Gokten Dogangun
Ph.D. Candidate
Political Science and Public Administration
Middle East Technical University, Turkey
Title: An Overview of ‘Gender’ Politics in the Post-Soviet Russia
In this paper, I will try to provide an overview of gender politics in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia with
a specific focus on the redefinition of citizenship. My main argument is both in Soviet and post-Soviet
times, Russia has a gendered citizenship regime. My main question is whether there has been
rupture or continuity between the Soviet and post-Soviet gender politics. My aim is to discover the
images of femaleness and maleness in Soviet and post-Soviet times, and how these images shaped
the state aprroach to gender equality. It is concluded that there has been no drastic change in
understanding and treating ‘woman’ before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
During the Soviet times, gender had served as an organizing principle in the Soviet state. The
Soviet state assigned close attention to women than men. Women would be both objects and agents
of the new Soviet ideology. Early Bolshevik writings carried a fear that if women were not included in
the revolutionary process if their support would not be gained, they might sabotage the new political
order and join a counterrevolution. Moreover, women had a revolutionary potential because they
were illiterate, backward, weak substratum and so were ideal constituency for creating comrade.
And, more importantly, the production of future communist generations was in the hands of women.
If they put negative into the heads of their children, then those children might resist the new Soviet
order. In the immediate post-revolutionary period, the disruption of pre-Soviet, traditional gender
system attracted the Communist Party to undermine the old social system and to consolidate their
hegemonic rule. The disruption would symbolize the triumph of the new regime.
The attention of the Bolshevik leaders to women was not only out of an altruistic concern for
women’s welfare, but because the production of future generations of communists was in women’s
hands and because women played an important role in the Soviet symbolic system. What had been
done in the name of women by Bolshevik revolution was significantly motivated with the aim of
breaking the old social relations, and establishing a new social system.
The Soviet ideology on women focused on the inequality between men and women.
Depending on the theoretical works of Bebel, Engels, Marx and Lenin, the Bolshevik leaders
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determined capitalism, private property and class exploitation as the main and only source of
unequal men-women relations. They believe that if the conditions of capitalism were removed, then
women-men equality would be automatically realized. They believe that women’s liberation would
be attained by formal equality as well as through economic self-determination and women’s equal
participation to labor force. The road to liberation for women as citizens and creative social beings
would run through work.
There had been very important achievements like amendments in civil code, labor force
participation, education, social provisions, etc.
 Women and men were granted equal civil and political rights
 Labour law established the equal rights of women’s labour force participation with men
 Maternity leave [financial support of full-pay for eight weeks before and after birth]
 The principle of equal pay for equal work
 Equal rights to education for both sexes
 Women were granted the right to vote and to be elected as deputies to the soviets in 1918
Constitution
 Restrictions on divorce were lifted and divorce was restricted to the request of either spouse
 Marriage was cast as a civil rather than religious union by 1918 Civil Code
 Marriage was restricted to the mutual consent of the parties
 About residence, wife would not have to follow husband
 The choice of surname was extended (surname of man or wife or a joint surname could be
chosen, ending the automatic imposition of the man’s surname on his wife)
 New inheritance laws permitted the inclusion of the daughters and their equal share with the
sons
 Fathers of children born in or out of wedlock were liable to share expenses connected with
pregnancy, birth and child maintenance
What kind of duties and roles prescribed for women within the new Soviet regime? Although the
formal equality before law was achieved and liberated women to a large extent, gender roles and
socialization was not radically changed. Lenin argued that not only a new legislation to guarantee
women’s rights but also women’s emancipation from domestic burden [domestic slave], which
would be going to continue even if new legislature was passed. Lenin’s remark that ‘equality in law is
not yet equality in life’ is ver important to remember. Lenin: Women’s question is analyzed during
the time of Bolshevik revolution and Civil War. Lenin – formal equality would not be enough to
change inequalities between genders. Transforming domestic life and relations would be required to
achieve real revolution, for Lenin. Thoughts of Kollontai and Armand to transform domestic relations
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were originated from Marxist ideas on women and to some extent had to extend them, given the
current socio-historical conditions in the SU. Abortion was legalized. The CPSU officially supported
the special work for women organized by Zhenotdel.
