A new employment agency for women will hold a jobs exchange fair this month specially aimed at finding jobs for professional women all over the country, organizers said Friday.


Marina Guseva, president of the Proserpina agency, said the fair would be held at the Rossia Hotel on Dec. 10, to highlight the problems faced by women in finding jobs. Official statistics show unofficial unemployment in Russia at more than 7 percent, with women comprising two-thirds of that number.


"A job hunt is often a humiliating experience for women and we want to provide them with as much psychological support as possible," said Guseva, 25.


The agency, organized three months ago, has five staffers and a database of more than 2,500 unemployed women ages 18 to 60.


"We found out that it is as hard to find jobs in the modern market for young women with no professional experience as it is for those in their 40s who lost the jobs," Guseva said.


She said 147 young women under 30 years old attending the fair would take part in a competition for 14 job vacancies, including fashion models, secretaries, office managers, waitresses, hairstylists and nurses. More than 50 companies will also be attending, each of which has guaranteed to offer at least two vacancies.


The fair would also include appearances by several well-known singers, television personalities and comedians, including Leonid Yakubovich, Leonid Yarmolnik and Oleg Gazmanov. In order to get such performers, the agency had appealed for help from the Cultural Initiative of Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin's Our Home Is Russia bloc.


Cultural Initiative spokesman Andrei Ayvazov said all the artists had waived their professional fees. "All of them are performing for free as they support our political movement," he said.