GENDER EQUALITY AND SOCIAL REGULATION OF PUBLIC LIFE: PHILOSOPHICAL UNDERSTANDING

Abstract

The aim of the article is to identify the ideological and cultural prerequisites for gender equality in society. Politics is the central battlefield of the social struggle for the rights of all gender groups, but in modern Ukraine the main gender group that has a real chance to achieve significant success in this struggle is women. This is evidence of the unfinished struggle for gender rights and gender equality in Ukraine. This struggle is an integral part of the liberalization of public life, which is rightly associated with the European dimension of Ukrainian national identity. Bringing the level of social institutions closer to similar European models, on the one hand, has an integral part of achieving gender equality, on the other hand — it is necessary to achieve all other types of equality of Ukrainian citizens in their political rights. The issue of gender equality is most vulnerable when radical, fundamentalist attitudes are on the rise in society. The democratic legal system of regulation of public life, which impartially ensures the observance of individual rights and freedoms of members of any communities and gender identities, is attacked both by supporters of traditional religious values and by representatives of the secular authoritarian system. In the case of Polish women’s protests, gender equality has become hostage to temporary political expediency in alliance with religious church interests, and in Ukraine, despite a favorable legal background, gender equality is hampered by a mixture of authoritarian pasts with a corrupt oligarchic political selection system.