Russia

The lives of women in the Russian Federation in the 21st century are shaped by multiple legacies (demographic, ecological, economic, and social) bequeathed by 70 years of communism in the country's recent past and by Russia as a country, making the difficult and simultaneous transitions from an industrial to a postindustrial society and from a centrally planned economy to market capitalism. Although literacy and employment rates for Russian women are among the highest in the world, the gendered wage gap between men and women and the degree to which women are underrepresented in politics in Russia are also very high. Reproductive and child health, trafficking of women, domestic violence, and questions of family stability also remain important issues for Russian women, as does the work/family balance and lack of affordable childcare.

Demographic trends in Russia significantly affect women, particularly in regard to patterns of marriage and fertility and in the way that the Russian government formulates policy toward its female citizens. Mortality rates have exceeded birth rates in Russia since 1992, and there has been an annual decrease of .5 percent in the Russian population from 2000 to 2006. Although Russian women do outlive Russian men (average female life expectancy is 72 years, and average male life expectancy is 59 years), life expectancy for Russian women is 7 to 12 years lower than rates in other developed European countries, and mortality rates for Russian women are more than [Page 1262]twice as high as those for other countries with a similar gross domestic product. The extremely low life expectancy for Russian men means that although the ratio of working-age women (16 to 54 years of age) to working-age men (16 to 59 years of age) in Russia is quite normal (954 women to 1,000 men in 2008), in the postworking-age cohort, women outnumber men by the incredible ratio of 2,600 women to every 1,000 men (in 2008). Similar to other developed European countries, Russia has fertility rates that are below the population replacement levels—in Russia's case, 1.3 births per woman per year, which is 1.65 times lower than replacement level. The average maternal age at time of first birth is also growing in Russia.

Partially as a consequence of the Soviet period of Russian development (1919–91), with its formal legal commitment to education and gender equality, educational and literacy rates for women in Russia are among the highest in the world: 99.2 percent of Russian women older than 18 years are literate, and the combined gross enrollment ratio for women in primary, secondary, and tertiary education in Russia was 93 percent in 2005 (the rate for male students was 85 percent). An impressive 82 percent of women in Russia complete some form of tertiary education, and women outnumber men in tertiary education by a ratio of 1.36 to 1.

The high education achievement of Russian women does not translate into economic success, however. As a result of both the legacy of the Soviet push for full employment for women and the dire economic straits of most families during the transition to capitalism, nearly the same number of women as men are formally employed in the Russian economy, and the number of women participating in the informal economic sector has also continued to grow throughout the 2000s. Despite high rates of employment, the gender wage gap in Russia is quite high and is growing. In 2002, the average woman's wage was 33.5 percent less than the average man's; in 2005, the average woman's wage was 39.2 percent less than the average man's wage.

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