Economic sexism
Men and women in Russia still do not have equal rights at work and in family life. This is evidenced by recent research by scientists. According to the law, of course, representatives of the weaker and stronger sexes have equal opportunities in all spheres of personal and public life. After all, we live in a secular, democratic state, and therefore, by definition, there should be no infringement of citizens.
But this is on paper, but in life it is not at all the same. Russians are still close to the character of the successful Katerina from the film “Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears,” who was afraid to admit her high social status to the abusive drunkard Gosha. “A wife should not earn more than her husband” — this is exactly what many women in our country believe more than forty years after the release of the cult film.
Who is to blame for this, why is Gosha’s statement still alive? MK spoke with experts about the gender problems that Russians face.
Research shows that sexism towards women is still a problem in Russia: in work, in family relationships, and in self-expression. Experts from the World Economic Forum testify: our country is in 122nd place out of 152 in the gender equality ranking, neighboring countries such as Sierra Leone and Morocco.
Recently, the Rabota.ru service conducted a survey on salary the wishes of the Russians. On average, respondents would like to earn 119 thousand rubles per month. However, it turned out that the level of expected income depends significantly on gender. Men reported claims for a salary of 129 thousand, while women reported a figure of 88 thousand, almost one and a half times less.
Expectations and reality, alas, coincide. According to Lyudmila Lipatova, a professor at the branch of the Northwestern Institute of Management, Doctor of Sociological Sciences, Russian women with higher education earn on average one and a half times less than highly educated men. Huge pay gaps affect virtually everyone, from unskilled workers to top executives. In some regions, for example in the Trans-Baikal Territory, Murmansk and Arkhangelsk regions, the gap is almost twofold.
Negativity towards women is based on the fact that they are less competent than men, that they should take care of children and family, and not about their career. For centuries, stereotypes have developed that women are more emotional and less logical…
“If we discard stereotypes, one might assume that men work more and it is their diligence that is reflected in their salaries. However, statistics do not confirm this hypothesis, says Lyudmila Lipatova. — In most regions, the length of the actually worked working week for men was 0.6–0.8 hours longer than for women. But even in this case, the differences in time spent per month do not exceed 2.5%.
— Women often fall out of the working rhythm, go on maternity leave, and take care of the child. There is less time for work, people also forget about training, everyday life and child care take up a lot of resources. Men, of course, also go on parental leave, but much less often, says career consultant and founder of the recruitment agency Hurma Recruitment Ekaterina Starodubtseva-Kalacheva.
However, it’s one thing when a woman herself decides to postpone her career because of the birth of children, but it’s quite another thing if the employer imposes, to put it mildly, incorrect demands on her.
…38-year-old Tula resident Yulia Tyutina, mother of two sons, still remembers with tears in her eyes how she was humiliated at an interview, although five years have passed since then. This happened in one of the municipal institutions.
“You will sometimes have to work on weekends, we do not welcome sick leave to care for children,” the personnel officer said. — But that's not the main thing. You are still young, what if you want to give birth again? We don’t need an employee on maternity leave, do you understand me?”
Yulia did not plan to give birth. But she didn’t intend to give up her offspring if pregnancy suddenly happened.
— How can you even make such demands? Don't give birth! But the fact that? Will you fire me with a “wolf ticket”? — the woman was indignant.
The personnel officer did not argue. The conversation in the office took place under video cameras, in front of witnesses, and the refusal of a candidate with two higher educations would have looked strange. In general, Yulia was not refused directly, but the salary was offered at the lower level of the salary scale.
“Well, I wish I could get a job in a private company with crazy earnings, where you really have to choose: either devote all your strength to your career, or stay true to family values. Then we would consult with our husband and parents about whether this is worth going through. But unimaginable conditions were presented to me by a government organization that is obliged to comply with the requirements of the law! But, as you can see, the law, even in this case, is the drawbar.”
True, there are cases of de jure discrimination, which in fact cannot be called de facto discrimination. Personnel officers, being good psychologists, usually see for what purpose a person comes to work. It happens that women want to get a job, succumbing to emotions or experiencing problems in their personal lives.
“A girl came to me and asked us to get a low-skilled job,” recalls an employee of an oil refinery in Yaroslavl. — I look at her: beautiful, slender, very young, and there is despair in her eyes.
The personnel officer asked the candidate to tell about herself. It turned out that the girl was studying at the university, got married early, and her husband demanded that she bring money to the family and began to give up. So she decided to get a job at a factory and transfer to the evening department in order to spend as little time at home as possible and have money to live on.
— We had vacancies at that time. But why ruin a girl’s future career? Which one is working? She didn’t hold anything heavier than a handkerchief in her hands! I said that there was no suitable position for her at the moment and asked her to wait at least another month.
A month later, that same girl returned with a huge bouquet of roses. She said that she left her disgusting husband, returned to her parents’ apartment, continued her full-time studies, and soon received a cash grant and an invitation to an internship in China.
— The gradual decrease in the proportion of women in such sectors as industry, agriculture and forestry, construction, transport and communications can be considered a concern for their health. Work at enterprises in these industries is often classified as hard and stressful, and is also carried out in dangerous and harmful conditions, which has a particularly detrimental effect on the female body,” comments Lyudmila Lipatova. “In this situation, without fear of accusations of discrimination, one can wish that until working conditions are humanized in these industries, there would be as few women in such jobs as possible. By the way, surprisingly and at the same time sadly, women earn more in “hard” areas: fishing and fish farming, forestry and agriculture.
