Gender Museum Kharkiv

Gender Museum Kharkiv

Gender Museum Kharkiv

Gender Culture Center is a non-profit organization conceived as a platform for empowering women and youth. A place where every person, regardless of gender, age, occupation, social status, will be able to obtain basic gender knowledge, on such concepts as human rights and gender discrimination.

Exhibition: Birth Culture. Giving birth and being born 
From 30th September 2021 to 31 November 2021

On September 30th the exhibition “Birth Cultures. Giving birth and being born” was unveiled in Gender Museum Kharkiv (Ukraine).

The Ukrainian exhibition is focusing on birth giving and maternity as gender constructing process – the process of construction of gender roles.

Since ancient times a society expects that a woman will give birth. But… What does society do to make a woman willing to give birth? How mothers were treated in Ukraine before the October Revolution? In what conditions did Soviet women give birth? What the Ukrainian society does for women to feel safety? What modern methods of insemination do exist? How the Ukrainian society treat surrogacy? How the state cares about solo-mothers? How do gender construction and manipulation work and impact girls’ behavior as future mothers?

During a guided tour through the exhibition, visitors have an opportunity to ask and answer these and other questions, look for new senses and revise old ones together with a guide. There is also an opportunity to try “a pregnant belly” and feel themselves as a pregnant woman, swaddle “a child”, bring a sling.

The objects of the exhibition which demonstrate birth giving are from the own collection of the Gender Museum and also presented by private persons and Institute of Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine. A lot of videos and supported information on delivery and birth are added to the exhibition.