GeoJournal DOI 10.1007/s10708-014-9522-5
Professional women and the economic practices of success and survival before and after regime change: diverse economies and restructuring in the Russian Republic of Buryatia Melissa Chakars • Elizabeth L. Sweet
Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014
Abstract Drawing from historical research, participant observation, and informal and formal interviews, we examine the economic experiences of professional Buryat and Russian women before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the Siberian Russian Republic of Buryatia. We use a diverse economies framework to theorize a broader understanding of the restructured economy and how women have sought to improve and maintain their lives by developing various practices in the workforce in both the Soviet and post-Soviet periods such as gaining more education, informal networks of exchanges and favors, urbanization, and, for Buryats, Russian language acquisition. We argue that women in the early 2000s continue to employ many of these practices regardless of their varying experiences and attitudes about the transition from socialism to a market economy. Keywords Russian Federation Buryatia Siberia Women’s work Diverse economies Indigenous peoples
M. Chakars (&) Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia, PA, USA e-mail:
[email protected] E. L. Sweet Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Introduction In an interview in 2006 in the Russian Republic of Buryatia, a Buryat woman in her sixties explained that, ‘‘I lived normally during the Soviet Union and don’t live badly today. However, that is because I have found my place now… not everyone can do it.’’ The woman, a mother of four, had been a teacher in the Soviet Union—a common and stable job for professional women in the last decades of Soviet power. If the USSR had continued, as a woman in her sixties, she would have been retired and living on her teacher’s pension. Instead, however, because of the economic turmoil of the post-Soviet economy, she had given up teaching, become a businesswoman, and was still working. Although her economic situation may have stabilized, her employment, career, and retirement plans had drastically changed. This article explores the experiences of such women by examining the lives of ethnic Buryat and Russian professional women during two important transitional periods: the 1950s to the 1980s when Buryatia experienced rapid socioeconomic development and the 1990s to the early 2000s when the Soviet Union collapsed and the new Russian Federation adopted a market economy and a different political system. Women in Buryatia, as the example above illustrates, could be flexible and were often able to adapt to the changing political and economic circumstances that were beyond their control. However, while some women adjusted and perhaps even flourished with the
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changing times, others—as the interviewee suggests— struggled. Although much research has been conducted on the history of women in the Soviet Union and the economic experiences of many of its former citizens after its collapse, there are no specific studies that illuminate what it was like for Soviet women in Buryatia—a multi-ethnic region located five time zones away from Moscow in eastern Siberia. In addition, much of the post-Soviet work on women and the economy focuses on those who live in large cities such as Moscow and Saint Petersburg (Caldwell 2004; Metcalfe and Afanassieva 2005; Pavlovskaya 2004). These western Russian cities are much wealthier than those in Buryatia and therefore offer women different opportunities than those that are available in eastern Siberia. Our study on Buryatia is also distinct because we compare the experiences of the two different ethnic groups in the region: Russians and Buryats. The Buryats are a minority in Russia, the titular nationality of the Republic of Buryatia, a Mongolian people, and the largest indigenous group in Siberia. From the 1950s to the 1980s, women in Buryatia experienced upward social and economic mobility in large numbers. This was especially true for ethnic Buryat women who initially lagged far behind their Russian counterparts. By the 1980s, however, both Russian and Buryat women had made strong educational and professional advancements in part because of the economic practices they adopted. For example, urbanization played an important role. Buryat women moved from rural areas in Buryatia to the capital city of Ulan-Ude while many Russian women moved from the European part of Russia to Siberia in search of employment opportunities and better wages. In the late Soviet period, many of these urban Buryat and Russian women began to obtain higher educational degrees in large numbers, gain access to professional jobs, and participate in official women’s organizations intended to raise the status of women in society. At the same time, there were limitations to their mobility. Scarcities in the economy also often meant that women spent many hours on domestic activities and commonly used the ‘‘economy of favors’’ and blat (unofficial exchanges of goods and services, agreements, or contacts) in order to make ends meet. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the new Russian Federation transitioned from a planned to a market driven economy. This process resulted in an economic crash that produced exceptionally high
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unemployment rates for women in Buryatia—a region so hard hit by the economic turmoil that the central government in Moscow assigned it special financial assistance in 1995 (Gill 2007). Particularly devastating to women was the elimination of many social services such as subsidized daycare and higher education that had helped them attain better professional and financial security during Soviet times. Despite ethnic and historical discrepancies that differentiated the experiences of Buryat and Russian women in earlier decades, our study shows that both Buryat and Russian professional women later expressed many similar concerns about their country’s transition to a market economy. They also adopted many of the same workforce development practices in order to overcome the economic challenges they faced. Furthermore, while some of these women have been able to employ new and specific strategies made possible by a more capitalist economy, we argue that the dramatic changes since 1991 have forced most of them to continue to rely on at least some of the same pre-transition economic practices into the 2000s. They utilize these, as they did in the Soviet Union, regardless of their varying attitudes about and experiences in the economic transition from socialism to capitalism. Women in both the Soviet and post-Soviet periods sought to make the best of their situations in the varying circumstances of the times (Caldwell 2004; Stenning et al. 2010). Our work however, illuminates patterns among the different paths women in Buryatia have taken to improve and maintain their economic situations during various political, social and economic shifts in the country. We demonstrate that developments ranging from the availability of Russian language education and rapid urbanization in the 1960s and 1970s to traditional prejudices limiting the types of women’s employment and their mobility within professions to the varied demands of the postSoviet market economy greatly affected women’s employment and work opportunities. We explore women’s multiple economic practices through such periods of change theoretically anchored by a diverse economies framework, which we argue benefits from a more multi-method approach. First, we briefly describe our methodology and the theoretical framework of diverse economies that provides a context for our analysis. Second, we present a timeline of events describing the restructuring of social, economic, and political status of Buryat and Russian women during
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and after the Soviet period. Last, we discuss women’s work practices and their attitudes toward economic transition.
