A good example of that is violence against women. But in the communist period this was very much a taboo subject, or one that was not discussed, not written about, no data on. We're seeing in the transition period that the lid is being taken off. In the Russian capital Moscow, more than a third of divorced women in one survey said they had been beaten by their husbands. In Azerbaijan, one in four women surveyed said they experienced regular beatings from their husbands or partners.
Laws protecting women are lax in many post-communist countries.
Domestic violence is not prohibited by law in Armenia, Bulgaria, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Marital rape is not a crime in Albania, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania, Tajikistan, or Ukraine. With the collapse of state-supported services and the economic crises of the past decade, many women are facing unemployment for the first time. Even in countries that have had relative economic success, women are still losing jobs at greater rates than men. The upheaval of transition has also led to a rapid growth in the number of women involved in the sex industry.