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

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.