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Last year, I celebrated International Women’s Day in Russia. The PR firm I was working for at the time asked me to conceive and produce a short video for the occasion celebrating the female workers in the office. The nature of this celebration, however, was very different from what I had anticipated; a video that I had envisaged as a series of interviews of the women in the office talking about their proudest moments turned into a sequence of videos of men lauding their female co-workers. I could not help but note the irony. A video intended to celebrate female achievements and reflect on gender equality was doing precisely the opposite by depriving the women of a voice and implying that their validation could only be obtained through men.
And yet, to Russians, this is completely normal. On International Women’s Day, which is referred to in Russia simply as ‘8th March’, Russian women are accustomed to receiving flowers from the men in their lives – be it from their fathers, brothers, husbands, sons or co-workers. I was to be no exception: all the women in our office received a tidy bouquet of tulips from the men collectively.
22-year-old Masha from Taganrog, a port city in southwestern Russia observes: "I’ve never questioned the way the 8th March [IWD] has been celebrated in Russia.’ In fact, ‘it’s really pleasant", she says, "it has connotations of affection". The idea is that men are acknowledging the indispensable role that women play in their own lives: "They say that without women we wouldn’t be here anyway", explains Masha. “It may sound slightly egoistic because it sounds like men are celebrating their own achievements and [merely] acknowledging the contribution of their other half to these achievements, but no one sees it that way”.
“You know, we have this saying in Russia: the man is the head, and the woman is the neck”, continues Masha. “The head does the thinking and makes the decisions, but the head would not stand on the body were it not for the neck, it provides support”. Whereas to the Western reader this might sound patronising and demeaning to women, Masha contends that “this phrase is perceived as a positive thing in Russia, it means that without the woman nothing would work”.
This attitude betrays Russia’s prevailing adherence to traditional gender roles. Women are beautiful and feminine and men, strong and masculine. The most striking illustration of the rigidity of these gender roles was made manifest to me on a ski trip in Western Siberia. Gently provoking my thirty-something ski guide about the inflexibility of Russian gender roles, it transpired that, according to him: “When men make a decision, they aren’t allowed to change their minds. Changing one’s mind is a woman’s trait”. When I put this to Masha, she confirmed this theory with another Russian saying:
A woman will say something (zhenshchina skazala),
then she will change her mind… (zhenshchina peredumala).
This perception of gender roles is sometimes at odds with Russia’s modernising trends. On a visit to Tomsk last May, I found myself, predictably, in one of its cafés, this time called Ptitchka: a modern sort of place, where the combination of an irresistible food selection and ridiculously cheap prices meant that a ‘coffee’ inevitably turned into a three-course meal. I was with two Russian friends, Anya and Katya – as always impeccably groomed, with strikingly good posture and immaculate nails. Anya, who had been newly thrown into Muscovite professional life was complaining about her work, arguing that she found it hard to retain her femininity in a working environment.
This sort of whining used to irritate me profoundly. What I now understand, however, is that I was making precisely the mistake that most Westerners do; I was interpreting what Anya had said with Western reference points, where femininity isn’t so much a requirement for women, as it is a choice. This is perhaps a perfect example of the widespread and sometimes paradoxical coexistence of Russian traditionalism with modern global trends, and of the challenges that Russian women face adapting to contemporary norms all the while having to respect traditional ones, ideals which, as in Anya’s case, are sometimes in contradiction with one another.
Russian men expect impossible standards from their women. During last year’s IWD festivities, a Moscow Times article headline read: 'Putin applauds Russian women for managing everything at work and home whilst staying beautiful' [1].
Female attractiveness is emphasised in a way that male is not. A 2019 Levada-Centre poll asking Russians to rank 14 'qualities that you think best characterize women', selected 'beautiful' as second most important, whereas for men, it was number five on the list [2]. In the same Moscow Times article referred to above, Putin asserts the potency of female beauty. He is quoted telling a group of female police staff that when they patrol the city woodland parks, the number of accidents drops “because those who wish to commit suicide look at you and want to live again” [3].
Masha notes that she feels pressure to wear makeup, perhaps less so in Moscow where Western influences have permeated youth culture, but certainly in Taganrog, where she grew up. Boys on the other hand, are forbidden from showing signs of concerns about their appearance: “In my childhood, if a boy were to show signs of looking after his appearance, people would laugh at him, tell him that he was like a girl, as though it were shameful for a boy to care about his appearance”, says Masha.
Similar dichotomous gender roles also apply to relationships. Galya, a 20-year-old exchange student from Tomsk State University explains to me that, in her view, men and women get different things out of a romantic relationship. For the woman, “there is a share of egoism, its pleasant to be taken places and given presents”. And for the man, I ask? “He gets the relationship, the girl herself”, came the response. The way Galya sees it, there is a tacit social contract that comes with a relationship: “In Russia, guys do more for their girlfriends [than in the UK], but in return they ask for more”. The idea is that, as she puts it: “I look after you, so you should not do this and this”. Galya seems perfectly content with this arrangement but she does acknowledge, however, that there are limits. She says she would be happy not to wear a short skirt at her boyfriend’s request, but if he were to ask her to cut contact with her best (male) friend, that would be taking it too far.
