With their men at frontlines, women in Ukraine are holding together economy

Dnipropetrovsk Region: Kateryna Koliadiuk was curious. The 19-year-old Ukrainian agronomy student spotted an ad seeking women to enroll in a tractor driving course and decided to try. But the industrial vehicle was huge and complex, and she wasn’t sure she could operate it.

“In the beginning I was so scared. In the beginning I couldn’t do this,” she said. She now drives with authority, her manicured fingers resting at the wheel.

From driving tractors to working in coal mines, Ukrainian women are taking jobs once reserved for men, who are being drafted to the front lines in the war with Russia. Women have also signed up to join the armed forces at a higher rate.

Koliadiuk said her family was shocked. “We were told that women should be in the kitchen, at home with children. That is why to go and study such equipment was so scary,” she said. “But then we took care of ourselves.”

It’s part of a crucial government effort to grow an economy devastated by three years of war and address labour shortages created by the mobilisation, according to the economy ministry, which leads training programmes in construction, agriculture and transport geared toward women. “Ukrainian women are under a lot of pressure because their men are on the front line,” Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said in an interview with The Associated Press. “When the man is mobilized, the woman is mobilised with him as well.”

Businesses want to hire again after the initial economic shock of Russia’s full-scale invasion, but the labour force has shrunk. About 5 million Ukrainians left the country and are abroad, the minister said, and another million are serving in the armed forces.

That’s a lot considering about 9 million Ukrainians are currently employed, she added.

Svyrydenko is Ukraine’s first female economy minister and a symbol of the rise of women in the labour force because of the war.

Before, women were mostly employed in education and health care, social protection and government service, she said. Now there’s demand in the industrial and military areas. “It is the mindset of both women and employers that is changing,” she said. “Employers are ready to take women on the job more often, and women are ready to diversify their skills.”

In coal mines in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, women are now hired to operate machinery to keep production going. There and elsewhere, men still dominate jobs that require heavy physical labour.

Former accountant Iryna Ostanko, 37, was looking for a new job and decided to become an elevator operator at a mine in the Dnipropetrovsk region. She was inspired by her husband, who has worked at the mine for 15 years. He supported her decision.

“Before, in this place underground, there were no women at all,” she said.