When Boris Yeltsin and Viktor Chernomyrdin went before cabinet and parliament officials Friday to speak about Russia's future, they addressed a sea of gray. They should have known better. For the future of Russia is not to be found among men in gray suits. If there is to be a better future for this country, Russia must look to its women -- and it should start looking now.


For far too long, the women of Russia have been second-class citizens. They were told throughout the Soviet era that they had equal rights with men, that communism -- unlike capitalism -- allowed equality of the sexes. But it was all a lie.


Here, in the workers' paradise, women worked outside the home decades before the West's feminists began agitating for this right. But in Russia, it was not a right but an obligation that resulted in one of Soviet communism's most prevalent institutions: the double day. After putting in a hard day's work at the factory, Russian women faced hours of household chores and queuing for food. They did not have the luxuries of their sisters in the West -- washing machines, cars, cooperative mates. Most still do not.If equality at work was absent under communism -- which moved women into the least lucrative and often most physically taxing jobs -- this remains true in the present era of transition to a free market.


Women are the primary victims of Russia's lurching economic reforms. When unemployment strikes, women are the first to lose their jobs. When wages are eroded by inflation, women feel it most since they are at the bottom of the pay scale.


In the realm of politics, the situation is a little better. There are proportionally a few more women in today's State Duma than there were in the last Supreme Soviet, and many of those with seats in the new parliament were elected on an agenda of women's issues -- from the Women of Russia slate -- rather than as token figures to make up a percentage.


Likewise, a small but growing class of women is breaking into business and banking, and other Russian women are discovering for the first time that -- with the demise of the once omnipotent Communist system that touched every part of their day -- they can now take control of their lives. This they are doing, with an energy often lacking in the country's men.


One such woman, interviewed for this issue, spoke of her despair when she turned on the television news and saw the same gray faces of politicians as in the past.


"I just can't stand to look at them," she confided. "Our men are not capable of anything. I consider that the future of Russia lies in its women."


We tend to agree.