Methodology The research for this article is based on our combined 16 months of study in the Republic of Buryatia. We apply a transdisciplinary approach that draws from historical research as well as contemporary qualitative methods such as participant observation, informal interviews with Buryat and Russian women regarding their economic experiences, and formal interviews with both closed and open ended questions with 88 respondents. We describe the methodological details about these interviews in the section below on women’s attitudes toward economic transition. Through such a transdisciplinary approach, we make linkages between bodies of knowledge and the social, economic, and political realities that generate them. We transcend the knowledge of rigidly defined disciplinary boundaries (in this case history and urban studies) through collaboration as an essential strategy for understanding complex urban economic challenges and how women seek to resolve them (Misra et al. 2010: 97). We use archival materials from the National Archives of the Republic of Buryatia, official Russian Federation statistics, and secondary sources in both Russian and English. One author received a nine-month dissertation research grant from the American Councils for International Education and one author was a Fulbright scholar for a period of seven months. Our non-overlapping fieldwork started in August 2004 and ended in March 2006. We were based in Ulan-Ude, which is the capital city of the Republic of Buryatia located about 90 kilometres east of the lower tip of Lake Baikal.
Diverse economies We believe that traditional economic theoretical approaches alone are not sufficient to fully understand the economic activities of Buryat and Russian professional women in Siberia through the process of restructuring. Mueller (1994) also found that ‘‘simplistic assumptions about women’s roles’’ in work and home in Los Angeles were insufficient for understanding the complexity of their economic activities (158).
She calls for a more diverse approach to understanding women’s workforce participation (Mueller 1994: 159). Our article relies on Gibson-Graham (2006 and n.d.) who proposes a theoretical framework called diverse economies that addresses the multiple manifestations and diversity of practice for performing labor and organizing (re)production, exchange transactions, and the appropriation and distribution of surplus (Oberhauser 2005; Williams 2006). A diverse economies framework allows for a wider analysis of economic practice and community assets. Through such an approach, non-capitalist and alternative-capitalist production activities, as well as other forms of exchanges and distribution and how they intersect, become visible rather than relegated to the lesser category of informal economy, or excluded altogether from economic discussions and understandings. Diverse economies go beyond a simplistic framework of formal and informal economy, which renders a false binary, privileging the former as the ‘‘real’’ economy and dismissing the latter as problematic or as a last option for disadvantaged groups (Williams 2006). Communities with scarce resources such as those in Buryatia in the late Soviet period and after the break-up of the Soviet Union lend themselves to diverse economies analysis and are useful for understanding women’s work where activities such as shopping, childcare, and exchanging favors to obtain necessary goods and services have constituted a significant portion of actual labor and production. Gibson and Cameron (2001) call attention to research that ‘‘challenges the stereotype of disempowered regional communities by bringing to light other representations of the economy and highlighting instances where communities have built on their strengths and capacities to respond innovatively to social and economic change’’ (9). Women’s economic activity that falls outside of their professional careers is unregulated and thus hard to document, presenting an obstacle to empirical research. For example, scholars who have studied the varied usages of blat in both the Soviet period and the post-Soviet 1990s have encountered difficulty, including finding respondents willing to openly discuss such economic activities (Fitzpatrick 2000; Ledeneva 1998). We too, found no published studies specifically on informal or non-capitalist economic activities in Buryatia and women were hesitant to discuss them. Despite our difficulties with sources, however, we found that some of the women we talked with in
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Buryatia commonly engaged in informal activities and that all of the women described engaging in some form of work. Therefore, although local government statistics from 2007 report that 64 % of women in Buryatia were officially employed, we believe this does not tell the full story.1 We agree with Gibson-Graham that such statistics and theories that privilege capitalist structures and official forms of employment often obscure the substantial economic iceberg under the surface (Gibson-Graham n.d.). Ultimately, both formal and informal binary conceptualizations prioritize traditional capitalist activities over non-traditional capitalist and non-capitalist activities, precluding more nuanced understandings. The diverse economies framework is especially useful in analyzing transitional economies and several authors employ it to better capture the restructuring of post-Soviet economies (Matejskova 2012; Williams et al. 2012; Pickles 2010; Smith et al. 2008; Smith and Stenning 2006). Numerous studies have also now clearly shown that the collapse of the Soviet Union did not result in a simple and smooth transition from socialism to capitalism and democracy (Cohen 2000; Ledeneva 1998; Pickles and Smith 1998; Shevtsova 2007; Williams et al. 2012). Instead, scholars have described a complicated and even tragic situation where millions were negatively affected. In the new Russian Federation, many became unemployed overnight, the country’s GDP fell by at least 50 %, and even a decade after the break-up of the USSR, average wages were still at only about 40 % of their pre-collapse levels (Cohen 2000; Mikhalev 2001). Williams et al. (2012) finds that transition to a ‘‘market’’ economy can be characterized as ‘‘shallow and uneven penetration…’’ (229). They also suggest that a more accurate view of diverse economies in post-Soviet contexts, and more generally, needs to move away from dualities of market and non-market, which has been how some have previously applied a diverse economies framework (e.g. Gibson-Graham 2006). Instead, analysis needs to work toward a more intermingling of multiple economic practices that rely on and intersect with one another. Williams et al.’s
1
Zhenshchiny i rynok truda: Analiticheskaia zapiska No. 01-03-23. (2008). Ulan-Ude: Territorial’nogo organa federal’noi sluzhby gosudarstvennoi statistiki po Respublike Buriatiia. A document of the Territorial Organ of the Russian Federal Office of Government Statistics of the Republic of Buryatia.
