Gender studies in Estonia are shaped by the unspoken presence of the forty-year Soviet annexation that removed Estonian society from the international exchange of ideas during the time when gender became, first, a political issue and, second, an object of academic study. According to Soviet ideology, gender was irrelevant in the Soviet Union as the equality of men and women had supposedly been achieved. The fact that the reality men and women lived in was anything but gender-neutral or gender-equal did nothing to alter the ideological dictums. In a situation where even sociology did not effectively exist, it is no surprise that gender was not academically explored in Estonia under the Soviet regime. The total lack of gender awareness is reflected in an entry in the Soviet Estonian Encyclopedia from 1987, which defines feminism as a medical term, "the existence of feminine physical features or characteristics in a male." (1)

Thus, gender became visible and, subsequently, political, only after Estonia regained independence in the early 1990s. Estonia joined gender-related international debates and discussions but the period of separation also shaped the way in which new ideas were received. Local circumstances created an ideological sieve that let some ideas in and left others out. Feminism was one of the notions caught in the net. In the 1990s, Estonia sought to turn its back on all that was assumed to be Soviet, including the Soviet ideology of gender equality. Instead of asking how to make the vacuous equality slogans of the past meaningful, they were thrown out completely, replaced by neoliberalist economic policies and the hedonistic pleasures of Western consumer culture, neither of which was interested in investigating the politics of gender. Estonian women were exhorted to bear more children to guarantee the survival of the nation and make themselves beautiful to please their husbands. The rediscovery of gender was channeled into sexualization and Estonian women were congratulated on their ability to ignore the supposedly misguided feminist ideologies of their Western and, especially, Nordic sisters. (2) Awareness of gender equality as a serious social issue emerged only gradually as the income gap between men and women increased and as the toll of hegemonic masculinity on Estonian men became more and more evident. (3)

Gender studies as an academic field has grown out of these historical and social constraints. By the time Estonian society started to ask whether gender was in any way different from biological sex, Western academic discourse had developed very complex theories of gender. Estonia had to join the dialogue in mid-conversation. While the gender studies theorists in the West were debating Judith Butler, Estonians had yet to have a public discussion on whether gender was a political issue. This is not to suggest that gender studies have to follow the same evolutionary stages in all countries, but rather to explain why the transmission of ideas could not be automatic and direct. Ideas are exchanged and shared, but they are interpreted and domesticated locally. The local filter explains the coexistence...