Russian Gender Research Articles

Afterword

AbstractThis afterword brings the four articles in the cluster on “Gender in Russian and Soviet Military History” into conversation and suggests new ways to frame the theme.

TRANSLATION OF GENDER PRONOUNS FROM RUSSIAN INTO PERSIAN: A CASE STUDY OF THE PLAY “THE CHERRY ORCHARD” BY ANTON CHEKHOV INTO PERSIAN BY SIMIN DANESHVAR

Russian is a synthetic language, whereas Persian is an analytical language. The structures of these two languages are different from each other. The difference between the structures of these two languages makes it difficult to translate from one language to the other. One of these differences is the presence of gender pronouns in Russian and its absence in Persian. This difference will lead to the fact that if there are two gender pronouns in a Russian sentence, the translator will have to apply some tricks to clarify the gender content of the above pronouns. The purpose of the article is to identify techniques and methods for clarifying the gender content of Russian gender pronouns when translating from Russian into Persian. The novelty of the article lies in the fact that this article for the first time considers this problem when translating from Russian into Persian and identifies methods for solving it. This study uses a descriptive and systematic approach. The static population of this study included Russian sentences containing gender pronouns from the text of the play “The Cherry Orchard” by Anton Chekhov. At the end of the article, the methods of translating Russian gender pronouns from Russian into Persian are listed and illustrated by the Persian translation of “The Cherry Orchard” made by Simin Daneshvar.

The Diversification of the Russian Gender Contract and the Conservative Turn

The essay examines the overlaps and contradictions between the three components of the gender contract in contemporary Russia: government policy and legislation, organisational policies, and individual practices and attitudes. Using a variety of data sources—presidential speeches, official policy documents and entries by Moscow-based companies to the competition ‘The Best Company for Working Mothers’ (2008–2015)—the study finds that while highly paid working mothers might take advantage of the institutional conditions of defamilialism, low-income and unemployed mothers become the subject of the familialist policies of the state and small and medium companies.

Lexical units nominating women in the paremias about the gender inequality of the Russian language

Russian linguistic and cultural community gender stereotypes reflecting the inequality between men and women in the Russian linguistic and cultural community, verbalized by the paremias of the Russian language; the subject of the study are such nominating components as "woman", "wife", "daughter", "mother—in-law". The material under study forms part of the national picture of the world, of which the paremic corpus is a part. Special attention is paid to the verbalization of gender stereotypes in the studied parodies. The aim of the study is to describe the lexical units that nominate women and are used as part of the Russian language related thematically to the linguistic markers of gender inequality. The relevance of this study is determined by both linguistic and extralinguistic parameters. The first group includes an interest in the linguistic and cultural analysis of the paremiological fund, including in a comparative aspect. The second group of factors includes a social demand to satisfy the need to understand the mentality of representatives of the Russian linguistic culture. The following methods were used in this article: systematization, generalization, description, semantic analysis, conceptual analysis, linguistic and cultural analysis. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that for the first time it presents in a generalized form gender stereotypes that take place in the Russian language community and which are verbalized in paremias with nominating components "woman", "wife", "daughter", "mother-in-law", indicating a social role of a woman (wife, mother, mother-in-law, daughter). The main conclusions of the study are the following : historically, the Russian linguistic and cultural community has developed a pejorative view of a woman as a member of society. Russian language parodies with such nominating components as "woman", "wife", "daughter", "mother-in-law" most often actualize negative connotations that are expressed at the explicit level. This is confirmed by currently existing Russian gender studies, which show that there are certain patterns of male and female verbal behavior in the Russian language, the differences in which are probabilistic in nature.

Gender variation in indeclinable inanimate nouns and gender markedness in modern Russian

AbstractIn this paper, the results of a large web-corpus study on gender of Russian inanimate indeclinable common nouns are presented. In most cases, neuter is assigned to indeclinables as a default. However, morphophonological and semantic analogy may lead to feminine and masculine gender assignment. An extensive variation is observed in the whole group of indeclinables and for particular words, which is much larger than anything that can be found in indeclinable nouns. These data support the idea that both masculine and neuter genders have a special status in the Russian gender system (Magomedova & Slioussar 2023). Masculine tends to be chosen in case of conflicting gender cues. When there are no strong cues pointing to any gender, neuter is assigned as the default option. The results of the study are hardly compatible with various structural approaches to gender assignment, but can be accounted for in competition-based models.

