Soviet Job Layoffs Hitting Women Harder Than Men : Reforms: As bloated state firms strive for efficiency, the female workers are usually the first to go.

It wasn’t so long ago that central planners sent Soviet women out of the home and into the workplace.

Now, the collapse of the centrally planned economy is singling women out for upheaval again, creating opportunities for the most enterprising but consigning vast numbers to unemployment as their nation’s bloated state enterprises strain to grow more efficient.

“The face of unemployment in the Soviet Union is a woman’s face,” said Igor E. Zaslavsky, general manager of an official employment agency called the Moscow Labor Exchange, who estimates that 80% of the newly unemployed are female. “She is wearing a white collar and a woolen jacket and is aged 40 to 50.”

That makes her someone like Tatyana Gubanova, 43, one of 200 people recently laid off from a government fuel ministry. Her entire bureau, its staff mostly women, was abruptly shut down as officials scrambled to save money.

“I worked there for 12 years,” said Gubanova, who shares a 400-square-foot apartment with her disabled parents. She worries that it will take “countless visits” to the employment office to find a new job.

Still, as the Soviet Union lurches uncertainly toward a free-market economy, the outlook for women is not wholly negative. For the venturesome, the nerve-racking economic changes under way may also be opening up new possibilities.

Ask Olga Biryukov. For years, she was, in effect, a closet entrepreneur. Behind the closed doors of her apartment, she would design and sew clothing--a prohibited form of free enterprise.

A friend once tried to sneak some of Biryukov’s designs out of the country and show them to interested Americans, but the airport police made him open his suitcase.

“They asked him, ‘Why is a man carrying a woman’s wardrobe?’ ” Biryukov said. “He was so surprised that he couldn’t find the words.” Authorities confiscated the dresses.

Later she managed to arrange a U.S. showing for her line--”Olga from Moscow”--but continued to keep a low profile at home. It was the failure of last month’s coup that finally convinced Biryukov that lasting reforms were on the way, and now she is looking for office space and arranging for a state garment factory to help produce apparel.

“Now I’m going to have my own business,” the tall, blond Biryukov said with pride.

Although such forays into capitalism remain rare, they may offer a chance for people whose jobs do not survive the emerging economic shake-out.

The September issue of Rabotnitsa magazine--Russian for “Working Woman”--counsels its 12 million readers: “If you are laid off, don’t panic.”

Those with a talent for cooking should consider opening up a modest restaurant, the magazine advises; those with a knack for cutting hair might want to charge customers for the service.

For a nation that has long held to the pretense of full employment, such problems are novel.

Currently, the jobless rate in Moscow is about 6%, said Zaslavsky, who fears it could soar by next year. In Leningrad, the problem of female unemployment may be even worse than in the capital, according to an official of that city’s labor exchange.

Although women are less likely to work outside the home in Islamic republics, the situation in Moscow reflects that of many other Soviet regions, according to an aide to Zaslavsky.

In the Soviet Union, losing a job is not supposed to be a personal disaster; unemployment benefits typically start at well above half of salary and may last for a full year.

The now-crumbling economic system has also provided women with employment benefits that are extremely generous by U.S. standards. Maternity leaves, for example, can last up to three years, with the mother’s salary continuing for half of that period, said Zoya Krylova, Rabotnitsa’s editor-in-chief.

But whatever the protections, few doubt that being fired comes as a jolt. “It breaks up your whole life,” said Gubanova, who used to work on calculations of how much fuel would be required by different regions of the Russian Federation.

Losing a job comes as a particular shock to Soviet women because, in the 1960s, the government forced many Soviet housewives to take jobs outside the home to meet the demands of an expanding economy.

Women today work in a broad array of jobs, from butchers and street sweepers to professors and sports officials, although few have reached the top levels of government and large enterprises.

Why so many are losing their jobs is unclear. Some theorize that the very laws once enacted to help women--lengthy maternity leaves, for example, and liberal policies on staying at home with sick children--may now be making women targets for layoffs.

On top of that, the educational attainment of many women--they constitute the majority of university graduates--has landed many in the sorts of bureaucratic jobs that are starting to be cut back.

“The Soviet government issued a lot of good laws about women, but now the situation is turning against women,” said Krylova, whose magazine was launched in 1914 by an older sister of V.I. Lenin, founder of the Soviet state.

The problems come vividly to life in Moscow employment offices.

In one cramped room, an Armenian refugee from Azerbaijan, her gray hair covered by a scarf, paced unhappily in front of a poster that declared: “Soviet Citizens Have the Right to Work.” She plaintively asked passers-by, “Can you help me?”

Another unemployed woman, Ludmila Sclyarova, sought a part-time job so she would still have time to care for her 10-year-old son. Sclyarova--who had left her last job voluntarily to move to Moscow, where her husband lives--said she expects her legal background to yield employment.

The growing economic crisis has made the Soviet woman’s life even harder.

In many households, women bear the burden of waiting in block-long lines to buy groceries and figuring how to keep their families supplied with basic goods at a time when the ruble is battered by inflation.

“It’s twice as hard for women to live in this society,” Sclyarova said.

A few miles away, in a different employment office, Nina Shudrenco was also hunting for a job.

The 43-year-old single mother said that she had worked until recently for a state construction enterprise with projects in Siberia. Trained as an economist, she made long-term projections on the need for materials.

But increasingly these days, such jobs are considered unnecessary.

“They brought us into a room and told us that in two months we would have to find other work,” Shudrenco recalled.

All 15 of the laid-off analysts were women; all the men in the office kept their jobs. Some of the 15 victims have since quit the work force, while others found jobs through employment offices, and at least one was hired by a new, private enterprise.

The outcome “actually depends on your circle of friends,” said Shudrenco, a friendly woman with neatly cropped brown hair who wore a gray business suit for her job search.

As such stories become more common, public expectations about women’s place in the economy are becoming more gloomy.

A national survey in late 1989 found that 12% of the Soviet public expected women to be hurt by coming changes in the economy, with about the same number expecting women to be helped. (The rest either were undecided or thought conditions would not change.)

A survey conducted in July found that the number expecting women to be hurt had jumped to 20%.

“The position of women in the labor market could get worse and worse,” said Valentina Bodrova, an analyst at the Soviet Center for Public Opinion and Market Research, which conducted the surveys.

Such fears have prompted some Soviet women to follow the example of their counterparts in the West and encourage networking and mutual support in their career endeavors. A group of Muscovites last year organized the Business Women Assn.

A small article on the group in Izvestia triggered an avalanche of mail from would-be entrepreneurs, suggesting that the wish for economic independence reaches deep into Soviet society.

According to Ludmila A. Konareva, the group’s president, one writer asked: “I would like to be a member of your organization--can you help me buy two goats?”

Said Konareva--with more than a little sympathy: “We can give connections. We’ll help you any way we can. But right now we don’t have any money to help someone buy two goats.”