Women in the Russian labor market - Interview with Soja Khotkina | Gunda-Werner-Institut

Saint Basil's Cathedral next to the Kremlin. Photo: Jorge Henrique Cordeiro - Some rights reserved CC-BY-NC-SA

Soja Khotkina

What changes in the role of women in the Russian labor market have occurred over the past 100 years?

There have been fundamental quantitative changes and, more important, qualitative changes. At the beginning of the 20th century, men dominated the labor market and the percentage of women among the employed was less than 20. Now, that figure is up to almost 50. Back then, women who found employment outside the home were, in the vast majority of cases, only marginally educated; today, the educational level of employed women is higher than that of their male counterparts. At the beginning of the last century, more than half of those women who did work were employed as domestic servants. Today, the major sectors of employment for women include education and health care, where employees are predominantly women who hold a university or secondary school diploma. The quality and the human potential of the highly qualified female labor force are very high in contemporary Russia. In the sphere of production, men and women are employed almost equally (49 percent of employed persons are women) while the lion’s share of reproductive work in the home is performed by women. Thus, the level of the country’s economic development and the quality of life of Russian families depend on women more than they do on men.

In the context of the struggle for equal rights in the labor market, what aims should the women’s movement adopt?

Currently, the state is interested only in the reproductive rights of women, whereas their labor rights have been placed entirely at the discretion of the employers. Women are paid less for their work; and this is not solely because a lot of low-paid teachers and cleaning personnel are women while a lot of well-paid supervisors and miners are men. According to data from the recruitment agencies, male managers are offered 25 to 30 percent more than female managers in similar positions. It turns out that – as was the case 100 years ago – women have to fight for equal payment for similar work and for an 8-hour working day. At the beginning of the 21st century, such a situation is an alarming indicator.

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Zoya Khotkina. Fellow of the Institute of Social and Economic Studies of Population, Russian Academy of Sciences; UN expert on gender equality issues.

Natalia Bitten Journalist, political
scientist, writer, feminist. Has published academic essays and the
novel 'Mainstream' (2007) under the pseudonym of Natalja Kim.

She specializes in Gender Studies. Edited the largest
political paper in the area of Kemerow. Currently she works on the
internet portal Klub (traveling women). She is an active member of
'Initiativegruppe Für Feminismus'.

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