MOSCOW CENTER FOR GENDER STUDIES

In 2002 the Moscow Center for Gender Studies (the MCGS) with the support of the John D. and Catherine T. McArthur Foundation started the 3-years-long project "The Analytical and Informational Resource Center for the experts and researchers in gender equality". The project coordinator is Dr. Olga Voronina, the working director of the MCGS.

The idea of this project is to propose systemic activities to prevent the inefficiency of the National Machinery for gender equality in Russia. At present time there are a significant number of well-educated and professional experts on gender analysis in many university cities through this country. Women’s movement increases its influence and plays an active role in the social life. There is a great interest for gender education in high schools both on the part of administration and students. Nevertheless the National Machinery does not yet play an important role in policy making. Its status in decision-making processes is not substantial and the level of financing of its activities is not adequate. The gender issues are of low priority to the Government and Parliament in Russian Federation and sometimes are not visible. It could be explained by the fact that the Russian Government is not well informed in gender mainstreaming strategies that include the most complex and diversified concept of gender and gender equality. The governmental politics in ensuring equal rights and equal opportunities for women and men proves to be purely declarative and symbolic. On the one hand, during the last few years ex-president Boris Eltsin and ex-prime-minister Viktor Tchernomyrdin have signed a number of important governmental programs addressed to women and children. However their realization was not effective due the lack of financing. In 2000 one of the important body of the National machinery, namely, the Presidential Commission on issues of women, family and population was dissolved by the decree of President Vladimir Putin. One may conclude that international experience in legislation on gender equality, especially due to contacts of Russia with the Western countries, has no evident influence on the policy making process. International commitments to secure equal opportunities for women are de facto not being respected. All of the aforementioned facts reflect the lack of functioning national machinery embedded in the governmental structures of the country.

At present, the gender agenda proves to be an essential and organic component of activities of the international organizations and institutions, which the Russian Federation cooperates with. Within the last decade the UNDP, the European Council, OECD, and many other organizations elaborated and affirmed the highly important as to the contents and the methodology approaches to gender issues. They proposed the set of necessary political and institutional measures to implement gender mainstreaming into governmental programs. The positive experiences of gender mainstreaming in the European Union, OECD etc. have been systematically analyzed and propagandized. Gender issues are now discussed within the ILO, WHO, UNICEF and other international organizations. At present the World Bank and its institutions also adopted the gender mainstreaming agenda. All this experiences are not yet well known and properly studied in Russia. We are sure that all international experiences in formulating and realizing gender equality politics, as well as all relevant documents and working papers on gender equality and gender mainstreaming should be analyzed and available for policy-makers, researchers and women’s group activists.

The other issue is that of deficiency of reliable and sound information on women’s status in society in human rights perspective. The case studies of human rights violations and their gender analysis could help towards the explicit evaluation of the issue and to induce proper social policies and legislation, and, finally contributes to their more efficiency. From 1997 the gender indicators have been developed within the framework of the Russian State Statistical System, but gender measuring still remains unsatisfactory. Gender statistics comprises extremely limited number of indices (for example, data on gender professional segregation, gender wages differences, working mothers status and many other important issues are not measured). Furthermore due the peculiar consistency of the gathering and processing information, adopted by the State Committee on Statistics, the gender data enter with 1,5-2 years delay. The access to the data is restricted. The official publication "Women and Men in Russia" is usually published in 650 copies and has never been presented in Internet. Certainly, there is an opportunity to buy some additional data, but only few researchers actually do it because of high prices. Unfortunately, the prospects to improve the situation with the official statistics seem to be unsure. Partly it could be explained by insufficient financing. A considerable part of the official surveys are carried due the support of philanthropic organizations from abroad or foreign governmental grants, while the financing should be carried out at the expense of the federal budget. Besides, there is the urgent need for the professional publications on gender analysis of statistical data (with a description of available sources, methods of data gathering and processing, gender measuring indices in different spheres, their evaluation and analysis etc.). These methodological regulations could help all the policy-makers, researchers and women’s group activists to improve their professional knowledge and skills in gender analysis of regional and local statistical data.