The contract between state, women and men were not same. It was frequently gendered.
Gendered division of labour at home remained without any change and moreover, a gendered public
sphere emerged. Men and women were not equal either in public or private life. It was just the form,
not the content; of gender roles and socialization had changed in Soviet Russia. Indeed, Soviet Russia
had always been a conservative society. Despite the principle of formal equality, gender difference
was defined on the grounds of that women and men are complementary to each other. Depending
on traditional images of femaleness and maleness, the Soviet state prescribed distinctive roles and
duties for women citizens and male citizens in the building of communism. Soviet gender discourse
encouraged formal equality based on biological essentialism.
Women were defined as worker-mothers who combined their duties of mother and worker.
In the late 1920s, motherhood was seen as a duty, instead as a private matter. The state saw a
legitimate interest in controlling maternity and raising the future generations as true communists.
For the Soviet state, motherhood was the ‘natural’ destiny of women; and it had to be facilitated and
rewarded by the state. For instance, if a woman was the biological mother of more than ten children,
she was entitled as ‘heroine mother’ and given a certain amount of money. However, the father was
not entitled this way. The abortion, for instance, had always been regulated by the state and never
seen as a woman’s right since the revolution. The right to abortion (1920) was not inspired by a
commitment to woman’s right to control her own body. The main motive was to control backstreet
abortions. And the new law was not universally supported.
Men, on the other side, were expected to contribute to the construction of communism by
serving as leaders, managers, soldiers and workers. Men were also seen as main breadwinners
despite the importance given to women’s labor force participation.
This accelerated gender inequality in working life. Despite the principle of equal pay for equal
work in quantity and quality, women continued to receive 65-70% of men’s wages. Women were
concentrated more in low-paid sectors and feminine jobs. Soviet women were largely invisible in key
decision-making institutions.
The education level of women was equal and in many cases higher than men. They provided
a substantial percentage of the professional class of physicians, lawyers, engineers and scientific
workers. Labor force participation of women was the highest in the world, with 90 percent.
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Women like men drove a tractor but this did not free women from domestic burden like
cooking, cleaning, childrearing, etc. To balance productive and reproductive functions of women,
public dining rooms, cafeterias, laundries, kindergartens were opened. However, these facilities
would be expected to be set up, be organized and be run by women themselves. What happened
was the organisation of domestic work on a collective basis, instead of individual basis. This did not
change the perception that these functions are female work. And men’s participation into housework
was rarely suggested.
The case of Zhenotdel (women’s section within the Russian Communist Party-CPSU) perfectly
shows the contradictory nature of Bolshevik approach to gender equality. Zhenotdel experience
perfectly shows the legitimate boundaries of women question: women were of importance as a part
of proletariat. They were primarily comrade, not woman. Zhenotdel was created as an arm of the
party to reach its own ends and to mobilize women along revolutionary lines. Armand and Kollontai
accepted the principle of sameness and equality but at the same time they were aware of the
difficulties of and the need for specific measures for mobilizing women. Most party leaders did not
welcome a specific focus and organization for women. It was believed that gender could polarize the
whole proletariat on the grounds of sex, against communism.
Over time, the zhenotdel began to make demands on women’s behalf and to criticize the
regime for its failings. The party leaders accused these demands and attitudes for being feminist
deviations. The organization was first forced to take a more obedient and less independent stance,
and then closed in 1930. Despite the attention of many revolutionaries to sex equality, they
simultaneously ‘found it hard to cope with gender equality in their personal lives.’
Periodization:
1st stage = emancipation from family (1920s)
2nd stage = industrialization and development plans (1930s and 1940s)
3rd stage = demographic crisis (late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s)
In the 1930s and 1940s, the women question was reshaped around industrialization and
development. Stalin chose to solve these problems in a much traditional way, as strengthening the
family, ceasing critical discussions about the family, deterring divorce, banning abortion, reasserting
the domestic roles of women as mothers, wives and housewives. Women’s equality had been
defined in terms of their contribution to industrialization and collectivization in the 1930s, and in the
1940s, their participation in the Second World War in the 1940s.
