From Molen and Novikova's "Mainstreaming Gender in the EU-Accession Process":

"The labour markets in Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia have exposed how the 'happy marraige' of a neo-liberal economic framework and neo-conservative gender ideology is in reality a restatement of women's political, social and economic disempowerment through the politics of exclusion in terms of age, ethnicity, and class. The economic 'transition' processes have demonstrated tat the familiar concepts of the liberal democratic state are 'neither neutral nor impartial in the way in which they operate. Instead, they work in favour of some interests and against others. One of the groups to suffer disproportionately is that of women and it is because of this that the use of mainstreaming can be justified in order to redress this balance' (Beveridge, et al., 2000: 386)."

and

"With the break-up of the Soviet approach, women experienced downward social mobility in the early and mid-1990s. In particular, women from Russian-speaking minorities, who lacked citizenship in Estonia and Latvia, faced the most severe hardships. Some of these women, who were excluded from employment in the formal economy, found jobs in the informal sectors where their rights were much less protected than in the formal economy. Ther roles were marginalized to those of a mother, and low-paid employee in the local 'shadow economy', or a potential body for the lucrative sex-trafficking business into the European Union (Novikova, 2002:8). Due to their increased insecurity and the lack of future prospects, there has been a strong growth in the number of women in the transition countries involved in the sex industy (Huland, 2001:2). Stukulis and Wennerholm both point out that, due to constraints on finding formal employment , there are large numbers of Russian women working as prostitues in Riga and Tallinn (Stukulis, 2004: 221-2; Wennerholm, 2002:12)."