Dr Marta Makowska, Assistant Professor at the Department for Economic Psychology explains how young Ukrainian women have come to view traditional female roles and romantic relationships differently after immigrating to Poland.
The war in Ukraine has not only changed the daily lives of millions of women but also their way of thinking about love, family, and relationships. Emigration to Poland, the necessity of living independently, and the experience of prolonged uncertainty have led many young Ukrainian women to take a different view on traditional gender roles and romantic relationships. In some cases, they were able to make decisions free from the expectations of their families or local communities for the first time in their lives.
These changes were the subject of research I conducted together with Dr Arleta Hrehorowicz from Warsaw University of Life Sciences, and Katarzyna Sacharczuk, M.A. from National Louis University Business School in Nowy Sącz. In a study based on 19 in-depth interviews with young Ukrainian women living in Poland, we examined the impact of war and migration on perceptions of traditional family and romantic relationships. The study involved young, Generation Z women (born between 1997 and 2012) who came to Poland after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in 2014 or following Russia’s invasion in 2022. The respondents migrated from various regions of Ukraine, both large cities and smaller towns located in the eastern and western parts of the country. Interestingly, in their stories it was western Ukraine in particular that they described as more traditional in terms of attitudes toward family, religion, and social expectations regarding women and romantic relationships.
Generation Z is the first cohort raised in a world of social media, global role models, and easy access to diverse lifestyles. In addition, young female immigrants from Ukraine find themselves in an especially difficult situation: they must navigate a new social and cultural reality, build a sense of security far from home, and at the same time are at a stage in life where they are forming their first important emotional and romantic relationships.
- Migration to Poland and views on family
Though several participants viewed Poland as a country closer to Western European social norms and as more open to new models of romantic relationships, their opinions were not unambiguous. However, some respondents emphasized that they saw Poland as a society more open and less judgmental, especially in relation to divorce, living alone, marrying later in life, and building informal relationships. Some of them noted that greater financial and social independence of women in Poland makes it easier for them to end a failing relationship and reduces the pressure to marry quickly. According to one interviewee,
In Poland] people simply don’t interfere in your life. And they don’t ask (…) why don’t you have a boyfriend?
Still, many women emphasized that differences in attitudes toward relationships stem not so much from nationality as from age and place of residence. The younger generation, especially people living in large cities, is more open to alternative relationship models, while older people and residents of smaller towns more often stick to the traditional family model and put pressure on women to get married quickly. A respondent describes the older generation’s expectations:
My grandma, for example, wants me to have a family, so she doesn’t understand how it’s even possible: how can a woman be without a husband?
The interviewees notice low levels of acceptance towards non-heteronormative relationships, both in Poland and in Ukraine. For the most part, they describe the level of general social acceptance as well as their own experiences in their environments (“you can notice acts of aggression in both countries,” “the older generation doesn’t accept this,” etc.). This is how one of the respondents describes it:
I feel like Ukraine and Poland are similar in this respect. Maybe [Ukraine is] a bit less aggressive, because in Poland people are a bit more hostile toward this.
Furthermore, the women revealed clear skepticism toward the idea of open relationships. Although some of the respondents emphasized that they viewed such relationships as an individual choice others make, at the same time many of the interviewees noted that they could not imagine being in such a relationship themselves. In this sense, open relationships are viewed as a symbolic limit in terms of accepting alternative models of romantic relationships. For example, one of the women said:
I’ve never met anyone like that – I don’t know. And I suspect that where I’m from, in Western Ukraine, that would be completely unthinkable.
Another participant claimed:
No, I don’t like that. I don’t think it should be that way.
- What has the war changed?
Our respondents emphasized that the war in Ukraine has led to increased social acceptance of informal relationships, divorce, single-person households, single-parent families, as well as less traditional forms of family and romantic life, including e.g., non-heteronormative relationships. The women emphasized that the war has been playing a significant role in weakening the stability of relationships and in changing perceptions of the traditional family model in Ukraine. The deaths of men, prolonged separation, emigration, war trauma, and shifting social roles have been causing the breakdown of many relationships. This situation forces women to take responsibility for their lives and for their futures – something that had not been the norm for them before. As one of the study participants explains,
The guys simply come back from the war as different people. What they go through every day over there changes their consciousness so much that they return as different men – with broken hearts, with broken minds.
The women also mentioned the difficulties of dealing with long-distance relationships. Closed borders – at least for some men – uncertainty about the future, and prolonged separation have made maintaining existing relationships an enormous emotional challenge. Some interviewees mentioned a sense of suspension between two countries and two different life stages. For example:
My Ukrainian friend has been in a long-distance relationship for six years; she lives in Poland, and her boyfriend is in Ukraine. I can see that it’s hard for her, and since the war began, it has become even more difficult. She wants her partner to come to Poland, but he can’t. And she doesn’t want to go back to Ukraine because the situation there is bad, and she doesn’t want to live there – she already has everything here in Poland.
The war and emigration have made many Ukrainian women more financially and emotionally independent, which has changed their approach to relationships and increased their willingness to end failed ones. Some of the interviewees emphasized that life in Poland gave women a greater sense of security, independence, and opportunities to build a life on their own terms. They highlighted the key role of women’s economic independence: the possibility of working, supporting themselves, and living outside traditional family structures gives women greater freedom in making decisions, including those regarding relationships and their future. One of the interviewees argued:
Women won’t come back. Those who wanted to return have already done so, but the others won’t – those women and their children will stay, and the children will become Polish children. The women will stay here (…) they’ll assimilate, they’ll integrate, but they won’t go back.
- What will the future hold?
According to the respondents, increasingly open attitudes toward various forms of romantic relationships can be noticed in both countries, that is Poland and Ukraine, and they are mainly driven by the younger generation. On the one hand, acceptance towards non-traditional relationships, later marriages, divorce, living alone, and single parenthood is growing. On the other hand, there are expectations for relationships to be more equal are also on the rise. In the future, this may contribute to shifts in family structure and to a redrawing of traditional gender roles.
War and migration have not only changed the daily lives of Ukrainian women but may also lead to deeper social changes: a redefinition of partnership, family, and the roles of women and men in Ukraine’s future, post-war society.
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The research article is available in International Journal of Intercultural Relations: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0147176726000283
The article was machine translated.
