Kristen R. Ghodsee

Who is Kristen R. Ghodsee?

Kristen Ghodsee is an American ethnographer and the John S. Osterweis Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at Bowdoin College. She is known primarily for her ethnographic work on post-communist Bulgaria as well as being a key player in the field of postsocialist gender studies. Contrary to the prevailing opinion of most feminist scholars in the 1990s who believed that women would be disproportionately harmed by the collapse of communism, Ghodsee argued that many East European women would actually fare better than men in newly competitive labor markets because of the cultural capital that they had acquired before 1989. She was also critical of the role of Western feminist nongovernmental organizations doing work among East European women in the 1990s. Ghodsee has also examined the shifting gender relations of Muslim minorities after communism, and the intersections of Islamic beliefs and practices with the ideological remains of Marxism-Leninism.