Russia plans to further reduce the number of professions legally off-limits to women, officials said Tuesday, as the country looks for new ways to ease a worsening labor shortage driven by demographic decline, wartime recruitment and emigration.
The list of occupations prohibited for women has already been cut by more than fourfold in recent years, First Deputy Labor and Social Protection Minister Olga Batalina said at the Women of the North forum.
"Working conditions are changing thanks to digitalization and the introduction of safer production methods, so more professions that were once considered male are becoming professions for women," Batalina was quoted as saying by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency.
She added that Russia had recently appointed its first female freight locomotive driver.
Until recently, Russian law barred women from hundreds of jobs deemed too physically demanding or hazardous, based on concerns that they could harm women's reproductive health.
The list was reduced from 456 occupations to 100 in 2021, allowing women to enter a range of previously restricted professions.
The remaining restrictions still cover jobs in industries including chemical production, mining, metallurgy, oil and gas extraction, drilling and certain radiotechnical and printing occupations.
The government now plans to shorten the list further by 2027 under a roadmap approved as part of its national business development strategy.
The changes will require amendments to a Labor Ministry order defining occupations involving harmful working conditions.
Russia's labor shortage has become one of the country's most significant economic challenges.
Bloomberg estimated earlier this year that the country faces a shortfall of about 1.5 million workers, while researchers at Moscow's Higher School of Economics put the figure at 2.6 million.
The Labor Ministry has forecast that the gap could widen to 3.1 million workers by 2030.
At the same time, the country's reserve labor force has shrunk sharply. According to audit and consulting firm FinExpertiza, the number of people available to enter the workforce has fallen 40% since 2021 to 4.4 million.
Russian officials have floated several proposals to address the shortage.
Moscow Children's Rights Commissioner Olga Yaroslavskaya has proposed allowing children as young as 12 to take official summer jobs, while Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov has said Russia is prepared to accept an "unlimited number" of migrant workers from India to help fill vacancies in manufacturing and retail.
Demographer Igor Yefremov has attributed the tightening labor market to military mobilization and wartime recruitment, which he estimates drew around 1.7 million people into military service between 2022 and 2025, as well as large-scale emigration and a decline in the number of labor migrants following stricter migration rules.
By his estimates, between 600,000 and more than 1 million people have left Russia since the start of the war, while the number of migrant workers has fallen by roughly 1 million.
Read this article in Russian at The Moscow Times' Russian service.
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