AABS Awards Vilis Vītols Prize to Best JBS Articles for 2022 and 2023

Kadri Aavik & Maarja Saar (2021) Negotiating neoliberalism in the private sphere: narratives of Estonian single mothers, Journal of Baltic Studies, 53:1, 1-18, DOI: 10.1080/01629778.2021.1980071

Neoliberalism has become a prevalent ideology in most central and eastern European (CEE) countries. Most studies on the processes and effects of neoliberalization concentrate on the public sphere. Some feminist scholars argue that young middle-class women are increasingly becoming the bearers of neoliberalism – encouraged to achieve success in multiple areas of life. There is, however, a lack of empirical research on how women engage with neoliberal ideals in post-socialist settings. This article draws on 25 interviews with single mothers in Estonia to discuss how neoliberal ideology manifests itself in the private sphere. 

Our findings suggest that single mothers have an ambivalent relationship with neoliberalism as they are both challenging as well as reproducing this ideology in their everyday practices of gender and motherhood. On the one hand, they acknowledged and at times attempted to live up to certain powerful societal expectations, such as the pressure to look good and to be a ‘successful’ (single) parent, ensuring that their children get a head start from early on. On the other hand, they were critical of such expectations and felt that they were unable to adequately live up to these ideals. Yet, they also emphasized taking significant personal responsibility and constructed themselves as freely choosing subjects, including presenting single motherhood as a choice. As single motherhood is relatively common in Estonia (as well as in other Baltic states), the experiences of our interviewees help to understand how gender is performed in the private sphere by this significant group of women.

Please note that this article’s online publication date was in 2021, but its print publication was 2022, thus making it eligible for the 2022 Vītols Prize.

Dr. Kadri Aavik is Associate Professor of Gender Studies at Tallinn University, Estonia. Her research interests include gender inequality in the labour market, discourses on the gender pay gap, critical approaches to men and masculinities, human-animal relations, sustainability and veganism. Her latest books are Contesting Anthropocentric Masculinities: Lived Experiences of Vegan Men (Palgrave, 2023), Feminist Animal and Multispecies Studies: Critical Perspectives on Food and Eating (co-edited with Kuura Irni and Milla-Maria Joki) (Brill, 2024) and Routledge Handbook on Men, Masculinities and Organizations: Theories, Practices and Futures of Organizing (co-edited with Jeff Hearn, David Collinson and Anika Thym)(Routledge, 2024).  

Dr. Maarja Saar is a senior lecturer at Mid Sweden University. Her main interest is in migration, social protection, and discourses on deservingness. She is currently working on a project related to Russian and Belarussian migrants in Lithuania and Poland and how these migrants are both perceived by those societies as well as how they themselves interpret their belonging.

Volha Bartash (2023) Mnemonic border-crossings: how Roma communities from the Baltic borderlands remember their shared past, Journal of Baltic Studies, 54:1, 67-86, DOI: 10.1080/01629778.2023.2161589

Dr. Volha Bartash is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Regensburg and a research fellow at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies. She has published on the history and culture of Roma communities in Belarus and Lithuania, as well as on their memory of the Nazi genocide and World War II. Bartash’s current research interests include the relationship of history and memory, memory and borders, grassroots activism and the state. Methodologically, her research seeks to integrate archival history, oral history and ethnography. Bartash is committed to the practice of writing history “from below” and reconstructing the experiences of vulnerable and marginalized populations.