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example of a ‘‘typology of economic practices in the whole economy’’ relies on surveys contrasting affluent and non-affluent communities and documents a continuum of the flows and melding between market, nonmarket, waged and non-waged economic practices in post-Soviet Ukraine. They suggest that while the reality of economic practice is much more complicated than a dichotomous market and non-market split conveys, government data concentrates on and tries to isolate market activities from other economic practice. Furthermore, mainstream economic theory that has privileged the isolated analysis of waged work, formal market exchange, and capitalist distributions, does not provide a realistic or broad understanding of economic life. Within a transdisciplinary approach, we are using Williams et al. (2012) typology of economic practice to examine the economic experiences of Buryat and Russian women through periods of drastic social, economic, and political change. We are contributing to this scholarly conversation by adding race, ethnicity, and gender as additional factors in our diverse economies analysis of economic transition in postSoviet Siberia. In addition, we believe it is crucial to understand the historical background of the Soviet period for better analyzing the post-Soviet experiences of Buryat and Russian women.
The social mobility of Buryat and Russian women in the Soviet era The Republic of Buryatia was founded in 1923 under the plan for Soviet federalism that gave the ethnic Buryats their own territory in the form of an autonomous region within the Soviet Russian Republic. However, industrialization and agricultural opportunities brought many ethnic Russians to Buryatia throughout the twentieth century and today Buryatia is only around 30 % Buryat. In the first decades of the republic’s existence, most of the residents were rural, eking out an existence dependent upon the land. In particular, there were few women who had university degrees or professional positions. In the 1930s, Joseph Stalin introduced economic policies that initiated a rapid process of transformation that significantly affected Buryat and Russian women. These policies included the collectivization of agriculture, the forced settlement of nomadic Buryats, and rapid industrialization that over the decades attracted thousands of
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ethnic Russians to Buryatia where they often could make higher wages. These developments brought about greater urbanization, more diverse job opportunities, and allowed many Buryats to move to the republic’s expanding small towns and cities—especially the capital Ulan-Ude—where they joined many of the new Russian immigrants. By the fall of the Soviet Union, around half of the Soviet Union’s Buryats were living in cities (Afanas’eva 2004; Mangataeva 1995; Nimaev 1999). The rapid process of settlement and urbanization, as well as the expansion of educational institutions, opened many new doors to Buryat and Russian women. However, Buryat women were much slower than their Russian female counterparts to benefit. In the early postwar years Buryat women were vastly underrepresented in all professions in the Buryat republic. This was not only in comparison with Buryat men, but also in comparison with ethnic Russian women who were better represented in many fields. For example, statistics from the National Archives of the Republic of Buryatia show that in the late 1950s there were no Buryat women agricultural specialists and while Russian women made up over 50 % of the Russian agronomists and animal husbandry specialists, Buryat women made up only one-fourth of these jobs held by Buryats. While half of the Russian legal workers were women, only 12 % of the total number of Buryats occupied those same positions. Russian women made up 35 % of high administrative jobs in the local government held by Russians, but Buryat women made up only 14 % of these positions held by Buryats. In comparison to Buryat men, only in the professions of teachers and doctors—professions typically held by women in the Soviet Union—did Buryat women exceed them.2 However, Russian women dominated both of these professions and Buryat women lagged behind. Traditional gender roles, language, literacy, and geographic reasons can help explain why Buryat women were professionally so far behind their male Buryat and Russian male and female counterparts in the first decades after World War II. Social gender roles that placed men in positions to more likely obtain an education certainly marginalized Buryat women. 2
These statistics were compiled from Natsional’noi Archiv Respubliki Buriatii (National Archives of the Republic of Buryatia [NARB]), f. R-196, op. 1/8, d. 8, ll. 2-41.
However, ethnic Russian peasant families also typically placed women in subservient positions. Therefore, the role of language and literacy is especially important to consider. Prior to the Soviet education boom of the 1960s, fewer Buryat women than Buryat men attended school or spoke Russian fluently. In addition, they had significantly lower literacy rates than Buryat men as well as Russian men and women (Lamakhanov 2006; Sanzhiev et al. 1983). As late as 1939, 42 % of Buryat women were officially documented as illiterate compared to only 24 % of Buryat men. In addition, until the later postwar years the majority of Buryat women lived and worked in the countryside and raised large families. There was little time or opportunity for studying and pursuing professional careers. The social status of Buryat women began to change in the 1960s when central and local authorities devoted resources to improving educational opportunities that helped Buryat women advance and catch up to their Russian female counterparts. Officials in Buryatia and across the country increased the number of schools and more students enrolled in them. In the 1960s and 1970s, the number of residents in the Buryat Republic enrolled in high schools, technical institutes, and higher educational institutes rose by 40 % (Khalbaeva 1999). In the 1970s, the republic’s government expanded evening education for adults, which cut the number of young adults without a high school degree in half (Belikov 1980). In just 11 years, between 1959 and 1970, the number of Buryat women with a high school degree doubled and the number of Buryat women with university degrees tripled (Jones and Grupp 1992). Buryats in general entered educational institutes in record numbers in the late Soviet era and by 1979 they ranked third highest among all of the nationalities of the Soviet Union in education levels (Kaiser 1994). Women were a large part of this process. In fact, they were so much so that by 1989 more Buryat women held degrees from higher educational institutes than Buryat men. Education in the Buryat Republic was directly related to fluency in the Russian language. In order to attend higher educational institutes, Buryat women needed to learn Russian. All entrance exams into universities were in Russian, and Russian was the lingua franca of higher education in Buryatia. Also, many Buryat women with university degrees later went into professions in urban settings where Russian was largely spoken. Therefore, becoming fluent in the Russian language was necessary for educational and professional advancement. Buryat
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women learned Russian and this offered them many of the same professional opportunities that were then available to educated Russian women in Buryatia. At the same time, the switch that Buryat women made to speaking Russian in school and on the job contributed to an increase in Russification among the Buryats that amounted to a decline in Buryat traditions and the usage of the Buryat language that still continues today.3 The rise of education levels and Russian fluency among Buryat women went hand in hand with their increases in urbanization. Many Buryat women who moved to cities to attend higher educational institutes stayed after graduation to pursue their careers. Already in 1959 there were more urban Buryat women than men in the republic and that gap only increased in the 1960s and 1970s.4 These urban Buryat women had fewer children than their rural counterparts (Lamakhanov 2006). Buryat women also began to marry at later ages during this period and the rate of early marriage (defined in the Soviet Union as marriage between the ages of 16 and 19) fell by 50 % between 1959 and 1970 (Jones and Grupp 1992). Fewer children and later marriages gave Buryat women more time to gain higher educational degrees and follow career paths. Figure 1, compiled from data from the Republic of Buryatia’s statistical department, shows that by 1989 Buryat women had joined Russian women in obtaining professional jobs in large numbers.5 In addition, it shows occupations where Buryat and Russian women surpassed men. As the figure demonstrates, Buryat and Russian women held more jobs in education, culture, art, and health and social services than men did in the republic in 1989. In one category—administration—Buryat women also held the same number of administration jobs as Buryat men whereas Russian women held many fewer of these jobs than Russian men. These data demonstrate that by the later Soviet period, 3
The decline of the Buryat language occurred along with the decline and eventual cancellation of Buryat language schools in the Republic of Buryatia. Information about local government decisions about the phasing out of language education can be found in NARB, f. P-1, op. 1, d. 10087 and f. P-1, op. 1, d. 1485. 4 NARB, f. R-196, op. 1/8, d. 52, l. 3. 5 Compiled from Territorial’nogo organa federal’noi sluzhby gosudarstvennoi statistiki po Respublike Buriatiia. Materialy otdela statistiki naseleniia, itogi, vsesoiuznoi perepisi, naselaniia 1,989 g., 35 B (Territorial Organ of the Russian Federal Office of Government Statistics in the Repubic of Buryatia).
