ABSTRACT
The economic, social and political changes that have occurred in Russia following the collapse of the USSR had a profound effect on Russian women’s lives. Economic reform brought poverty, insecurity and high levels of anxiety and stress to large sections of the population, both female and male (UNDP 1999). In addition, women were faced with a new enthusiasm in the media, political rhetoric and public opinion, for essentialist attitudes to gender and restrictive notions of women’s appropriate place and role in post-Soviet society (Attwood 1996; Sperling 1999: 73–80). As a result, women’s position in the public sphere was considerably undermined in terms of both political representation and access to paid employment. Many women welcomed a move away from the excessive burdens of Soviet-style ‘emancipation’ which demanded both equal participation in the public sphere and primary responsibility for the family and domestic sphere from women. Yet a simple retreat into the private sphere of home and family quickly proved neither financially possible nor personally acceptable for large numbers of Russian women (Khotkina 1994; Mezentseva 1994; Bridger and Kay 1996). From the early 1990s onwards, many Russian women had to deal with new and difficult personal circumstances and struggled to support their families and loved ones both materially and emotionally. In the face of these many challenges Russian women showed great courage and ingenuity in developing flexible survival strategies for themselves and their families and adapting to new demands and circumstances (Kiblitskaya 2000; Bridger et al. 1996). As well as struggling individually, some women came together with others like themselves, forming grassroots women’s organizations in an attempt to improve their circumstances and help each other to survive and, where possible, to prosper.