Grammatical gender agreement in production: The case of heritage Russian

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: The primary goal of this study was to investigate the knowledge of Russian gender in young heritage speakers through different agreement constructions. Design/methodology/approach: Participants were 30 Russian–Spanish–Catalan multilinguals from Spain aged 7–11 years, divided into two proficiency groups, and a baseline group of 24 age-matched Russian monolinguals residing in Russia. All participants completed four experiments using an oral elicited production task addressing different linguistic conditions. Data and analysis: The accuracy scores were compared between the two proficiency groups and between the heritage and monolingual speakers to document any changes as a function of the type of agreement construction, gender value, noun form transparency, and crosslinguistic congruency. Findings/conclusions: The results demonstrated a hierarchy of gender values; masculine being the easiest gender value, neuter the most difficult, and feminine in between the two. The crosslinguistic influence was yelled under vulnerable conditions: when (1) the proficiency in heritage language is low, (2) in opaque and (or) incongruent nouns, and (3) in agreement construction which is absent in Spanish and Catalan. The results also suggest that the heritage language from the high-proficiency group can attain monolingual-like gender agreement knowledge. Originality: We documented gender agreement production in trilingual speakers, which is an under-explored topic. The study employs a new method of analysing gender in several constructions, including adjectival and verbal agreement at Noun Phrase and sentence levels. Significance/implications: The study provides insights into heritage language development during the early years of exposure to the two majority languages. The results may offer a greater understanding of the characteristics of heritage language/L2 development in trilingual children.

Speech accuracy and grammatical category of gender in modern Russian

The author argues that recently research attention has been attracted by the various structural feminitives that have become more active in the Russian language in general and in the media space in particular. The purpose of the article is to describe feminitives taking into consideration generic and gender correlations in the aspect of the textual category of accuracy. This purpose has determined the choice of adequate research methods, which used methods of contextual and linguopragmatic analysis. The article presents an expansive view of the problem of feminitives — in the context of the functioning of the grammatical gender category as a whole. Observations are made on the possibility of the gender category in general and temporary formations in particular to contribute to the formation of object, conceptual and emotional and aesthetic (elocutionary) accuracy. The article is based on the 2022 media texts. The correlations relating to gender significant for feminitives has been detected, which include an unmarked element as neutral one, implementing conceptual accuracy. The choice of such a unit is determined by its regularity and conciseness, and the conceptual accuracy implemented by it ensures a natural adequacy in the perception of the text by any addressee. The marked member of the opposition, in particular the feminitive in the direct meaning, forms and implements the object accuracy. Another marked member of the opposition, the feminitive in the direct meaning, represents emotional and expressive (eloquent) accuracy as the category of the highest level. Thus, the privative grammatical opposition relating to gender can be considered as binomial with the following variants of models: unmarked masculine gender — marked feminine gender (feminitive in the direct meaning); unmarked masculine gender — marked feminine gender (feminitive in the figurative meaning). It is also possible to analyse grammatical opposition relating to gender as a three-element one: unmarked masculine gender — marked feminine gender (feminitive in the direct meaning) — marked feminine (feminitive in the figurative meaning), taking into consideration contextual conditionality and the implementation of the accuracy category.

V. B. Zuseva-Ozkan. The warrior maiden in Russian modernist literature: Image, motifs, and plots

The review deals with V. Zuseva-Ozkan’s monograph that describes the folkloric and mythological origins of warrior maidens and their depictions in European literatures. This study focuses on the Amazons, Valkyries, Artemis, Athena, Brunhild, Jeanne D’Arc, and other female warriors. In her ground-breaking work that greatly enriches Russian gender studies, the scholar finds and examines the representations of female warriors by Russian modernist authors (V. Bryusov, A. Blok, A. Bely, N. Gumilyov, M. Tsvetaeva, and others). The scholar conducts a detailed analysis of the selected texts, drawing parallels with the authors’ other works and uncovering the sources of their inspiration. Establishing the motifs and topoi of the warrior maiden subject (the heroine wearing male clothing or armour, the virginity motif, her androgyny, etc.), the monograph examines them in the context of an individual author’s world. It is suggested, for example, that, while Blok and Bely incorporated female warriors in their mystical schemes, Tsvetaeva used the image as the embodiment of gender transgression.

