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Women in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia
Russian women are highly educated, have long-term presence in the labor market, and possess practical knowledge and attributes such as flexibility, perseverance, and resourcefulness that translate into business skills. Russian women, however, face political, economic, and social obstacles to full participation, some traceable to the impact of 40 years of communist rule and the early post-communist period. Although the Soviet Union boasted full employment and a high percentage of females in the labor force, the level of emancipation achieved by Soviet women was exaggerated. Women participated in the Soviet political and bureaucratic system, but often merely in token appointments or positions. As economic crisis took hold in the latter years of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev called upon women to return to their rightful place as wives and mothers and to voluntarily give up their jobs to men (Bridger, Kay, & Pinnick, 1996). Old attitudes, masked under Soviet rule, resurfaced. In Soviet Russia, many jobs were denied to women on the grounds of physical strength required or a hazard to health. In 1996, approximately 700 of 5000 job designations were still closed to women (Russian UN-NGO, 1996).