No Word for 'Sexism,' but Lots of Sexist Words

My working day at a reputable Western company always begins with a barrage of telephone calls. "Devushka, I'd like to speak to Mr. So-and-so." The caller's casual, condescending tone and the incomprehensible company name he presents -- either some form of Anglicized Russian or Russified English -- tells me immediately: I am dealing with a "New Russian." "Devushka, how can I call such-and-such a department?"


The caller, of course, doesn't care that the devushka, or "girl," to whom he is speaking has two higher degrees and lectures at an institute. None of these callers, in fact, has any idea what sexism is at all.


"I am not a girl!" I have heard my colleagues from Western Europe shout in such situations, losing their composure just for a moment. And why shouldn't they? After all, such openly disrespectful treatment would seem to be enough to enrage any woman -- and not just inveterate feminists.


But not in Russia. Here, such a natural reaction to sexism would be completely incomprehensible to Russian men. And Russian women, for their part, seem to be largely insensitive to the sting of sexist language. They seem not to notice demeaning expressions directed toward them and, in fact, they even exchange common, but degrading expressions among themselves.


But how are people to notice a phenomenon for which the Russian language does not even have a common term? Outside the narrow circle of specialists, there is still no generally accepted words for the English terms "sexism" and "male chauvinism."


Many people will remember how the whole world laughed a few years ago when, during one of those joint Soviet-American talk shows, a Russian woman uttered the immortal words: "There is no sex in the Soviet Union." Her denial of the obvious always rings in my mind when I hear people say there is no sexism in Russia.


One need only turn to the mass media to get one's fill of examples of how natural sexism seems to be for many Russians. Politicians, government bureaucrats and others in positions of power sometimes even seem to be trying to outdo one another in this category. Among them, figures in the military -- the "manly" profession -- are clearly in the forefront and, arguably, ahead of them all is former vice president Alexander Rutskoi.


I remember how, in the period before the October 1993 putsch, the openly anti-woman tone of Rutskoi's speeches left an indelible impression on me. He regularly tried to undermine the masculine virtue of his political opponents by heaping all sorts of epithets on them rather than engaging in the much more tedious work of actually debating ideas. Why bother constructing arguments when it is so much easier just to tag one's opponent with a label like "baba," a rude term for a peasant woman?


It would seem that his time in prison did nothing to change either his political views or his rhetorical devices. At an opposition gathering to mark the first anniversary of the uprising, our bold general gave his original interpretation of why the coup failed. It would seem that many defenders of the White House were not manly enough: "We should have given them all skirts!" Rutskoi commented.


In general, Russia's military is particularly unrestrained in its displays of sexism. I taught English for many years at a military academy and I remember how my department -- where the teachers were all women -- would meet and listen to speeches from the department head, a man, of course, and a colonel to boot. He would close almost every meeting with the memorable words, "Well now, you can all run along home and start making borshch."


These examples of sexism are the tip of the iceberg in our society. Beneath the water is a whole, hidden cultural layer saturated with sexism. Russia really is, to use an expression, "a man's world."


Let's look at an example from an interview with Arkady Volsky, president of the Union of Industrialists and Manufacturers. Early in his career, Volsky tells us, he was managing a workshop in which 500 women worked. "Once a month, each worker would demand to be put on light duty according to the labor laws," he said. "I was a young, trusting man, but it didn't take long to notice that pretty soon all my workers were on light duty. I would yell and scream at them, but finally I decided to make a chart on which I marked in red the days each worker requested light duty. I hung the chart on the shop floor and whenever someone decided to get clever with me, I'd just say, 'Let's go take a look at the chart and see ...' Everyone would start giggling, but then they accepted me."


There are several remarkable things in this little episode: the reference to the Soviet labor law that guaranteed women a few days of light labor each month (one can well imagine the kind of labor they did the rest of the month, as guaranteed to them by the Soviet Constitution) and the characteristic mocking condescension of the former workshop foreman and his certainty that the women valued his original solution and respected him for it.


But perhaps the most interesting thing here is the women's reaction. Their insensitivity to the sexism of the situation is typical, as is the way that they unconsciously accepted the "rules of the game" and did not see how they were aimed against them.


And you run into this all the time among Russian women. Nowadays you can't talk long before the subject gets around to how much everybody earns. At some stage in these conversations, you inevitably hear the phrase, "She makes good money for a woman." And you hear this casual expression most often from women themselves. Just recently, in Pravda, I read an article by a woman named Lyudmila Zaitseva in which she wrote, "Even I, a stupid baba, can see ..."


Such unconcealed sexism, especially in the mouths of women, is used as a device to create the impression that the author is in touch with the people. Before daring to criticize the president, Zaitseva felt obligated to indicate to her readers that, even though she is just a stupid woman whose place is in the kitchen, she simply must speak up.


As I said, most Russian women don't notice the subtle effect of such sexist remarks. "I don't even notice such stupid things," my best friend Anya told me when I showed her some of the examples I'd collected. She has a doctorate, manages a whole department and is the author of a number of scholarly works. She is also a strong personality with an independent cast of mind.


Anya is now married to her third husband. He is a complacent, characterless creature, but in their home, his word is law. And when I look at my friend, her husband and the way things are arranged in their home, I understand why sexist remarks fly right past her. She is completely submerged in that world and it doesn't even occur to her that the darts of sexism are aimed right at her.





Natalya Ivanova has a graduate degree in philosophy and is a freelance writer. She contributed this article to The Moscow Times.