Iuliia Shulga

Gender and Ukrainian Politics: the Making of Yuliia Tymoshenko Iuliia Shulga

This work, conducted in the frames of the qualitative research field of gender studies, using comparative approach and visual iconographic analysis, is developed as a case study of the political figure of the Prime Minister of Ukraine, Yuliia Tymoshenko. The goal of the study is to look at Yuliia Tymoshenko?s political career and her current official visual selfrepresentation in order to see what role gender plays in the process of her entering the political field and maintaining her high level of popularity in Ukrainian politics. The study is situated within the body of literature on women, as political actors and is mainly aimed to fill the gap in the research on gender and politics in Ukrainian post-soviet context. The results of the analysis showed that although Yuliia Tymoshenko?s political career can hardly be considered engendered, her visual self-representation is created around the notion of gender which is used as a successful political communication strategy in order to maintain popularity and power.