17. A Smart Hot Russian Girl from Odessa

The idea of Ukrainian women as a highly sexualised local product is not only omnipresent in the Internet commercials for ‘hot Russian girls from Odessa’ and ‘best escort girls in Kiev’, but also is regularly fanned at the highest political levels. But what becomes of it when a Ukrainian woman leaves Ukraine to orbit the academic circles? In this essay, I walk down memory lane and recollect my professional interactions at the intersection of gender and ethnicity, spanning 15 years (2006-2020) and offering an elaborate sketch of everyday sexism and gendered racism in academia.