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Buryat women had caught up to their Russian female counterparts. Buryat women did this by moving to cities, gaining fluency in the Russian language (which often meant losing fluency in Buryat), enrolling in institutes of higher education, marrying later, and having fewer children. While these practices helped Buryat women to advance in Soviet society, they also brought greater assimilation and homogenization.6 Both Buryat and Russian women were often presented with the same set of choices on the ladder of social mobility. Their daily lives were also similar. They lived in the same cities and apartment buildings, sent their children to the same schools, found employment in the same professions, and commonly communicated in Russian. These factors help to explain why many Buryat and Russian professional women generally had very similar experiences in the transition from socialism to capitalism. Although the rise in the number of professional occupations held by both Russian and Buryat women in the last years of the Soviet Union is impressive, nevertheless, they still faced many challenges. By law Soviet women had equal rights with men. However, traditional prejudices and ‘‘hegemonic masculinities’’ (Cassidy 2013) greatly limited their social and economic mobility. While the Soviet government expected all of its able-bodied citizens to work, women generally bore the double burden of working outside of the home and being responsible for almost all of the domestic tasks and childrearing as well (Hesli and Miller 1993; Silverman and Yanowitch 1997). Barbara Alpern Engel has argued that, ‘‘the entire Soviet economy rested on the unpaid and underpaid labor of women’’ (2004, 235). These non-capitalist activities contributed to the larger capitalist economy but are hidden under the tip of Gibson-Graham’s (n.d.) economic iceberg. A more diverse view of the economy reveals many more relevant practices and exchanges that reach far beyond waged labor and market trade but are not isolated from them. If a diverse economy perspective were to be applied, all of this labor would have to be accounted for. But it is more complicated than just adding the number of hours women worked without pay. There 6
While it is not the focus of this paper, Buryats have challenged threats to the erosion of their identity in the face of Russification, sovietization, and modernization. This subject is discussed at length in our article, Sweet and Chakars 2010.
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Fig. 1 Occupations, gender, and ethnicity, 1989
are compounding factors that influence women’s acknowledged contributions to the economy. In particular, sexism, Cassidy’s (2013) ‘‘hegemonic masculinities,’’ and the larger workload made it more difficult for women to gain high positions within their given professions. For example, women were commonly absent in positions of leadership in Buryatia. Out of 340 directors of collective farms in Buryatia in 1959, only three were women—one Buryat and two Russians.7 Also, in the decades after WWII, no woman ever held the high profile position of head of the UlanUde city soviet (a position equivalent to mayor) or first secretary of the republic (a position equivalent to governor) (Imetkhenov and Egorov 2001). In addition, educated women were encouraged to enter into careers that were considered appropriate for them in the Soviet Union. These included such areas as education, healthcare, science, and cultural work (Bridger et al. 1996). This helps to explain the evidence presented in Fig. 1 that shows Russian and Buryat women strongly represented in these fields. Research also shows that women, including those with higher degrees, made less than men. For example in the late 1970s, the average Soviet woman made 70 % of a man’s salary (Silverman and Yanowitch 1997). Many women also accepted less prestigious or lower paid work in return for conveniences that helped them raise families such as shorter commutes, better hours, and lighter work loads. On the one hand, the Soviet government helped the extra economic burden placed upon women by 7
Based on data compiled from NARB, f. R-196, op. 1/8, d. 8.
providing greater social services such as low-cost daycares, summer camps, medical facilities, and higher education as well as maternity leaves and early retirement. This produced a certain security that allowed women to raise families, gain higher educational degrees, and advance their careers even if there were limitations. On the other hand, the Soviet government increased the hardships placed upon women through its planned economy that led to scarcities of consumer goods. This forced women to engage in economic practices that fall outside of traditional economic endeavors but fully within the diverse economies framework. In order to obtain ordinary items ranging from food to shoes to furniture, Soviet citizens often had to rely on forms of barter, such as blat in the Soviet Union, that included informal exchange networks, mutual support, and exchanging economic or social favors. People had to create large networks of family (in the case of the Buryats these could include clan/kinship groups), friends, colleagues, and others in order to receive desired consumer goods and services (Ledeneva 1998; Metzo 2001). Women, who largely managed the household economy, regularly relied on these economic actions outside of what is traditionally considered formal or informal capitalist economic activity.