Another subject is the development of democratic values of equality and raising gender public awareness. At present time gender awareness is missing at all levels of society and the public education needed for promotion of such awareness. The educational institutions should act more actively as well. In all countries in transition including Russia there is a considerable growth of gender education. For the last years many universities and high schools in Russia included special lectures (or courses of lectures) into their curricula, and the interest to gender studies is growing. Due the support of Western foundations, first of all J. and C. McArthur, the Women Network Program of the Open Society Institute / Soros Foundation and the Ford Foundation gender education in this country has found prospects of development. In 2001 the Ministry of Education adopted the educational plan for universities with the obligatory course of "Feminology. Genderology" for specialty of "social work"; this specialty is taught in 70 state universities in Russia. However the quality of educational programs on gender studies is insufficient. In several universities, — the Moscow High School of Social and Economic Sciences, the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the European University (Saint-Petersburg), the State Universities in Samara and Tver teachers in gender studies are highly professional. But many lecturers from other provincial universities who are interested in new educational programs on gender issues face the problem of bringing them up to standard. Quite often lecturers instead of reading gender courses keep delivering either traditional Soviet lectures "on women’s issues" or those based on bio-determinist ideology of "women’s predestination". Under current social and economic situation this contributes to more severe gender discrimination and sharpens gender conflicts in the society (especially in families and in professional employment). Lecturers and researchers who belong to "old school" have no methodological instruments to deal those negative social phenomena. Such situation in education is determined by many factors. The most important ones are: the lack of special literature on gender issues in the university libraries; the deficiency of knowledge of contemporary Western and Russian experiences in gender studies; the dearth of specialists; the lack of new statistical and sociological data, knowledge on activities of international research centers and institutions on different aspects of gender politics that are almost inaccessible. Unfortunately, because of the crisis situation in education in Russia only few organizations and experts (mainly those who live in the capital) have operative access to new information. Apart from common social obstacles there are material, technical and informational factors (lack of necessary means for buying literature; in some regions of the country electric or telephone nets are often in disorder and it is difficult to use Internet), language barrier. For the last years thanks to the Western foundations who persistently support reforms in education, many positive changes have taken place: the professional skills of lecturers raises, the new textbooks are issued, the universities libraries are being equipped with new literature and equipment. Nevertheless, gender education is somewhere on the roadside of the processes of high school reforming. The "mega-programs of education" of Open Society Institution or the programs of the development of inter-regional research and education associations were supported by several foundations while gender education lacks such a support. At present time great efforts should be made to change the situation and to improve professional skills of the high school lecturers.

According to the issues set above, the MCGS’ long-term strategy is to promote gender equality in policy-making and to build coalition of gender experts and gender public policy makers by means of intellectual and social resources of the Center. In the long-term perspective MCGS will work as the institution engaged in problems of gender and social politics. The principal steps of the Center in this direction run as follows:

• To induce regular monitoring the situation with women and men’s rights, i.e. monitoring of the outcomes of the political decisions in social and economic sectors;

• To develop gender analysis of Russian legislation;

• To disseminate information on gender issues and women’s empowerment and to contribute to its accessibility for experts from all over the country;

• To promote gender educational standards into the state educational plans and high school curricula;

• To further gender mainstreaming into national Machinery on gender equality;

• To facilitate cooperation between women’s and human rights organizations and to support building coalitions on gender equality;

• To contribute to development of gender professional experts coalition, including (a) analysts, (b) women’s and human rights NGOs, and (c) national machinery officials for gender equality and women’s empowerment.

MCGS successfully cooperates with Federal Vice-Minister of Labor and Social Politics Galina Karelova, the Head of the Department of Women’s Health (the Ministry of health) Ludmila Gavrilova, deputies of the State Duma (we are actively working with Ekatherina Lakhova and Tatiana Yarighina), with Gender Unit of the Informational and Analytical Administration of the Council of Federation (we are in regular professional contacts with the Vice-director of the Administration G.I. Klimantova). At present time the MCGS establishes cooperation with the Federal Ministry of Education.

The current project is designed for 3 years; it is supposed to establish the base for strategic program implementation and to raise the MCGS’ capacity as an intellectual and informational resource center to help to professional experts on gender equality.

THE AIMS, TASKS AND METHODS OF THE PROJECT REALIZATION

The principal aim of the project is to provide gender experts with analytic and informational resources and to facilitate building gender expert coalition for gender equality politics. The MCGS tries to ensure the complex approach to development of gender expert association based on unities of analytic, educational, informational and social-transforming activities that was and will be the principal one for MCGS.

