People in Russia expect women to prioritize motherhood over professional development because of Russia’s low fertility rate. Citing a belief that strenuous jobs pose a threat to women’s safety and reproductive health, the government has barred women from occupations like aircraft repair, construction and firefighting. While the country passed reforms in 2019 to reduce the number of restricted jobs from 456 to 100, they will not come into effect https://absolute-woman.com/european-women/russian-women/ until 2021. However, some of the largest industries, like mining and electric engineering, remain in the barred category. When women—commonly described as “the weaker sex”—do serve in the Russian military, they do not escape traditional gender stereotyping.
- Wives of merchant class men had more independence than wives of the nobility or peasants because of the nature of their husband’s work, especially when their husbands were away from home on government service, as they were frequently and for long periods of time.
- It is not uncommon for practitioners in different fields to criticize scholars for being out of touch with what it is happening on the ground.
- They need to know if it’s safe to trust a man and to open their hearts.
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Many of the problems raised at the conference are systemic and go beyond women’s issues; solving them will require a cultural shift and political transformation. The Russian conservative backlash is shifting attention from the country’s economic decline and growing inequality to status anxieties and is undermining both traditional and intersectional feminist agendas. Some feminist and women’s rights organizations that used to be seen as a normal part of civil society are now ostracized by the general public. While the pursuit of women’s rights should not be reduced to a fight against specific government policies and legislative initiatives, Russia offers an interesting case for exploring the motivations and strategies of activism and social change in an authoritarian regime. In January 2017, the lower house of the Russian legislature decriminalized first time domestic violence. This applies to first offenses which do not cause serious injury, decreasing from a maximum penalty of two years imprisonment to a maximum of fifteen days in police custody.
Russian Women
Domestic violence as a whole– which disproportionately victimizes women– is a serious threat to women’s rights in Russia. In January 2017, Russia decriminalized domestic violence that does not cause serious injury– meaning broken bones or a concussion– for first-time offenders.
Manning with women: an overlooked solution to personnel shortages?
Outside of the military, too, an order from Vladimir Putin currently prohibits women from more than 450 professions across a number of industries—the fear being that overly strenuous activity might interfere with one’s ability to bear children. Though the Labor Ministry is reportedly working to reduce this number to 100 by 2021, restricted jobs will still include mining, https://www.kashivsoundarya.com/2023/02/04/ukrainian-brides-meet-ukraine-women-for-marriage/ construction, metalwork, firefighting, or jobs that involve heavy-lifting, diving, handling hazardous chemicals, welding, or aircraft repair. Law enforcement officers do not consider domestic violence against charged women as a significant circumstance relevant to the criminal case of the murder or causing bodily injuries to their partners or other male relatives. You can learn how to date and even get into a romantic relationship with a Russian woman from abroad and create a new family. There is an extensive number of sites where you can not only look for your future partner, you can also maintain constant and instant correspondence. Unfortunately, very often there misunderstanding can occur, which sometimes cannot be avoided because of language and cultural differences.
Russia initially denied a spike in domestic violence, despite national domestic violence organizations reporting their inability to keep up with a steep increase in calls from victims. Women were fined for breaking quarantine in order to escape their abusers until May 2020, when the government finally declared domestic violence an emergency in which breaking quarantine was acceptable. In March 2020, Putin signed a bill increasing the severity of punishments for breaking quarantine, which include fines https://www.sudhirsraval.com/project-muse-feminist-german-studies/ up to US$640 . If their actions caused others health issues or even death, those who break quarantine would receive a minimum of 5-7 extra years in prison and fines worth up to US$4,800. Meanwhile, under Russia’s domestic violence legislation, only abuse that results in a victim’s hospitalization is criminal; first-time offenders are punished with a fine worth merely US$88.
There is a widespread perception of inequality as a norm in Russia, so much so that women in the workforce may not even notice discrimination. Even conservative projections from border control agencies paint a picture of a nation in flight. During the two weeks following Putin’s mobilization announcement, 119,000 Russians entered the EU and an independent review of Russia’s Federal Customs Service data for the same period showed 200,000 going to Kazakhstan and another 49,000 entering Georgia.
Soviet and post-Soviet Russia experienced immense demographic losses, so it is no wonder that in the 1990s a moral panic resulted from the so-called “Russian cross,” a demographic trend so named because of the intersection of the declining birth rate and climbing death rate on a graph. Leaders link demographics to geopolitical strength, and nationalists worry about ethnic Russians dying out, so church leaders and political leaders have joined efforts to counteract what they see as alien ideas of feminism and a child-free ideology imposed by the West. “I don’t know anyone who was drafted or taken away, except my cousin who is out in the countryside,” Sofia said. His family is exploring many options to shield him from the draft, including enrolling him in seminary school—they heard that people in religious careers are exempt from service. “It is so hard when someone you love leaves,” said Katya, a 26-year old woman from Moscow who asked that her name be changed for her safety. “I spend a lot more time now missing him, and I focus on work to distract myself and not think about it.” Katya said that her daily life doesn’t feel that different—though she did learn how to fix home appliances, which would typically have been her partner’s domain.
And, more than 700,000 people have since fled the country to avoid such a fate, according to Forbes Russia. This estimate cannot be independently verified, and has been disputed by the Kremlin.
Makoveev noticed that after Vladimir Putin announced a military mobilisation in September, which led to an unprecedented exodus out of the country, many Russians were now choosing to stay in Argentina. In one chat group called Giving Birth in Argentina, on the Russian messaging Telegram app, more than 3,000 members, mostly soon-to-be mums, exchange tips on the finest maternity wards in Buenos Aires or where to best get baby formula. Figures on how many Russian women travel to Argentina specifically to give birth, however, are hard to come by. Russian women moving to Argentina to give birth now pay anywhere from £1,000 to £8,000 to brokers like Pekurova, who offer services that range from arranging translators and helping with the reams of paperwork to organising photoshoots with the newborn baby. Like many other firms in the industry, Pekurov’s company previously offered similar tours to Miami, Florida – once a hotspot for birth tourism. Even prior to the war, Russians could go visa-free to only about 80 countries.
