Gender Equality, Individual Empowerment, and Pluralism

Abstract

The Russian case reveals that the post-communist state can suffer just as much from inaction and inattention, as from a dramatic reform. If not explicitly protected through state funding and strong legal frameworks, women’s equality can fade away. Certainly, as some have argued, the introduction of capitalism sharpens inequalities between men and women.¹ However, there is no logical reason why capitalism automatically causes employers to favour male workers over female ones, to consider day cares to be a drain on society, or to call for restrictions on abortion. If such developments occur during a transition, it is important to consider how political beliefs and assumptions arise, and how politicians make decisions about their priorities. In a highly charged, intense political environment, under conditions of perceived urgency, competing beliefs and assumptions about how to organize society can swirl. In Russia, the early post-communist transition removed institutions which in the Soviet past had protected women to a certain degree, while introducing sudden disadvantages for women in the new market economy. Post-communist leaders took few concrete steps to provide policies to enable working women to maintain their financial independence. A lack of legal protection for women meant that some became worse off as a result of the transition, and the regime actually reified this disadvantaged status rather than promoting policies to encourage the social inclusion of women.