A new survey shows that educated Israeli women who are originally from the former Soviet Union are overwhelmingly on the side of Ukraine when it comes to the ongoing conflict in Eastern Europe.
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The survey was conducted by Dr. Svetlana Chachashvili-Bolotin, a senior lecturer at the Ruppin Academic Center in Netanya, as part of a larger ongoing study on the impact of the war on immigrants from the former USSR.
The survey sampled 467 women between the ages of 25 and 60 with academic degrees who arrived in Israel between 1988 and 2018. The survey shows that overall the support for Ukraine among those women sampled stands at 80%. Among Ukrainian-born women, this climbs even higher: 87% said they support Ukraine, 5% said they support Russia and 8% said they had no opinion.
Among Russian-born respondents, the support for Ukraine stood at 76%, while 22% said they do not support either side and 2% said they were in favor of Russia. Among those who were not born in either Ukraine or Russia (but in other republics of the former Soviet Union), 74% sided with Ukraine, while 5% said they support Russia.
According to Chachashvili-Bolotin, some of the trends that emerge in this survey could apply, to varying degrees, to other demographics within the larger group of former Soviet immigrants (i.e. not just to educated women between the ages sampled).
The survey further gauged the degree to which the war might have impacted the respondents' daily lives. "Those born in Russia experience more tensions within the family because of their views compared with other groups," the Chachashvili-Bolotin said. "We found that 55% said that in their family or with their relatives there are more conflicting opinions compared to only 47% of Ukrainian-born women who said the same about their families and relatives"
Some 40% of Russian-born women in the survey said their lives have turned for the worse since the war broke out, while 42% of Ukrainian-born women said the same.
The survey also found that the war bolstered the sense of belonging to Israel and gave more validation to the decision to make aliyah. Both Ukrainian- and Russian-born women gave a score that averaged above 4 (out of 5) for whether they believe the war increased their feeling that they made the right choice to come to Israel. Ukrainian-born women saw an increase in their Ukrainian identity, with an average score of 3.3.
"Perhaps we can see that there is an awakening of identity among Ukrainian-born women," the researcher said. "There is a direct attack on Ukraine, and the ripples have reached Israel. The fighting has impacted people's psyche and it is incumbent upon us to comprehensively address this and alleviate the secondary traumatic experience. Decisionmakers should set aside resources to deal with this."
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