Has Feminist Philosophy a Future in Russia?

Abstract

T wenty years ago, political and socioeconomic reforms aimed at democratization were initiated in Russia. Since then, many new concepts have entered our life and mentality: the legal state, the multiparty system, the market, liberalism, and even human rights—but not women’s human rights or feminism. Rather, popular culture keeps voicing the idea that feminism, as a Western phenomenon, not only leads to a war with men but even poses a threat to Russian national values. The media creates the image of feminists as masculinized, sexually unsatisfied, and/or morally degraded women whose core values are rights, power over men, and money—not family and children, which a “normal” woman is expected to prefer. At first glance, this situation seems amazing because, in general, Russian women appear to be quite emancipated; they actually have many rights for which several generations of Western feminists had to fight. Our women are economically independent and highly educated (over 60 percent of professionals with higher education are women); they work in virtually all sectors of the economy, including government (parliament, the ministries, courts), science, high-tech industries, medicine, and education. And in Russian families (even those in which both parents are present) it is quite often a woman who is the head: she manages the family budget on her own and makes important family decisions. Moreover, former state ideology (Marxism), with which about half of the currently active women’s population has grown up, declared and guaranteed (even through the constitution in many respects) equality of women in all spheres of life. What, then, is the reason for this deep-rooted inner aversion to feminism on the part of society (including Russian women themselves)? Why do not only ordinary women but even those holding high political positions take the definition of women as the second sex as the norm? Among the many reasons why such an attitude originated—the totalitarian state, a lack of political experience by women struggling for their rights, and so on—biological determinism plays, in my view, the most important role. In spite of formally declared equality of women and men in Soviet and