Anna Oksiutovych participated in the section “Care and Care Work During War: From Survival to Social Reproduction”, presenting the research result which she, Oksana Dutchak and Olena Fedyuk got within the project.
During her presentation, Anna Oksiutovych showed how familialistic elderly care model manifests itself in Ukraine, where primary responsibility for care provision rests with families. Demographic changes, social services reforms, and the ongoing war have significantly complicated this model, rendering care provision increasingly fragmented and uneven. In this context, families are compelled to combine resources across multiple levels — state, market, humanitarian, and volunteer — in order to meet care needs.
Within the research, Anna Oksiutovych explained, she and her colleague examined how families navigate this fragmented care continuum and the strategies they develop under wartime conditions. The research employs qualitative methods, including semi-structured interviews with caregiving families, desk research, and expert interviews with professionals from social services, NGOs, and volunteer initiatives.
The findings demonstrate that the familialistic model reproduces pronounced gender inequalities, as women overwhelmingly assume the role of primary caregivers while simultaneously balancing paid employment, household responsibilities, and care work. Both the war and the social services reform have further disrupted existing support networks and limited access to institutional and market-based care. As a result, care is increasingly relegated to the private sphere, with families relying heavily on informal networks and personal contacts.
The study highlights eldercare in Ukraine as a sphere of continuous adaptation and compromise, situated at the intersection of state, market, and humanitarian arrangements, underscoring its marginal position within broader social policy.
More information: https://sau.in.ua/event_held/v-kongres-socziologichnoyi-asocziacziyi-ukrayiny/
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