Locating Women's Human Rights in Post-Soviet Provincial Russia

Abstract

This essay provides insights into studies on citizens' engagement with human rights in Russia through its focus on a relatively under-researched area, namely, the ways in which women perceive the role of human rights in daily life contexts. This essay argues for the importance of analysing how women's perceptions of human rights are formed in situ in order to understand the ways in which location and gender create particular constraints for women in terms of their perceived and actual access to rights protection and ability to use rights to resolve their problems. Drawing on data generated during in-depth interviews conducted with women living in the provincial Russian city of Ul'yanovsk in 2005, this essay reveals women's complex engagements with the meaning and role of human rights in their daily lives. In particular, this analysis shows how women's perceptions of their positionalities in a post-Soviet provincial city informs how they think about where, when and why human rights apply to women.