Women and the economy after the collapse of the Soviet Union The dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 and the rapid transition and restructuring to a market economy in the new Russian Federation had a devastating impact on the everyday economic lives of women. Specifically, there were four negative consequences caused by this upheaval for women in Buryatia and throughout the country. First, the social services provided by the Soviet government that had helped women in their household labor were severely cut. Prices for daycare, education, housing, food, and medicine rose rapidly while people’s savings disappeared. Second, the new Russian Federation’s cuts in education, health services, government, and research and cultural institutions hurt professional women most because, as evidenced in Fig. 1, these were areas where they were heavily employed. Third, women’s employment was affected by government policies to raise the declining birth rate. Starting in the last years
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of the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev, officials began to encourage women to dedicate themselves to family life by offering ways for women reduce their workload. In the 1990s, as the birth rate continued to drop, the Russian Federation required private companies to contribute to maternity leaves and other benefits to help working mothers. As a result, many businesses simply chose to not hire women in order to avoid such costly complications (Bridger et al. 1996; Dashieva 2007; Metcalfe and Afanassieva 2005; Pavlovskaya 2004; Silverman and Yanowitch 1997). The fourth reason why women were negatively affected by the political and economic restructuring that occurred after the break-up of the Soviet Union was the lack of government protection against discrimination. In the Soviet Union, the government promoted the equality of women through laws, propaganda, women’s organizations, and affirmative action programs. Even if the results of this work were varied, the government had policies to advance the position of women in society. These official measures that existed under the Soviet Union largely disappeared with the formation of the government of the new Russian Federation. Instead, unchecked, widespread discrimination in hiring policies and on the job seriously limited women’s professional advancement (Bridger et al. 1996; Dashieva 2007; Metcalfe and Afanassieva 2005; Sargeant 1996; Silverman and Yanowitch 1997). This problem was exacerbated by the precipitous decline of women in politics in the Russian Federation. In the Republic of Buryatia, which has its own republican parliament called the Khural, the number of women representatives dropped considerably in post-Soviet elections. In the late 1980s (still during the Soviet period), women represented a little over 38 % of the representatives of the republic’s parliament. By 2000, they made up less than five percent (Dashieva 2007). The low number of women in high political positions has decreased opportunities for greater legal protections as well as improvements in social services. In the 1990s, Buryatia fell into a deep recession that was even worse than the economic depression that existed in many of the other regions of the Russian Federation. Rural parts of the Buryat Republic were especially affected and this caused many more women to leave the countryside for cities and in particular the capital, Ulan-Ude. Nevertheless, finding a job was still
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difficult. In the first 3 years after the break-up of the USSR, industry in Buryatia dropped by 35 % and agriculture by 30 %. The region also had twice the rate of unemployment than the average for the Russian Federation. In 1995, the economy had reached such a serious level of decline that, as mentioned earlier, the republic received special status from the central government in Moscow for economic assistance. Women in Buryatia were the most negatively impacted. In 1998, they made up 73 % of the unemployed residents of Buryatia. Among those women who were employed in the 1990s, on average their income was less than men. In addition, more than half of these women made less than the official subsistence level for the Russian Federation (Dashieva 2007; Gill 2007). In the 2000s, the economy in the Russian Federation, including in Buryatia, began to improve. Inflation rates were stabilized and many people began to successfully recover from the initial shock of the transition to a market economy. However, job growth has been varied. While work in many fields such as industry, agriculture, and science have continued to decline, jobs in the service sector such as retail trade, finance, and insurance have grown considerably (Cooper and Bradshaw 2007). While there are some new job opportunities, official statistics from Buryatia continue to reveal extremely high unemployment rates for women. Local government statistics from 2007 show that women’s unemployment rate stood at 44 % and men’s at around 31 %.8 Unfortunately, these statistics do not provide data on the ethnicity of these women and men. Women’s levels of unemployment are shocking, however they only record official forms of employment. They do not take into account unofficial and supplementary forms of work and thus document diverse economies.
Women’s work and economic practices Women in Buryatia have employed many different practices in an attempt to both improve or maintain
8
Compiled from Zhenshchiny i rynok truda: Analiticheskaia zapiska no. 01-03-23. (2008). Ulan-Ude: Territorial’nogo organa federal’noi sluzhby gosudarstvennoi statistiki po Respublike Buriatiia (Territorial Organ of the Russian Federal Office of Government Statistics of the Republic of Buryatia).
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their financial situation and obtain greater social mobility since the collapse of the Soviet Union. These have had varied results. For example, the transition to a market economy has made it legal for women to open their own businesses. However, few women in Buryatia have actually done this. Aside from a small handful of women, it was in fact men who opened almost all of the new official businesses in the republic after the collapse of the USSR (Dashieva 2007). Many women likely steered away from opening official businesses because of the risks involved. Women, who still bear the greatest responsibility for raising children and managing the household, may have simply sought out more stable and secure work. Marina Pavlovskaya’s research on women in Moscow in the 1990s demonstrates that women there regularly preferred to hold official state jobs—even though they often paid less—rather than work in the private sector because government employment ensured them better security and benefits (Pavlovskaya 2004). Evidence also shows that businesswomen in Russia are less likely to be in managerial positions (Metcalfe and Afanassieva 2005). The consequence of predominantly maleowned and run private businesses—a phenomenon that has occurred across the country—has left open the possibility for more prejudices in hiring and in the work environment. Indeed, although many women in Buryatia work in private businesses, few are in high decision-making positions within them. Low paying official jobs in government and private businesses, as well as the high unemployment rate, forced many women in Buryatia to engage in other forms of economic activity outside of the traditional rubric of capitalist economics but that permit a traditional capitalist system to function. These activities fall within a diverse economies framework. After the break-up of the Soviet Union, numerous women began to participate in the unofficial business of shuttle trading. Shuttle traders, or chelnoki in Russian, are people who buy goods abroad and then bring them back to Russia to sell. Scholars have estimated that in Russia in the early 1990s as many as 30 million people began to engage in shuttle trading (Humphrey 1999). It is still commonly practiced today. Russian citizens travel to Europe, Turkey, Korea, Japan, Mongolia, and China in order to purchase goods and then resell them at, often outdoor, markets in Russia. Although some people are full time shuttle traders, many practice it periodically to supplement income when needed. In
Buryatia for example, a woman might simply take a trip to China or Mongolia once or twice a year to supplement her income from a steady, but low-paying job as a teacher in a school or university or as a secretary in a government office. Many women in Buryatia since the fall of the Soviet Union have also continued to rely on education to help their economic situation as they did in Soviet times. In the 1990s and 2000s, women in Buryatia have enrolled in universities in large numbers. Indeed, statistics show that this does improve their chances for employment. Among unemployed women in Buryatia in the two decades since the Russian Federation embarked on the transition to a market economy, the smallest group has been those with higher educational degrees. As during the late Soviet period, women in Buryatia continue to have on average higher levels of education than men. In 1998, 32.2 % of the women in the republic had a higher educational degree compared with only 20.5 % of the men (Dashieva 2007). From the overall population of officially employed people in Buryatia in 2007, 23 % more women than men had higher educational degrees.9 This shows that women with higher degrees have been more successful at gaining employment than their counterparts without them. These statistics also show that men hold more of the jobs that require less education. Because many women have chosen education to help them improve their financial situation it has led to higher numbers of professional women in the workforce. In the postSoviet era, there have also been more educational opportunities as private learning institutions have opened and public ones have expanded. Educated women in Buryatia have continued to dominate the professional fields of education, art and culture, government administration, and health as they did in Soviet times. However, these are areas that have been subject to government cuts in times of crisis. Perhaps most threatened have been teachers. Russia’s declining birthrate has decreased the need for teachers, thus reducing a significant area of employment for women (DaVanzo and Gammich 2001).