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During Stalin time, the official discourse was like that the women’s question was resolved
and liberation of women was fully achieved. The Zhenotdel was banned and abolished in 1930.
Abortion was banned and illegalized (because unlike capitalism, there would be no unemployment,
exploitation, fear of future in socialism and no more inadequate living conditions like aftermath the
Civil War).
From late 1950s to glasnost (late 1980s), demographic crisis was at the center of gender
policy. Khrushchev’s concern to democratize the Soviet system led him to bring women’s issues back
on the political agenda and to ask why women were not as politically active as men. Khrushchev
adopted “differentiated approach to political agitation” and took into account the “different
characteristics of various groups” including women. Women were not a homogenous mass but a
differentiated group with different needs and problems. In that regard, he showed interest in the
issues concerning domestic roles, the availability of kindergartens, the reestablishment of women’s
organizations, and women’s involvement in social organizations.
The double burden was implicitly defined as problems. Despite Khrushchev’s attempt of deStalinization, it was still tending to define women’s objectives from above. The implication here is
that the needs of women were selected for attention were those which coincided with party
priorities about the aspects of women’s lives needing change to match socialist aspirations. For
instance, the zhensovety (women’s council) was lack of autonomy from the communist party. If
women had been allowed to define their own objectives, different goals could have pulled in
different directions and perhaps clashed with party priorities. A new focus on women’s question was
also derived from helping the CPSU to create “new women”. Abortion was legalized again in 1955.
Brezhnev’s main contribution was the declaration that the women’s question was unsolved.
The earlier “solved” status of the 1930s and 1940s prevented any serious analysis of gender roles.
The women’s question was reopened and the official boundaries of debate about female roles had
been widened, not for the idea of women’s liberation, but for immediate practical problems of
economic growth and labor supply. Brezhnev’s interest in the female double burden and his concern
about the supply of kindergartens, crèches, public dining rooms, etc. to disburden women was
related to find out a way to ease both productivity and fertility.
For the Bolshevik leaders, liberating women from the social relations of capitalist mode of
production had been put as the main motivation source of revolutionary attempts regarding women.
Breaking the social order organized around capitalist mode of production, reconstituting the legal
system and institutional structures along communist lines, and endowing women with formal
equality before the law [without touching the gendered nature of division of labor at home and in
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public sphere], the Bolsheviks assumed the women get liberated. Since they just focused on the
inequalities derived from capitalist order, they could not notice the pre-revolutionary Russian society
had been full of gendered traditional patterns and they promoted and institutionalized a gendered
order and a gendered citizenship regime.
Throughout the Soviet years, women policies had been restructured according to the
changing political, economic and demographic needs of the state. Here, the point is the legitimate
interference of the state in shaping gender policy as well as the dilemma that the state encountered
while reasserting the women as workers and mothers. The economic-demographic and political
priorities were competing like private and public roles and duties of women. The main dilemma was
between eco-demographic needs (high fertility rate) and political needs (commitment to women’s
emancipation).
In the second part of my presentation, I will focus on post-Soviet gender policy under the
circumstances of transition to market economy and the demographic crisis in Russia.
Despite the huge shifts in economic and political system, in post-Soviet Russia, there has
been a great continuity with the Soviet past in terms of state approach to gender question. The
economic and social system has continued to be shaped by an essentialist gender order as well as
gender policies have been shaped around state priorities. In the post-Soviet period, gender question
has continued to preserve its centrality to national politics. Liberals, anti-communists, nationalists, it
doesn’t matter who. Gender still functions as a point of convergence for Russian policy-makers.
Gender has become the central area for reunifying the post-Soviet state and to organize its citizens
around new values. The category of women becomes a site where tradition and modernization are
debated, new governments are legitimized and age-old traditions are reconstructed.
Transition to market economy
Like the Soviet era, post-Soviet era could be characterized by the organization of reproductive and
productive functions of women by the state. Part policy did not radically change the official line on
the link between employment and women’s liberation. Perestroika did not guarantee a gender
debate in feminist direction. Gorbachev placed the woman question higher on political agenda. He:
 supported motherhood with labor force participation;
 increased opportunities for part-time work;
 promoted women to senior posts;
 supported the revival of women’s councils (zhensovety)
Glasnost allowed the expression of a range of views, but highly traditional ones. Glasnost had
not undermined the central Soviet claims, even if implicitly challenged it. The woman question was
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discussed in relation to economic crisis, the need to strengthen the family and the demographic
crisis.