The groups whom the project is intended for are analysts, experts, politicians, the National machinery officials, municipal and federal state authorities and their officials, journalists, women’s and human rights activists, university and high schools teachers and lecturers, post-graduate and post-doctoral students, researchers and self-educating persons.

As analytic and informational research center the MCGS works out three problems. They are:

• Statistical monitoring of gender equality;

• Informational and analytical help in improving gender education in the universities; and

• The study of the international and foreign experiences in gender mainstreaming and gender equality politics.

Statistical monitoring of gender equality — the coordinator of the sub-project — Dr. Marina Baskakova, Ph.D. in Economics.

The purpose of the sub-project is to provide of reliable and new statistical information on social and economic positions and gender rights in Russia. The specific tasks are: to gather new gender statistical data, to elaborate methods of their processing and presentation to specialists.

The data of the Russian Longitude Monitoring Survey (RLMS)2 on Health and Social and Economic Status, the Institute of Social and Economic Studies of the Population (ISESP RAS) survey "Tahganrogh + 3?", that are available by Internet will form the informational basis of monitoring (apart the official State Committee on statistics data). On the basis of RLMS data one can get indices on gender statistics that state statistics can hardly obtain in the nearest future. Here are some examples as to what indices one can trace in the planned monitoring:

Women’s and men’s wages in different economic sectors, the size of women’s and men’s pensions (differentiating according to various indices); dynamics of professional gender segregation, gender differences as to home work, caring of children and disabled relatives; gender differences in accessibility of paid and free health services.

The realization the tasks run as follows. At the first stage an additional framework of indices for statistical monitoring of gender issues and measuring gender equality in employment, health care, education, income distribution, time spending will be elaborated with the help of experts. The MCGS intends to recruit specialists from the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Development, the Institute for Economic and Social Studies of Population and the Institute of the Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Using the questionnaires of RLMS the experts will elaborate a framework of 200-300 indices that would represent as fully as possible gender aspects in different social and economic spheres. At the second stage, the processing of the data within the period from 1992 till 2003 will be done. At the third stage the methodology of gender statistical analysis will be generalized and set out.

Available resources. At present, MCGS has some human and technical resources for project realization (due to of cooperation with SAS — statistical analytic system and autonomic non-commercial organization; "The actoir-analytic centre", etc.). The MCGS also has computers compatible to the new software calculating great amount of information. We have a free access to the SAS, provided by the SAS-Institute. Besides, there is an opportunity to recruit students-volunteers from the State Polytechnic Bauman-University who will do their practical work on studying SAS. Such collaboration, on the one hand, will help to realize the project with a considerable economy of finances, and, on the other hand, to disseminate knowledge in gender analysis among the students of one of the best technical high schools of the country.

The interim results of the project will be regularly published on the MCGS’s site and in special issues of the MCGS Newsletter. Six issues will be published. The topics are follows: gender imbalances in wage levels, income distribution, health, education, work responsibility in the household. Such analytic notes will comprise the analysis of principal statistical data that characterize the dynamics of gender relation’s issue in Russian society. The methods of gender analysis of regional, local and other statistical data will be presented at the MCGS seminars and workshops and in Internet. There is an idea to issue guidelines "Using Statistical Data for Gender Analysis". The final report "Statistical monitoring of gender equality in Russia: 1992-2003" with the results of statistical monitoring will be also published and presented to all engaged persons and institutions.

Informational and Analytic Resources for gender education at the universities — the coordinator the sub-project — Dr. Olga Voronina, Ph.D. in Philosophy

Aims:

• To raise the professional skills of lecturers on gender studies, researchers, post-graduate students in social sciences and the humanities;

• To further integration of the European standards of gender education into the national higher education standards;

• To promote democratic values, human rights and gender equality by means of gender education.

1. Collecting, systematizing and forming the units of open, free educational and methodical information (both on paper and electronic repositories) for education and academic research in of social sciences and the humanities. This comprises the following forms of work: selection from the catalogues (printed and in Internet) of Russian and foreign literature and purchase of it for the MCGS’s library; collecting, systematizing and annotating new literature for cards and electronic catalogues; getting access to the base of data of EBSCO (through Internet) and providing this information to the specialists of the MCGS’s network; collecting and systematizing Russian educational curricula (in the form of an electronic catalogue) according to the different gender disciplines; collecting and systematizing information on collective and individual research projects on gender issues. Presentation this information to Russian researchers, university teachers and lecturers using the Internet-site of MCGS.

