On Mar 8 Russian women forget equality drive to enjoy courtesies.

MOSCOW, March 6 (By Itar-Tass World Service writer Lyudmila
Alexandrova) -- On Monday it will be a hundred years since a leading
German woman socialist, Klara Zetkin, had an idea of introducing a special
day of struggle for women's rights, which, after a while, was transformed
into a spring holiday - March 8 - also known as International Women's Day.

This day in Russia, in contrast to what it is in the West European
countries, is not so much an occasion for the advocates of the equality of
sexes to take the streets and demonstrate, as a genuinely popular
holiday, when everybody is literally obliged to give women presents and
say no end of nice and flattering things. And yet, it is on the eve of
March 8 that as a rule many recall all of the women's problems and
evaluate their real position in society.
As follows from an opinion poll, published on the website of the daily
Noviye Izvestia, 55 percent of its readers believe that March 8 is a
spring holiday and a good occasion to congratulate the ladies around. To
18 percent of the polled this date is just an extra day off, and 12
percent responded that March 8 is an old-time Soviet-style holiday. Ten
percent remarked - with a pinch of sarcasm - that it is a real holiday for
the flower vendors first and foremost, and six percent claim that it is in
no way different from any other day in the calendar.
As for the original message of the March 8 holiday - the solidarity of
women in the struggle for equal rights with men - it is remembered only by
a select few.
Experts say that the reason for this sort of transformation is that if
one takes a look at the situation that there existed a hundred years ago,
the need for the fight for gender equality is no longer as acute. Women
have the right to vote, they can get higher education and dedicate
themselves to science and research, they have the right to initiating
divorce and to abortion, and there has been great progress in the market
of labor.
On the basis of statistics and the opinion of experts one can draw an
image of the average Russian woman. The portrait may look like this.
She is better educated than man, she works, for which she gets far
less than the opposite sex, and at home she is responsible for most
household chores. She is no longer as obsessed with marriage prospects as
her mothers and grandmothers. She eagerly agrees to unregistered marriage,
she appreciates freedom and intimate life. She wishes to rear children,
but at the same time she is unprepared to sacrifice professional
ambitions. And the state does literally nothing to help her with all this
somehow and for it reserves for her only backstage roles in society.
The woman must dedicate herself entirely to the family and children.
Career-making and mental faculties are in tenth place in terms of
importance, and equality with men is worth forgetting. This is precisely
the Russian society's attitude to its fairer half, according to a ROMIR
Monitoring opinion poll of several years ago.
As many as 78 percent said that the family is the main thing about
life in Russia, 44 percent pointed to love, 12 percent, to career success,
and a tiny seven percent said that the equality of women's and men's
rights is most important of all.
The realties, however, are in stark contrast to the public opinion.
First and foremost, as it has turned out, women are no longer eager to get
married. An opinion poll by the very same ROMIR group has shown that one
in three Russian women has decided that work and career should be placed
above maternity.
"Russian women wish to stay out of wedlock," says the chief of the
Human Demography and Ecology Center at the Economic Forecasting Institute
under the Russian Academy of Sciences, Anatoly Vishnevsky. In each one
thousand women, he says 175 have never been married, 180 are widows, and
110 divorced.
The real state of affairs regarding women's loneliness does not look
so sad. The dwindling share of registered marriages is compensated for
with growth in unregistered ones, and specialists tend to regard them as a
new model of the Russian family.
"The Russian woman no longer believes that her social status depends
on the marital one. Approximately one-third of children are born to
unregistered spouses or a single mother," political scientist Svetlana
Aivazova, a leading specialist on gender equality, told Itar-Tass.
According to opinion polls, says Aivazova, "most Russians believe that
it is far better to have no family than to have a bad one."
Although the average woman is better educated than the average man
(one in four employed Russian women have higher education, in contrast to
one in five working men, and 58 percent of college students are women),
they get for their work less than men (according to official statistics,
her wage is two-thirds of the man's one, and, according to many experts,
it is as small as 50 percent of what a man would get for the same work).
Whereas just eleven years ago the average woman's earnings were 78.5
percent of the average man's, now this rate ranges 46 to 52 percent from
region to region.
Statistics show that the higher salaried the profession is, the fewer
women there are, for they tend to take mostly lower steps of the career
ladder. But the situation has been changing year in, year out.
"A mere five years ago in the ten contenders for the position of a
chief executive officer there could be no more than three women," the
daily Noviye Izvestia quotes Natalya Kurkchi, a partner of a recruiting
company. "Now the rate is approximately 50 to 50.
By the number of women involved in the political life of the state
Russia is in 99th place on a 115-line list, says a report by the World
Economic Forum. And, as UN experts believe, as long as there are less than
20 percent of women in the bodies of power, the problems of children can
have no effective solution, and if the rate is under 30 percent, the
problems of women remain unresolved.
In the meantime, the sentiment in society is very different. The very
same ROMIR poll showed that 70 percent of Russians are for the full gender
equality, and 44 percent will be prepared to vote for a woman candidate
for the presidency.
"A mere 15-20 years ago the state had a social policy for women,
albeit a latently discriminatory one. Now women have been neglected by the
state, first and foremost in terms of support after child-bearing,"
Aivazova said.
Also, says she, "the past few years have seen an onslaught of the
conservative ideology. Conservative values are being dictated to society."
The political scientist recalled the discussion over the possibility
of legalizing polygamy, in which some officials took part.
"Before, it could never occur to anybody that such an idea may be
discussed in full seriousness. Now, it is a real attack on women's rights."
In her opinion, this trend is first and foremost a result of ever
greater influence of the religious factor - both Islam and Orthodoxy - on
society.
"This is the choice of the elite, which is beginning to plant these
values in the interests of religious groups, while the idea of the secular
state is being pushed into the background," Aivazova said. "The reel of
history is being run backwards, to 1905 and beyond."

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