9
Compiled from Zhenshchiny i rynok truda: Analiticheskaia zapiska no. 01-03-23. (2008). Ulan-Ude: Territorial’nogo organa federal’noi sluzhby gosudarstvennoi statistiki po Respublike Buriatiia (Territorial Organ of the Russian Federal Office of Government Statistics of the Republic of Buryatia).
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In Buryatia, some women began to take action in the late 1990s in an attempt to improve the social, economic, and political situation of women there overall. In 1997, Buryat and Russian women gained support from government officials to hold a conference titled, ‘‘The Situation of Women in Buryatia: Rights, Realities, and Perspectives.’’ The conference examined the negative effects on women due to the economic and political changes in post-Soviet Buryatia (Dashieva 2007). It called attention to women’s problems and asked women, government bodies, and private associations to seek solutions. This kind of conference with government involvement is similar to such activities that took place during the Soviet period. For instance, in 1960 the first women’s congress was held in Buryatia that called for the equality of women in all spheres of life.10 Such organizational activities occurred regularly throughout the late Soviet era to serve as a space for discussing constructive methods to advance women’s social standing in the region. It is therefore not surprising that such organizations have continued since the break-up of the USSR. By the early 2000s, there were 11 women’s groups operating in Buryatia that were regional, republican, or national in membership composition. Henderson (2009) argues that the expansion of such women’s organizations across Russia in recent years has provided women with a space for leadership in society. This is important since women’s representation in elected political bodies has declined so dramatically. However, Henderson also explains that these associations have generally sought to obtain and create services that the state no longer provides, especially in areas of health and education, rather than primarily focusing on achieving equal rights for women. As in the Soviet era, many in the Russian Federation continue to view the areas of health, education, and family as acceptable for women’s employment and political activities. Indeed, many of the women’s organizations in Buryatia in the 2000s have paid special attention to problems with healthcare, schooling, and the family. Yet, there have been calls by some for greater political rights in other areas for women. Another conference on women in 2001 in Ulan-Ude asked the local government to create 10
Materials from the conference were reprinted in Pervyi s’’ezd zhenshchin Buiatskoi ASSR (Ulan-Ude: Buriatskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo 1960).
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measures to strengthen the rights of working women in addition to improving healthcare and the family (Dashieva 2007). Also, in February of 2006 the Buryat Republic’s Department of Women and Children held a conference titled, ‘‘The Strategic Gender Planning Conference’’ focused on education and youth issues. One participant also presented research about increases in crime in the city of Ulan-Ude and how women might develop responses to it. Author Sweet was a keynote speaker at the conference and gave a presentation on women and economic development opportunities in Ulan-Ude. The focus that women in Buryatia have placed on such practices as choosing stable government jobs over opening official businesses, shuttle trading and selling goods in local markets, gaining higher education, and making political demands for better education and health benefits demonstrates their sharpened attention to reaching practical goals and obtaining personal gains. This situation is similar to what F. Umut Bespinar found in a study of women in urban Turkey who used work-related strategies largely to bring about short-term advantages for themselves and their families (Bespinar 2010). In Russia, these practices have helped to improve some women’s economic and professional situations. Nevertheless, despite their efforts, many women of Buryatia, as in all of Russia, have continued to struggle in the early 2000s due to the transition from a planned to a market economy. Women continue to have the highest unemployment rates and still face much discrimination. Because of this situation, many women are regularly using non-capitalist economic practices that were developed during the Soviet era. In the mid1990s when the economy was in its deepest crisis, some estimate that the informal economy accounted for as much as 40 % of household income in the Russian Federation and that almost all households in the country relied on it in some way or another (Pavlovskaya 2004; Rose 1994). During the 1990s some estimated that 50 % of family food consumption was a result of dacha (small family garden plots) production (Wehrheim and Wobst 2005). In addition, women across the Russian Federation, including in Buryatia, have continued to rely on informal exchange networks where they are able to trade favors and material goods ranging from childcare to tutoring to foodstuffs to finding employment (Metzo 2001; Pavlovskaya 2004). Education, shuttle trading, gaining
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higher education, and exchange networks form the bulk of economic strategies carried out by women in Buryatia and they can be understood within a diverse economies framework. They together represent an alternative conceptual model for economics and women in post-Soviet and restructured Buryatia. This broad model is helpful in analyzing the interview data discussed below that is focused on women’s experiences during economic transition.