Teaching Grammatical Gender in Russian as Foreign Language to Spanish Learners: a Review and Didactic Recommendations

Previous studies report that grammatical gender causes difficulties for learners of second (L2) and foreign languages (FL), especially for those students whose first language does not possess this grammatical characteristic. Although Spanish and Russian share gender feature, Russian has a more complex gender system which may be difficult to acquire for Spanish-speaking students. Given that it is not clear what explicit instructions Spanish students of FL Russian receive during the acquisition process and not numerous research that study this issue, in this paper we aim to analyse three elementary level textbooks usually used to teach Russian as FL in Spain as for their presentation of grammatical gender. The textbook analysis revealed differences between the presentation of noun endings of each gender and the activities employed in practicing gender agreement. Notable similarities between three textbooks were found in their lack of: i) natural and grammatical gender distinction, ii) noun endings frequency statistics, iii) explicit reference to the Spanish gender system. The didactic recommendations that emerge from the present study are the following: the explicit instructions should focus on the distinction between natural and grammatical gender, the reference to Spanish gender and the most relevant endings for non-canonical nouns, and noun endings frequency statistics should be provided.

Lexical innovations with the root popolam (‘in half’) in the Russian gendered Internet discourse

The relevance of the study is underpinned by the modifications of the Russian society gender canon, the Russian gender worldview transformations and by the growth of importance of the communicative and linguocultural Internet space that constitutes the field of spontaneous social, psychological and linguistic experiments and also representative sources of information on the Russian-speaking men and women’s speech practices. The research is aimed at revealing and describing derivational, semantic and functional features of the 23 lexicographically undefined, engendered lexical units motivated by the adverb popolam (‘in half’) pointing at the extralinguistic situation of the financial responsibility dividing ina couple. The research is conducted on the material of the authors' contexts corpus including 1750 speech products manifesting informal Internet communication that were published inthe period from 2012 to 2022. The corpus contexts were obtained by continuous sampling method with the help of the Russian social network VK search engine and Google web search engine. The authors used methods of word-formation, semantic interpretation, contextual and discursive analyses and statistical method. The analysis has diagnosed that the constituents of the derivational nest with popolam- as the basis are used to nominate, categorize, characterize and evaluate masculine and feminine persons as participants in romantic, sexual and family relations. The innovations are also used to denote and characterize relationships in a couple from the point of view of financial responsibility division between partners. They are also used to designate actions and behavior types of participants in such relationships. The analysis proves that the innovations contain stable negative evaluation and are prevalent in woman's language. The analysis revealed that the functions of denomination, categorization and negative evaluation of the social interaction subjects and phenomena depend on the main ideological function of the innovations. The ideological function is increasingly important underthe circumstances of the conflict between patriarchal and new egaliterian gender contacts. It is determined that popolamshchik (‘slammer’) as a male denomination is not only the most widespread and important constituent but also a key word of the gendered Internet discourse.

Obscene language and the renegotiation of gender roles in post-Soviet contexts

Abstract Mat is a specific domain of Russian obscene vocabulary including words related to sexuality. The first sociolinguistic studies on mat emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union, concomitantly with the formation of Russian gender studies in the early 1990s (Tëmkina & Zdravomyslova 2003: 51). Until today, research on gender and taboo in Russian has been exiguous. Many scholars claim that the use of mat is a male prerogative (Uspenskiĭ 1994: 56, Doleschal & Schmid 2001: 274), whereas women’s use of mat is heavily sanctioned in society. Through data from a survey I carried out with 772 participants, I illustrate that mat is strongly present in women’s language use and that stereotypical gender conceptualizations are undergoing change. From the participants’ answers it emerges that discussions about the use of obscene language play a critical role in the multifaceted process of renegotiation of gender roles in post-Soviet contexts.

Семейное предпринимательство как ресурс повышения качества жизни семьи и ее трудовой занятости .

Family entrepreneurship as a resource to improve the quality of life of the family and its employment was the subject of discussions of the II Russian Gender Forum, which was held in Moscow on October 29—30, 2020 at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation. Moderator and initiator of the Forum, chairman of its Program Committee — Professor G. G. Sillaste, scientific head of the Department of Sociology and Science School “Gender and Economic Sociology” of the Financial University under the Russian Government, a member of the scientific and expert council under the Chairman of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly, defined the purpose of the Forum clearly — analysis of the realities and potential of the development of family entrepreneurship as a long-term social resource of the Russian economy and the quality of life. According to the scientist, family entrepreneurship is a promising technology for the development of a world of neuter gender entrepreneurship, an effective social practice that allows to combine the efforts and experience of family members in a single business useful for it and society, bringing to the family income, confidence in the future and better the quality of life. However, the expansion of family entrepreneurship requires not only the family initiative, but also consistent support from the state at all levels of its management activities. Discussions in numerous sections of the Gender Forum concerned the problems connected with the ways of improving the effectiveness of family and business activities, strengthening the economic solidarity of its members. organizing the exchange of experience, implementing family projects in promoting progressive economic ideas.

