Toward an Understanding of Gendered Agency in Contemporary Russia

Abstract

AbstractAssessments of Russian women’s current social and political status must take into account the complicated legacy of Soviet women’s “emancipation.” Although the Soviet government enforced women’s access to higher education and a broad array of professional opportunities, it never challenged traditional notions of masculinity and femininity, or the double burden tacitly assigned women. It did not invest in products and services that would have eased “women’s work” as homemakers and caretakers, nor did it protect women from sexual harassment on the job. The transition years have bared, glorified, and globalized the patriarchal state that lay just beneath the socialist veneer of the Soviet Union. Indeed, the Putin government has repackaged that patriarchy as conventionally and commercially masculinist. Women do exercise some power as consumers and mothers; they seek other-than-material fulfillment in facilitating positions rather than face opprobrium as public leaders. Some are attempting to scout new...