Women’s attitudes toward economic transition In the spring of 2006, we conducted 88 face-to-face interviews with women in Buryatia that included both closed and open- ended questions. Thirty-five of the women were ethnic Russians, 49 were ethnic Buryat, and four were from another ethnic group. We recruited respondents in the capital of the Republic of Buryatia, Ulan-Ude, and in a smaller town in the southwestern corner of the republic called Arshan. We selected respondents using a strategy of purposeful and snowball sampling (Patton 1999) to ensure a variety of perspectives from both rural and urban women. The respondents ranged in age from 16 to over 60. The majority, however, were older than 30 and had higher educational degrees. The survey asked multiple questions about economics, politics, and society and also made inquiries into the individual experiences of women in the context of economic and political transition. For this article, we provide an analysis of three specific questions that allowed women to describe their personal experiences related to the shift from socialism to capitalism. The three are: 1) Did you live better before or after the break-up of the Soviet Union?; 2) How would you compare your life before and after the collapse of the USSR?; and 3) What types of changes over the years have you seen (if any) in your economic situation? Regarding question one, around one-third of the respondents answered that life was better ‘‘before’’ the collapse of the USSR, one-third answered ‘‘after,’’ and one-third responded, ‘‘don’t know—it is difficult to answer.’’ Regardless of these responses however, many of the Buryat and Russian women elaborated by describing both positive and negative aspects of life before and after the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union. The answers of educated women over the age of 30—and thus women who were old enough in 2006
to have experienced life in both the USSR and the Russian Federation—do not reveal any particular pattern of difference in terms of how each ethnic group answered the questions. Both Buryat and Russian women generally provided a similar set of responses, which indicates that as women—regardless of ethnicity—they shared much in common in their history of economic restructuring. Therefore, whereas Buryat women had very different work experiences in the 1950s (as seen in the statistical data and analysis above) by the 1980s and into the post-Soviet period, they occupied similar types of professional positions as Russian women. For this reason, Buryat and Russian women both faced a similar set of problems in the 1990s such as the loss of jobs in ‘‘women’s professions,’’ high unemployment, and difficulties resulting from the lack of social services, and rising university tuition rates. Therefore, many Buryat women were affected in very similar ways as Russian women when the Soviet Union collapsed. This suggests commonality of experiences since the women commented similarly on the same topics of income, security, education, and state of society. The women interviewed discussed their financial situations in terms of the economic transition. Many described how despite there being an increase in the availability of consumer goods after the transition, the combination of rising prices and unemployment meant that few could actually afford them. All but five of the respondents stated that expenses for food, education, and healthcare had increased after the transition. One Russian woman in her 40s explained simply that, ‘‘We were poor in the Soviet Union and we are poor now. Achieving financial well-being is always hard.’’ This woman went on to describe how she had been a teacher in Soviet times, but now works as a manager of a tourist company. As mentioned earlier, while the profession of teacher was a stable one in the Soviet Union, it became much less so after 1991 when the government had little money to pay its educators. Another woman, a Buryat in her 50s working in government administration, declared that, ‘‘Our family lived better before the break-up of the Soviet Union. We had better educational opportunities, guaranteed employment, stable salaries, and stable prices.’’ An older Russian woman also complained, lamenting that after the transition she could no longer afford to take vacations to the sea since her financial situation was much worse. Even one Russian woman
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in her 20s working as a teacher also argued that life had been better in the USSR even though she was too young to have spent much time in it. She explained that, ‘‘We lived better before [the transition]. Now we have everything but money.’’ Those who expanded positively about the Soviet Union in their answers emphasized that life was more stable then and that there had been more resources available. A Russian woman in her 30s employed by the local government explained, ‘‘Before the collapse, people had stable jobs and salaries, but they did not have freedom. Now people have freedom, but they do not have stable jobs and salaries.’’ Education was a particular focus with many of the women, which relates to the importance women placed on education as a strategy for economic improvement as described above. A Buryat woman and former academic in her 60s stated, ‘‘The best years were in Soviet times. There was free education. No one bought their education or diplomas back then.’’ A Russian woman in her 30s also criticized the contemporary state of education. In particular, she expressed frustration that tuition costs had become too high. Many women also displayed a general concern for the health of society since the collapse of the Soviet Union. A college educated elderly Buryat pensioner argued that, ‘‘In the Soviet Union… the moral state of society was better.’’ A Russian teacher in her 40s contended that before the transition to a market economy, ‘‘relations between people were better’’ and ‘‘there were fewer social problems.’’ Several women worried about the future. A Buryat teacher in her 40s complained that, ‘‘During the Soviet period we had firm conviction in the future, which is unfortunately, now not the case.’’ Similarly, another Buryat teacher in her 50s explained that, ‘‘today there is no feeling of security or certainty for the future.’’ A number of the women interviewed expressed a strong belief that the quality of life had previously been better. A Buryat woman in her 50s stated, ‘‘Before the disintegration of the USSR, people lived more freely, more interestingly, expecting the best. People lived more fairly, more openly. They had the opportunity to study, to go to other cities, and abroad.’’ Despite the complaints about financial difficulties, several of the older women did express happiness that there was now religious freedom. For example, one Buddhist Buryat woman in her 50s claimed that her life was better now ‘‘in a spiritual way.’’
