, but has also influenced the direction of the Ukrainian women’s movement. Today the very existence of the Ukrainian nation is being threatened by severe pressures of russifica tion in Ukraine proper, while Ukrainians abroad are slowly being assimilated into their host cultures. The only logical conclusion to be drawn from the existence of these circumstances is that the priorities of Ukrainian women today should be, on the one hand, to preserve the Ukrainian family, language and culture at home, and on the other, to disseminate information about the plight of Ukraine and gain supporters of its struggle for liberation. In the early stages of organizing themselves, Ukrainian women were guided from the very beginning by the principles of solidarity, political non-alignment and religious tolerance, which were adopted as well by the founders of the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America. In this, the centennial year of the women’s movement, to which Ukrainian women gave so much effort and for which they endured so many sacrifices, we should renew and reinforce our commitment to these ideas. The Ukrainian immigrant community is currently involved in divisive political bickering, with the result that matters of critical importance to the community now and for the future are being ignored. Members of the UNWLA, by working for the common good, must seek solutions to the really urgent questions through construc tive activities. We will never achieve these objectives unless we mobilize our energies, try to bridge the generation gap and find some common denominator for uniting women of all social back grounds in the pursuit of these goals. One attempt to define the issues and initiate a dialogue with women who do not belong to community organizations was the conference “UKRAIN IAN WOMAN IN TWO WORLDS” held in October 1982. Since it took place a year and a half ago we can now look at it with some perspective, which is necessary for evaluating the effectiveness of the conference. Press reaction imme diately following the conference, though limited, stressed the positive results which the UNWLA, its sponsor, hoped to elicit. The conference program consisted of informal panels, free discussions and the introduction of issues and problems which had previously been considered taboo subjects or irrelevant to the Ukrainian community. The number of women, 24 www.unwla.org
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