The demographic problem had been a concern for policy-makers since Khrushchev but the
radical break happened by Gorbachev. In 1987, Gorbachev explained that women should return to
their truly destiny since socialist development didn’t leave women sufficient time for housework,
childrearing and family life.
The demographic crisis, the high rates of abortion, the double burden of women, the rising
unemployment and the limited capacities of state led to the introduction of the idea of bringing
women back home. Easing women out of workforce was seen to prevent social disintegration,
decrease growing unemployment, release tension in the labor market and resolve demographic
problems. Flexible employment policy for women, for instance, helped the party accommodate the
Marxist heritage as well as support women’s withdrawal from the work-force. Party policy in the
1980s was characterized by this flexibility.
The transition to neo-liberalism was experienced in a gendered way. Women started to
concentrate more in the low paid spheres, and informal employment became very common for
them. The state would not able to afford childcare institutions and the system of nurseries had
collapsed. All this process increased gender inequality both in home and working life.
However, at the same time, despite the neo-liberal pressures to reduce the public childcare
services, the post-Soviet state preserved and even extended childcare leaves. The new long-leave
scheme created a disincentive on the side of new private sector employers to hire women.
Additionally, the value of these payments did not keep up with inflation and the Russian families
came to feel that the state left them alone to create and manage their own lives.
Most importantly, the state care system left its place to neo-familialist model, or we can call
it as refamilialization of care. Neo-familialist model promoted traditional understanding of gender
roles, and conceptualized male as mainly breadwinner, and women as homemaker, mother and care
provider. In contrast to the Soviet female model of worker-mother, the new care policy aimed to
facilitate the status of a temporary homemaker for an extended period and to release tension from
the labor market.
Move to market has not strengthened plurality and individual freedom but reinforced
essentialist sex roles, since the market is seen to require these masculine characteristics smothered
by the feminized Soviet past. The new sexual culture versus official puritanism of Soviet period has
not challenged but reinforced many of the old stereotypes of masculinity and femininity. Gender
difference is seen as biologically rooted and pictured as natural and necessary.
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Basic features of post-Soviet gender policy can be summarized as follows:
 Feminized Soviet period versus masculinized post-Soviet period.
 Celebration of masculinity as a result of moving to market economy.
 Double-burdened women as natural.
 Essentialism and biological difference.
Basic ideology of gendered citizenship in post-Soviet era is new traditionalism in various
forms. In the transition period, competing gender ideologies are based on invented traditions, which
set out normative notions of masculinity and femininity. Post-Soviet transformation has challenged
the structural foundations of Soviet emancipation of women. But practice of combining women’s
roles rooted in everyday life and economic conditions remained. By doing this, all gendered
representations explicitly or implicitly appeal to some notion of “TRADITION.”
In the early transition period, post-Soviet Russia mostly advocated traditionalist hierarchy
between sexes both in public and private spheres. These positions were strengthened by the idea
that Soviet policies equality destroyed the natural harmony between men and women by overemancipating women and by destroying masculinity. Natural models of masculinity and femininity,
and traditional attitudes about value of family revived. Man is portrayed as a breadwinner and a
protector while woman as a housewife and mother.
Women also supported the traditional position of men as the main provider of the family and
wanted back the pre-revolutionary figure of male breadwinner.
In a survey conducted in 2003 by Elena Zdravomyslova, it is revealed that women are
increasingly expressing traditional views on gender roles; reaffirming their destiny as mothers and as
homemakers; defining husbands as the breadwinner. At the same time, many women would still like
to have a successful career but this does not change the increasing preference on staying at home.
Another characteristic of transition period was feminization of labor market. In crushing the
masculine work identities favored under Soviet organization, women have transformed themselves
into feminine women. Women have started to manage their professional identity through their
attention to their personal grooming, dress style, and make-up. This feminization also serves to
reinforce the essentialist gender order.
