ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I continue mapping the characteristics of Russian socio-
political activity. I will examine how civic organizations and formal politics
are gendered: how women and men practice political citizenship and how
they are positioned and represented as political subjects. Gendering of
agency is examined at two interrelated analytical levels. First, gender is
analyzed at a symbolic level. I ask how femininity and masculinity and their
interrelationships are represented in the context of civic activity and politics,
and how sexual difference is constructed as a political difference (cf. Rosenholm 1999, 14). How do the categories ‘woman’ and ‘man’ emerge
within different interpretative repertoires and how are the relations of
subordination/emancipation constructed through them? I will also discuss
how repertoires of gender and activism intersect with discourses on
nationality (‘Russianness’, ‘Sovietness’, ‘us’ as a nation). I argue that with
the signification of socio-political activity and the symbolic demarcation
of its boundaries, a national gender order and political community are
produced. Second, this chapter addresses the question of gendered practices of par-
ticipation. Are there differences in women’s and men’s participation in civic
organizations and formal politics? Do women participate more in civic
groups, or is there rather a gender division so that women dominate certain
types of organizations and men other types? Several scholars have con-
tended that women are very active in the civic sector in Russia (e.g. Richter
2002; Henderson 2003; Sperling 2006). However, this claim has not been
thus far statistically attested. I address this question here by investigating with the representative survey how women and men actually participate in
civic groups in Tver0. These results provide an indication of the gendered patterns of the Russian civic terrain and can be used as a point of compar-
ison for future studies in other Russian localities.