Пост-Пекин: российская гендерная политика в международном контексте

Пост-Пекин: российская гендерная политика в международном контексте

VAL´KOVA Ol´ga A., Shturmuia tsitadel´ nauki. Zhenshchiny-uchenye Rossiiskoi imperii [Storming the citadel of science: Women scientists in the Russian Empire

Ol´ga Val´kova monograph is devoted to women’s gradual entry into the academic community of the Russian empire in the late 18th – early 20th century. The book is essentially a reworked doctoral dissertation that Ol´ga Val´kova successfully defended at the Institute for the History of Science and Technology, Moscow, in 2014. We should certainly welcome this publication, as Ol´ga Val´kova’s research fills a manifest gap both in the social history of science in Russia and in Russian gender histo...

Российским гендерным исследованиям 30 лет: ретроспектива и перспективы

A retrospective analysis of the thirty-year period (1990—2020) of the formation and development of Russian gender studies is presented, in which identified are three conditional stages, characterized by the originality of the tasks solved and the results achieved, as well as the influence of external contextual factors: the first stage — the period of formation and institutionalization of gender studies in the Russian Academy and higher school, which received in the scientific literature on gender studies the name “gender 90s”, as a reflection of the rapid start of a new scientific direction in the 90s of the XX c.; the second stage — the inclusion of gender studies in the Russian context through the understanding and analysis of Russian material and problems. This stage covers the first decade of the XXI c. (2000—2009), and can be conditionally designated as the period of “transition of quantity into qualityˮ; the third stage — the development of gender in the digital age is associated with the continuation of Russian gender studies in context of digitalization and the emergence of a network society, as the main challenges of the last decade of the XXI c. (2010—2020). Special attention in the article is paid to the modern period, in which the fundamental ideas of gender equality began to be reflected in the changing Russian legislation: in 2018, the Ministry of Labor of the Russian Federation reduces the list and types of work professions prohibited for women from 456 to 100. This is the result of many years of demand from both international and Russian women’s organizations and researchers. 2019 — Russia has resumed work on preparations for the adoption of the federal law “On the fundamentals of the system of prevention of family (domestic) violence in the Russian Federation”. More than 900 thousand people signed a petition on the adoption of the law posted on Runet, while opponents of the law collected only 19 thousand signatures. The article presents the results and outlines promising directions of Russian gender studies, including those related to the emergence of a virtual gender space on the Internet.

Internal and External Factors in Heritage Language Acquisition: Evidence From Heritage Russian in Israel, Germany, Norway, Latvia and the United Kingdom

In this paper we consider elicited production data (real and nonce words tasks) from five different studies on the acquisition of grammatical gender in Heritage Russian, comparing children growing up in Germany, Israel, Norway, Latvia and the UK. The children grow up in diverse heritage language backgrounds, ranging from small groups (in Norway) to large communities (in Latvia). Furthermore, the children vary with respect to family background (one or two Russian-speaking parents) as well as the intensity of instruction in the heritage language through complementary schools. Russian has a three-gender system (masculine, feminine, and neuter) with gender cues varying in their transparency, predictability and frequency. The majority languages that these children speak differ widely with respect to the linguistic property studied: While English has no grammatical gender, Latvian and Hebrew both have two-gender systems (feminine and masculine), as well as the Oslo and Tromso dialects of Norwegian (masculine and neuter), while German has a three-gender system, with a feminine-masculine-neuter distinction, like Russian. However, the transparency of gender assignment varies greatly, with Hebrew and Latvian having predictable gender based on the shape of the noun, like Russian, while gender assignment in Norwegian is generally arbitrary and German is semi-transparent, with gender assignment tendencies rather than rules. The focus in the paper is on language-internal and language-external factors that may be (non-)facilitative for the acquisition of gender in Russian, i.e., possible cross-linguistic influence from the majority language and the importance of background factors, such as family situation, age at start of kindergarten, size of the Russian-speaking community, current exposure to Heritage Russian instruction, and the main language of instruction. Our results show no significant differences across groups with respect to the majority language, but clear effects of background variables, with family type, age and current exposure to minority instruction as the most important ones.