Why does violence in the family and at work remain a serious problem in Russia?
— In answering this question it is difficult to rely on any confirmed data. Official statistics include only cases where there is a statement to the police or an offense has been committed. After the adoption of the law on the decriminalization of beatings in the family in 2017, the statistics improved twice, but the problem remained, says Anna Drobot, head of the Moscow branch of the New People party.
“Women are much more likely to become victims of harassment in the workplace and domestic violence, and in addition, they perform a larger volume of household chores,” says lawyer Evgeny Antonov. — Due to the latency of offenses, the specifics of labor relations and the inviolability of home, effective legal mechanisms for overcoming these problems are at the development stage.
If we take the extreme form of domestic violence—murder—then men die from domestic violence approximately twice as often as women. The figures for the year look like this: 243 women and 472 men died. When you look at violent crime in general, the situation is reversed. Of the 33 thousand cases, 23 thousand were women.
These two facts allow us to reconstruct a typical scenario of a family tragedy: a woman suffers beatings for years, cannot stand it and responds to the offender, resulting in fatal cases. Surgeons talk about this in personal conversations. Often men are admitted to the operating table with stab wounds after a conflict with their wife.
“The solution could be the development of an institute of family psychologists,” says Anna Drobot. — From our practice in Moscow, we know that timely help from a psychologist often saves families. Unfortunately, not everyone can afford this, and there is also a risk of getting hired by a “specialist” without education and experience.
The only area of life where there seems to be no obvious discrimination against women is life expectancy. Anna Drobot reminds that in our country there is a significant gap in life expectancy between men and women. According to this indicator, Russia is a global anti-leader along with Armenia and Belarus.
According to Rosstat, the average life expectancy for men is now 64 years, for women — 74 years. The ten-year gap has remained unchanged over the past three decades. In Moscow the situation is better, 75 and 82 years respectively.
However, statistics, as you know, are accustomed to measuring temperatures in hospitals. A recent study by scientists from the scientific and educational school of Moscow State University “Brain, cognitive systems, artificial intelligence” forced experts to pay attention to the connection between women’s mortality and their profession.
Analysts looked at the demographic situation in Russia during the COVID-19 pandemic and found that women suffered more than men. Experts have identified a significant reduction in life expectancy for women in Russia, much greater than for men. Moreover, among the countries providing reliable statistics, this phenomenon was noted only in Russia.
Medical workers have suffered the most. It turned out that women predominate among employees of hospitals, clinics and hospitals, which led to the emergence of the so-called professional channel of infection. At the same time, the difference in income and employment was not in favor of the fairer sex. The lack of resources among women led to their rather high mortality rate during the pandemic and, in general, to a decrease in life expectancy compared to men, the authors of a large-scale study conclude.
Paradoxically, social stereotypes and gender discrimination against Russian women are balanced in the legal field: the position of women in Russia (according to the letter of the law) is more favorable than that of men.
Obvious advantages are observed in three main positions: married life, raising children and criminal law, says Evgeny Antonov.
Thus, a pregnant woman has the exclusive right to an abortion and is not obliged to have it if the man does not consent to the birth of an unwanted child. If a woman, who is formally married, gives birth to another man, the husband is automatically registered as the father of the child. This rule also applies for a period of 300 days after the divorce. This state of affairs forces the ex-husband to challenge paternity in court, and to recognize the biological father. Thus, Russia at the legislative level recognizes the principle of monogamy, which came into legal norms from church canons.
The husband does not have the right, without the consent of his wife, to initiate proceedings for divorce during the wife’s pregnancy and within a year after the birth of the child, even if the child's father is another person.
Child support payments are overwhelmingly paid by men, and the courts, despite the principle of joint maintenance of children, often exact in favor of women not half the rate per child, but the entire subsistence minimum.
Basically, Russian men are forced to actually buy communication with their children by paying increased alimony to their mother or by unequal division of property after divorce.
Pregnancy, as well as the presence of children under the age of fourteen, is the basis for mitigating administrative liability for women, the law does not allow the use of administrative arrests against them. Men do not have such concessions.
For committing crimes, women can be held exclusively in general regime colonies as punishment in the form of imprisonment, while men also serve their sentences in a strict and special regime.
Finally, the law does not prohibit women from behavior that provokes men and from appearing at work place in a provocative appearance with demonstration of intimate areas (short skirts, deep neckline); There is no liability for failure to complete household chores.
Thus, the state manually establishes gender balance, the lawyer concludes. But, alas, we are talking about the law, and not about its implementation. And Russia is still very, very far from civilized world standards.
• Create your career plan. Visualization is already a big step towards success. Analyze your current skills and knowledge, strengths and weaknesses, where you could apply them. Try to be objective and set adequate goals for yourself.
• Don't try to be perfect. Perfectionism is based on the fear of making mistakes, when in fact it is the inaction due to the fear of making mistakes that causes the real damage. Strive for progress, not perfection, and learn from your mistakes, this is the best experience.
• Be open to new things. Even if you do not have one hundred percent confidence in your abilities, this is not a reason to refuse existing opportunities for development.
• Surround yourself with people and things that correspond to your picture of the world. The environment in which we live affects us much more than we realize. It is important that the people around you are a motivating force for you.