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While most of the respondents over 30—and even a few under—expressed nostalgia for Soviet times, a number of the women in their 20s claimed that life was better after the collapse. One college educated Buryat businesswoman in her 20s commented, ‘‘We live better today because of the market economy.’’ Interestingly, two unemployed college educated women in their 20s—one Russian and one Buryat—argued that even if unemployed, ‘‘life is better now [after the collapse].’’ The Russian woman went on to explain that today ‘‘there are choices that one can make for themselves’’ and the Buryat woman stated that the ‘‘level of independence and freedom’’ has increased since 1991. Although these younger women were only children during Soviet times, they have certainly been exposed throughout their lives to a variety of opinions about Soviet life from older generations, school, and the media all of which could have influenced their ideas and helped them to express their own beliefs about life before and after the break-up of the USSR. Hahn and Logvinenko (2008), in a study of generational differences in Yaroslavl from 1993 to 2004, showed that the younger generation was consistently more supportive of the economic changes that occurred after 1991 than older ones and generally felt more positive about life in the post-Soviet era. Many of the younger Buryat and Russian women that we interviewed felt the same. Regardless of their varying attitudes toward the transition from socialism to a market economy, these interviews do illustrate that even though the economy had improved since the tumultuous 1990s, many women still felt a lack of security in 2006 and therefore expressed great frustration over their economic situations. The interviews also confirm that many women were particularly concerned with the state of education, as it had provided them in the past with a method for social and professional mobility. In a separate part of the interview when women were asked about how they could improve their situation, many explained that gaining more education would help. Many also sought to improve their incomes by moving to urban centers. In a number of interviews, women also described using practices within the realm of a diverse economies framework. For example, one Buryat woman explained how she was able to ask her cousin to get her an eye doctor’s appointment using the insurance card of another cousin. She was able to see the doctor and
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get a reduced price for her prescription glasses. Another Buryat woman described how she did translation work on the side to supplement her regular income. Two Buryat woman in their 40s—both with ‘‘state jobs’’—admitted that their families regularly sell the extra food they grow at their dachas to increase their overall incomes. One Russian teacher in her 30s complained that she was constantly looking for extra work to make ends meet and another Russian woman in her 20s explained that, ‘‘every member of my family has a job as well as additional forms of income.’’ These responses reveal that many women cannot live on their regular salaries alone and are therefore forced to find supplemental income and participate in economic practices outside traditional demarcations of the economy, which are limited to waged labor and market exchange as they did during the Soviet period. These similar economic practices suggest, as Williams et al. (2012) also describes, that the implementation on the ground of the market economy has not deeply penetrated society on many levels. While our interviews and statistical data show great commonality in the economic experiences between Russian and Buryat women through transition, our observations do show some differences. For example, we have met Russian women who have chosen to leave Buryatia in search of better employment. Many Russians, who have only been in Buryatia for a generation or so and make up the majority ethnic group in the Russian Federation, feel comfortable in finding work in other parts of the country. For Buryat women however, leaving Buryatia may prove more problematic. Many non-white Russians have experienced prejudice and even violence outside of their traditional regions. In addition, many Buryats view southeastern Siberia as their homeland and they have strong family and sentimental ties that keep them there. Another difference that we observed in the economic experiences between Buryat and Russian women was the role of extended family. One Russian woman explained that she could never marry a Buryat man because of the family obligations within the Buryat culture. She said that even if a distantly related cousin came to visit, the family was obligated to host him indefinitely. However, these kinship/clan relationships could also provide significant support for women. A young Buryat woman in her 20s described how she was able to send her son to relatives in a rural village to help raise him while she worked in the city.
Conclusion By employing a diverse economies framework and a transdisciplinary approach to the economic experiences of Buryat and Russian women from late socialism to the 2000s, we show that women adopted a variety of economic practices in an attempt to improve—or sometimes to simply sustain—their financial and social status in society. We also show that using a diverse economies framework allows us to have a better understanding of professional women who have found it necessary to engage the economy in multiple ways that straddle and meld formal and informal markets as well as non-capitalist economic practices. In addition, by studying women’s work over the past 60 years and the varying economic strategies that they have adopted, we can better understand how women were affected by the transition of the 1990s, the longer term restructuring of the economy, as well as their attitudes towards it in the 2000s. Knowing what women both gained and lost over the past 60 years allows us to better conceptualize their more recent opinions about the past. Despite the transition from socialism to a market economy, women in Buryatia have continued to pursue some of the same economic practices for social mobility and everyday life as they did before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since the 1960s, Russian and Buryat women have sought to obtain higher education (and for Buryats also Russian language fluency) and professional jobs. They have moved to urban areas and participated in women’s organizations in order to call greater attention to problems they face in sustaining their communities and families. In addition, they have engaged in informal networks and the exchanging of favors—blat. After the economic crash of the 1990s, the new capitalist system created both hardships and new opportunities. While many women became unemployed, others found work in private businesses or in the informal sector. Nevertheless, the interviews conducted in 2006 show that while some women have adjusted, many still long for the greater security that they felt was guaranteed in the Soviet Union. We also found that geographic identity (i.e. homeland) and familial networks influenced Buryat women’s responses to changing economic conditions more than Russian women. Our work on women in Buryatia also points to a need to better understand the reasons behind the
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differences between women and men in regards to education and professional work. There is still much work to be done in terms of data gathering and theorization about transition and restructuring in regards to the gendered dimensions of Soviet and post-Soviet experiences. While there has been some qualitative work on women and transition, even less qualitative work has been done that explores men’s everyday experiences. More studies like Vinokurova (2010) that document Sakha men’s emasculation in the process of transition in the Russian Sakha Republic are needed. Our data show that while men in Buryatia have higher employment than women and dominate leadership positions in politics and business, they still obtain university degrees in much lower numbers. This indicates that while men are succeeding in some areas, they are falling behind women in others. A study that analyses their experiences would be useful. Highly educated women and men in Buryatia and across the Russian Federation have much to contribute in terms of economic and political development. Both Vladimir Putin and his predecessor, Dmitry Medvedev, have argued that the Russian Federation is too dependent upon the export of raw materials, especially oil. Therefore, they claim that it is necessary to move Russia’s economy into high technology markets by utilizing the intellectual potential of the country’s highly educated residents. If leaders in the Russian Federation truly seek such a policy the country will need to invest in education and knowledge-based activities. This may provide new opportunities for women in Buryatia where their unemployment rates remain high despite their best efforts. Acknowledgments We would like to thank Margarita M. Khalbaeva-Boronova for her help with research and conducting the interviews.
References
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