Galya has been in Durham on an exchange for all of three weeks now and she has already observed some striking differences between Durham and her own university back in Siberia. “I have noticed that in the streets there a very few couples, I may have seen perhaps five or six couples over the course of about three weeks, whereas in Russia you see them everywhere”. Whether merely a reflection of British distaste for public displays of affection, or a genuine sociological difference, the fact remains; in Russia, young people are under a lot more pressure to be in a relationship.
“When everyone around you is boasting about their boyfriends, then you feel a lack of affection and attention and you feel like you want it too”, observes Galya. “From the age of 20 or 21 practically everyone is in relationships and when you go out with friends everyone is in couples and if you’re not in a relationship you just end up sitting on your own”, she adds.
When asked why she thought this was the case, Galya’s answer was simple: “It comes from a desire to feel wanted…you always want someone to compliment you”. For Galya, this kind of attention cannot be obtained from friends as it would be inappropriate from a boy, and inadequate from a girl: “In Russia we draw a distinction between female and male attention”.
For 22-year-old Alexandra from Stavropol, this traditional conception of gender roles also extends to friendships. Currently studying in Moscow, she too has been in the UK for a few weeks. Sitting across from me in a coffee shop, her pale blue eyes radiate intensity – I can tell she has a strong character. When I ask her about her weekend, she tells me that five of her Russian friends had come to visit her and together they had visited Newcastle and Edinburgh. Glowing with pride, she explains to me that among her friends, the boys bought her everything, food, ice cream and so on. According to Alexandra, that’s how it should be: “I want them to look after me the way men look after women, when I’m cold they give me a coat”.
In Durham, however, she notes that: “I have been here three weeks and no one has come up to me”, whereas “in Russia I have a different admirer almost every day”. Suddenly, I cannot help but suspect that the five male friends that had come to visit her were most likely all admirers too. Sensing my deliberation, she cocks her head energetically and looks at me quizzically: “The only boys that I am interested in are those that are interested in me, they have to choose me, and then I will say either yes or no”, she adds matter-of-factly.
And what about how things are done here? “We don’t understand your obsession with independence, I don’t want to be independent, I want something traditional”, came the answer. Yet Alexandra considers herself a feminist, though certainly not in the Western understanding of the term. “We have feminism, but it’s different”, she says. For instance, “we want there to be equality in terms of the effort that each puts into the relationship”. She explains to me that she doesn’t think it fair that, once married, men tend to get complacent and consider their fair share of effort expended in the process of securing their wife.
Alexandra sees men and women as both compatible and complementary, but fundamentally different. She advocates an equality where each party brings to a relationship (either romantic or platonic) that which the received attributes of their gender permits: “A woman is pretty, shy, caring and a man is honest, hard-working, a leader”, she declares.
In Russia, the word “feminism” has yet to conjure positive connotations, especially in men. Alexandra would never let it be known to a man that she regards herself as a feminist for fear that it would be misconstrued. “Everyone thinks that feminism means like in Europe, and no-one wants it the way it is in Europe”, she says.
In Russia, feminism is ostensibly viewed as a Western attack on femininity [4]. “To some extent I do not understand what the problem is, everyone thinks that men and women are equal”, says Masha from Taganrog. And she has a point. Today, according to data from the World Bank, the percentage of women in Russia’s labour force is 48.5%, relative to the UK which is 46.7% [5]. Historically, too, the Soviet Union was remarkably progressive in terms of women’s rights – in 1917, women received the right to vote (this happened in 1928 in the UK) and in 1920 abortion was legalised.
And yet, in 2017, Russia decriminalised domestic abuse reducing it to an administrative offence punishable by a fine rather than jail sentence [6]. Although this has provoked widespread outrage, when I asked Masha what she thought, she said she did not see it as a gender issue: “I think of it as a human question”.
“We think that you are obsessed with these gender issues (…) it seems it’s impossible to watch a single Western movie without the question of gender roles being invoked”. Alexandra is equally as unsparing in her opinion: “In England”, she says, “feminism is overcooked”.
The waitress came over to us for the third time to remind us that the place had closed. I made my way to the counter and, without even realising, ended up paying for Alexandra’s coffee too – it seems her abundant femininity had cast me in the role of yet another of her male admirers.
Author: Antonia Hamilton
References
1 & 3 The Moscow Times, (2019), “Putin Applauds Russian Women for ‘Managing Everything at Work and Home Whilst Staying Beautiful’”, 8thMarch: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/03/08/putin-applauds-russian-women-for-managing-everything-at-work-and-home-whilst-staying-beautiful-a64755.
2 Ferris-Rotman, A (2018), “Putin’s War on Women”, Foreign Policy, 9 April: https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/09/putins-war-on-women/.
4 Levada.ru, (2019), “Gender Roles”, 12th April: https://www.levada.ru/en/2019/04/12/gender-roles/.
5 The World Bank, (2019), “Labor Force, female (% of total labor force)”, September: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.TOTL.FE.ZS.
6 Walker, S (2017), “Fury at Russian move to soften domestic violence law”, The Guardian, 19thJanuary: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/19/russian-soften-domestic-violence-law-decriminalise-womens-rights.
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