RUSSIA : Women Seeking Parliament Seats Run Smack Into Prejudice

When Larisa Medunova visited a fabric factory recently to ask women workers to support her candidacy for the new Russian Parliament, they replied, “Just who do you think you are?”

The taunting question, which in Russian is literally, “Where are you climbing?” is usually put to people who cut in front of comrades in line, stick their noses into other people’s business or try to tackle problems deemed beyond their ken.

That it can also be put to a Russian woman seeking public office shows that, 70 years after the Soviets declared equal rights for women, politics here are more than ever a man’s world.

“They asked me, ‘Why do you need this? Don’t you have children? Don’t you have a husband? Don’t you have a job?’ ” Medunova said wryly.

The 43-year-old mother of two--a former teacher turned entrepreneur now running three private real estate, construction and engineering companies--was elected in 1991 to the Russian Congress of People’s Deputies. After President Boris N. Yeltsin’s attempt to disband that legislature ended with tanks shelling the White House last month, Medunova decided to run for the new Parliament, or Duma, in part to try to ensure such violence does not recur.

She is one of 36 candidates on the ticket for Women of Russia, a hastily formed centrist alliance of women’s activists, women entrepreneurs and Russian navy women.

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Women of Russia candidates and other feminists say Russia’s 78.8 million women have borne more than their share of the economic suffering caused by the transition to a market economy. As in the former East Germany, where women were the first to be fired, 80% of the Russian unemployed are women.

Soviet law required everyone to work. But women often had the worst-paid, most taxing jobs. Now many Russian women think freedom means being able to stay at home with their children--a concept relentlessly reinforced on Russian television. But as inflation of more than 25% a month decimates their standard of living, most women desperately need a paycheck.

But women now are paid about 40% of the average male salary, down from 70% of the male wage in 1989. In Russia’s new free-labor market, some complain, women are excluded from many of the best-paying jobs and have no protection against being fired, if they are not attractive, get pregnant or refuse a boss’s sexual advances.

Russian-made contraceptives seem never to appear on store shelves. Imported contraceptives are hard to find outside of Moscow; they also cost more than most women--who are struggling to make ends meet--can afford.

Many women, thus, are driven into Russia’s infamous abortion clinics. The Moscow feminist Center for Gender Studies estimates that 60% of women who undergo abortions experience complications.

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As the state slashes spending on health care, the rates of women dying in childbirth and infant mortality are rising. And the numbers of day-care centers, nursery schools and summer camps for children are shrinking.

Women of Russia leaders, when asked about “women’s issues,” mention these problems, as well as the proliferation of pornography, which they would ban. But in general, their campaign is pitched at issues unrelated to gender: merit-based equal opportunity, economic recovery and more government spending on health, education and welfare. They favor transition to a free market, not as a goal in itself, but as a means to reverse the slumping standard of living.

Natalia D. Malakhatkina, another Women of Russia candidate, stumped Wednesday at a textile factory in Yegoryevsk, about 65 miles southeast of Moscow, where 80% of the workers are women. The plant once depended on the Soviet military for 92% of its orders; production has fallen 42% since 1991, a third of the work force has been retired and 2,000 more workers may soon be laid off.

A 20-year textile industry veteran, Malakhatkina can tell by smell whether a shop is spinning cotton or wool; workers she chatted with were convinced she understood their problems. But several said they planned to vote for a harder-line candidate from the pro-Communist Agrarian Party.

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Meanwhile, democratic-minded women and committed feminists say Women of Russia has too many veterans of the Soviet women’s movement--and too many old ideas.

“I will not support just any woman,” said feminist leader Valentina N. Konstantinova. “I will only support a woman of really democratic leaning who supports reform.”

She is backing Yeltsin’s party, Russia’s Choice; many of her friends from the Independent Women’s Forum, a nonaligned women’s group, are candidates on the slate headed by economist Grigory A. Yavlinsky, who is pitching his party as a more reliable guarantor of democracy and free-market reforms than Yeltsin’s.

Certainly, the prospects for women in the new Duma look grim. Only 8.8% of candidates fielded by the 13 competing parties are women, and most of the female candidates are near or at the bottom of their parties’ slates. Under the system of proportional representation, only the candidates at the top of each ticket are likely to be seated in the Duma.

A Misery Index

Economic turmoil and deep cuts in state spending have worsened the status of most of Russia’s 78.8 million women. Their situation looks even bleaker in comparison to U.S. data:

A MAJORITY OF THE POPULATION... 53% of the Russian population is female 47% of the Russian population is male 51% of the U.S. population is female 49% of the U.S. population is male

...THEY TRAIL BADLY IN WAGES... (% of what women earned compared to men) 40% in Russia 75% in U.S.

...AND STRUGGLE FOR JOBS 32% of Russian women are employed 80% of U.S. women are employed

CONDITIONS ARE REFLECTED IN LIFE EXPECTANCY... (average age of death) 74 years for Russian women 79 years for U.S. women

...ABORTION RATES... 94 per 1,000 women in Russia 27 per 1,000 women in U.S.

...AND INFANT MORTALITY (deaths before age 1, per 1,000 births) 18 in Russia 9 in the U.S.

Sources: Russian government statistics, Center for Gender Studies in Moscow (Russia); Alan Guttmacher Institute, Population Reference Bureau (United States); “The World’s Women,” United Nations, 1991.