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At first, protests by Ukrainian feminist group Femen were ignored by the media. But two years ago the women started taking off their shirts. In recent months, their tactic has spread to France, Canada, and Brazil. Back home, in a basement office in downtown Kyiv, Oleksandra Shevchenko, a Femen founder, rebuts critics who say Femen protesters attract media attention for the wrong reasons. “When we mixed nakedness, intelligence and our ideas, we saw that it is working,” she says. “People saw this contradiction, they are not ready to see, and to listen to women, and to see aggressive women, naked, aggressive women.” Coming from Eastern Europe, Ukraine’s Femen and Russia’s Pussy Riot band represent a new kind of feminist protest, theatrical and radical. In Kyiv, activists train regularly for protests. Behind the training is anger that Eastern European women are 30 years behind Western European women, in salaries and in job discrimination by employers. “They say, 'You will get married in a few years, or even like, in a few months you will be pregnant, like you are not a good worker, I don’t want to have you in my office,” Shevchenko says. “Or, like the second way to work there, they say that you have to sleep with me, we have to have sex. And we can do nothing.” In June, Femen protested Ukraine's co-hosting of the European football (soccer) championships. They argued some fans would also visit Ukrainian brothels and strip clubs. | 