Gender equality: legislative issues of the Russian Federation in socio-political discourse

The article provides a comparative analysis of the national strategy to improve the status of women in the Russian Federation and alternative legislation on gender equality, as well as the heated debate that has developed in the media on the implementation of equal rights and equal opportunities for women and men. The clash of opinions is considered from the point of view of correspondence of the discussion of the issue of gender equality to the specific actions of the actors involved in it. Shown are the changes in Russian gender policy, often quite formal, and, as a result, the deterioration of international indicators of Russia's place in the ranking of gender equality. Various approaches to the definition of the term “gender” in the public are shown.

«Мужское» и «женское»: гендер в фокусе отечественных исторических исследований (материалы к учебному курсу «Основы культурной антропологии»)

Purpose. The article presents a brief overview of the 30-year period of the development of Russian gender studies and reviews the state of gender studies in Siberia in the last decade. Results. The authors came to the conclusion that the gender approach in Russia was very successful in the field of historical disciplines, especially in historical feminology and women’s studies. The authors analyze the emergence of various areas within this issue, the key topics and approaches that have been developed in the Russian humanities. The main directions were reflected in the anniversary collection digest on gender history and anthropology “Gender in the focus of anthropology, family ethnography and the social history of everyday life” (2019). Conclusion. The authors describe the current position of Siberian gender studies and conclude that gender issues in Siberia are less active in comparison with the European part of Russia. In recent years, Siberian researchers have increasingly replaced the category of “gender” with neutral categories of “family research”, “female”, “male”, and so on. More often researchers choose “classical” historical problems raised in historical science before the “humanitarian renaissance”, which began in the 1990s in Russia. In modern gender studies in the Siberian region, the capabilities of critical feminist optics and gender methodology are rarely used, and queer-issues are not developed.

Development of Speech Culture of Non-Philologist Students in the Course of Examining the Category of Gender in Russian Language

The article is devoted to one of the topical issues of modern pedagogical science – to the formation of speech culture of non-philologist students in the course of studying Russian language as state language of the Russian Federation, language of international communication, national language of the Russian people. The main competence formed in the course of studying Russian language is the communicative competence which is aimed at the development of speech activity of the students of non-philologist specialties. According to the opinion of the author of the research, an important indicator of success of the non-philologist specialist in the hi-tech competitive world is acquisition of skills of professional communication, use of the methods of speech influence and conviction. In the given work we investigate the question of grammatical and stylistic norms of the use of the category of noun gender representing the greatest complexity in the oral and written language of non-philologist students. In this regard the purpose of the present work is creation of the lingual-methodical principle of communicative approach which will provide the formation of speech culture of non-philologist students in the higher educational institution when studying the category of gender in Russian; determination of pedagogical technologies of training in order to increase the culture of speech communication of the future experts. The practical importance of the studied problem consists in the improvement of quality of the vocational training of non-philologists students; in the definition of the trajectory of the educational growth of future highly qualified specialist capable to choose language means in professional activity reasonably, to realize the communicative intentions in various situations of communication adequately, to respect the grammatical and stylistic rules of using the category of noun gender.

Russian Gender Relations in Educational Materials on RFL as a Subject of Reflection in the Muslim Audience

The article analyzes the textbook of the Russian language "The Road to Russia" by V.E. Antonova, M.M. Nakhabina, M.V. Safronova, A.A. Tolstykh, which is in demand at the elementary, basic and first certification levels of training of foreigners in Russia and abroad. Special attention is drawn to the speech practice and visual materials of this textbook, that represent gender relations in Russia, which might be ambiguously perceived by students who profess Islam. It is shown that when comprehending such materials, students often do not take into account the traditional moral values of the Russians and make inadequate moral conclusions. The necessity of considering these issues is explained by the fact that this textbook is applicable to an "ideal foreigner"; it does not take into account the confessional characteristics of students and significant differences in the organization of life in different countries. The article distinguishes particular texts and topics of the textbook, the study of which should be accompanied by special cultural commentary of the teacher, as well as speech material that might be excluded from the educational process, since its presentation in the Muslim audience is not appropriate. A reasoned conclusion is drawn on the necessity of compiling a textbooks aimed at forming a positive opinion on Russia among foreign Muslim students and harmonizing relations between speakers of different faith-based cultures.