Still, the identified problem of gender discourse in transition era was to create ideal-real man
or ideal-real woman rather than to explore difference, diversity and cultural richness. Alternative
gender and sexual identities remained extremely limited. Homosexuality was seen as a dangerous
sign of individualism and described as anti-social behavior.
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Demographic crisis
The demographic problem has been a crucial political topic since Khrushchev and Brezhnev.
Indeed, the population of Russian Federation has been declined from 148 million in 1990s to 143
million in 2010. While Gorbachev offered to return women home, Putin has tried to revive the Soviet
ideal type of worker-mother. Putin strongly advocated both wage-work and state support for Russian
mothers.
In his first public speech in 2000, Putin pointed the decreasing fertility rate as a serious threat
to Russia’s survival as a nation, as a people. In this speech, he outlined the preconditions to increase
fertility rate as:
 Promoting societal and personal values embracing families with more children
 Raising material prosperity
 Improving socio-economic conditions for bearing and raising children
 Improving conditions for combining work and family
 Improving housing conditions
In that speech, Putin again addressed the demographic development of Russia as the
country’s most acute problem. Putin proposed a new form of benefit: maternity capital. This new
‘maternity capital’ [went into effect on 1 January 2007] provides mother of two or more children
$10.000and will be paid when the child turns three years old.
The money will not be given in cash, but in a voucher and usable for any of three purposes:
the purchase or improvement of an apartment, the mother’s pension savings, or the child’s
education costs. Furthermore, monthly allowances for family members who care children under 18
months were significantly increased to 1,500 rubles (slightly less than $ 56) for the first child, and to
3,000 rubles (slightly less than $100) for the second child.
In contrast to the first decade of transition, Putin seemed to acknowledge that bearing and
raising children has negative consequences for women’s power. Women are left to make a choice
between their productive and reproductive functions. Here, Putin assumed that the state should
have the responsibility to help women resolve the dilemma of choice. These policies toward women
are intended to balance both fertility and labor force participation.
However, there are some important cracks in these policies if viewed from a feminist
perspective. Maternity capital shows that the state can legitimately involve gender issues, define
problems, suggest solutions and manipulate reproductive behavior. The state aimed to improve
women’s status by promoting their roles as defined by the state’s needs. The state defines itself as
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the agent to fight against family patriarchy (which is the degrading of unemployed women in family
life due to giving birth) and as mothers’ best friend.
By doing so, the state instrumentalizes female citizens as biological-demographic
mechanisms for national survival. With maternity capital, Putin aims to enable and promote women
to give more birth and to contribute to their country as MOTHERS.
Despite Putin’s focus on material support and incentives in his speech, there also has been
attention directed toward the cultural aspect of the demographic crisis. His effort is to foster
traditional family values, love of home and love of country.
Putin’s speech in 2006 as well as his approach was definitely gender-framed, despite its
gender-neutral language. Women’s independence and respect within the family is reduced to
economic independence/LFP. Women are conceptualized as having no legitimate interests apart
from their family and their roles as being mothers and workers. Putin not proposed a more equitable
gendered division of labor in the home. Parenthood was still defined in terms of motherhood and
fathers were again assigned the traditional role. He did not say even a word about men, and their
needs, roles (as father and husband) and potential contribution to family life. Femininity is defined in
terms of the working mother.
Putin didn’t talk about society’s expectation that it is women to leave the workforce to give
care. The balance between work (production) and family (reproduction) is considered as an
exclusively woman’s issue. This polarizes gender consciousness and strictly divides feminine and
masculine spheres.
Putin’s 2006 speech included two complementary gender issues, which were typical of the
Soviet period: the demographic problem and the reform of military service problem. The policies he
proposed were seen to be very similar to the Soviet policies of assistance and support for the
working mother as a natural caregiver and as a useful economic resource. As was in the Soviet Union,
Russian women’s citizenship has once again been defined in terms of the working-mother contract.
This illustrates that the state establishes gendered relations with female and male citizens, and
identifies their economic and social contribution to nation’s well-being on the basis of sex.
Yet, post-Soviet gender policy under Putin still illustrates continuity, rather than a rupture,
with the Soviet gender policies. His speech aimed at strengthening the legacy of the Soviet family,
which was centered on the civic entitlement of wage-earning mother.
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