Working Women in Russia at the End of the 1990s

The actual course of gender processes in the reformed economy of Russia does not conform to the proclaimed policy and ideology of the reforms. Traditionalism is growing stronger in socioeconomic relations. This is reflected, for example, in the patterns of employment by spheres of ownership: just 6 percent of women and 8 percent of men are not working for hire, including 0.6 percent of women and 1.2 percent of men who are employers,>sup>1>/sup> with the rest forced to sell (and we will say bluntly, relatively more cheaply than before) their labor. Women make up just 30 percent of employers, and they are represented by and large by small business. We cannot speak of any marked change in the economic, and primarily the social-labor, status of women.