2. Organizing and holding three Internet interactive schools for teachers and lecturers on gender studies (one in a year). The preference will be given to the teachers who, according to the directive of the Ministry of Higher Education of RF, start the obligatory courses of "Feminology. Genderology". Unfortunately, the program, produced by the Ministry, does not correspond to the criteria of modern gender education.

   Twenty participants of the educational program who meet certain criteria (lecturing in high school, preparing independent courses on gender issues, agreement of the university administration to include new course of lectures into the curriculum) will be invited for one-year study with the help of Internet. Informational teaching resources (the courses of lectures and the necessary publications) will be put on the MCGS’s site, the additional literature, if necessary, will be scanned and sent by E-mail.

   Training by correspondence in accordance with the special program will last for six months every year. The participants will get their tasks for their independent work by e-mail, as well as tutor’s consultations through Internet. Among the tutors there are also qualified specialists who work in other institutions alongside with the MCGS. The participants should prepare new educational programs. A special commission will examine all the programs. If professionalism of the participant is approved she (or he) will receive unofficial the Certificate of the MCGS.

3. The examination of the governmental educational standards and textbooks on social disciplines and humanities adopted and recommended by the Ministry of Education for universities and comparative analysis with the Western teaching materials for students in gender studies. Presentation the findings of the expert examination and discussing them at seminar together with the invited lecturers of high school, members of teaching-methodological associations. (The MCGS intends to discuss the educational literature on gender studies with these associations and with members of the Board of the Ministry of Education and the Committee on education of the State Duma and to make recommendations for publication for the Ministry of Education).

   The list of the literature on gender philosophy, sociology, economics, history, law, and political science, ethnology prepared by the Ministry as well as copies of recommended textbooks will be the object of expert examination. Nowadays every high school, even subsidized by the state budget, is to some extent free to choose textbooks for students. However, some textbooks are "tied" to the governmental standards — that is students are obliged to study them though they are not the only source of information. The Council of Experts that the MCGS intends to form will consist of the specialists who have the experience at the state universities. The main part of the Council work is an examination of the obligatory course "Feminology. Genderology" for the specialty "social worker". To elaborate the criteria of assessing the methodological workshop will be held.

   The findings of the expert examination will be presented at the final seminar, published in the periodicals and disseminated by the means of the MCGS’s network and that of the Kharkov Center for Gender Studies.

   The expected short-term results: gender professional skills improvement of 60 lecturers and introducing at least 50 new educational programs into curricula of high schools. The other short-term result is reducing "informational inequality" between the provincial cities and the "capital" center that is very acute issue for education and research activity in Russia. And at last lecturers, the Ministry of Education officials and members of the Committee on Education of the State Duma will get the analytic material on integration gender theory into the academic curricula.

   The MCGS has high intellectual, informational and technical resources for realization of this part of the project. The members of the MCGS were probationers in different foreign research and educational centers and institutions (the National Program for Research on Women, USA; the Consortium of Research on Women at Wisconsin University, USA; the Gender and Culture Program of the Central-European University, the Open Society institute /Soros Foundation) and regularly teach gender theory in such universities as the Moscow High School for Social and Economic Sciences, The High school for economics, the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and in all-Russian and international summer schools on gender studies. The MCGS has a library. Now the MCGS’ collection contains more than 1500 monographic, periodic and other editions on Russian, English, German, French and other languages. Basically they were published in two last decades. Recently many research, scientific, educational and public institutions as well as individuals from Russia and other countries participate in updating of the collection that is unique for Russia.

The Study of international experiences in women’s empowerment and gender equality — the coordinator of the sub-project is Dr. Elena Ballaeva, Ph.D. in Philosophy.

Aims and tasks:

• To engage policy-makers, researchers, women’s and human rights activists with aims of women’s empowerment and gender equality;

• To develop the gender experts network on gender equality and gender mainstreaming;

• To disseminate the international experiences on the interaction of civil society institutions and governmental bodies on women’s empowerment and gender equality;

• To facilitate the building coalitions of politicians, experts and women’s NGO activists on women’s human rights and gender justice;

• To examine and disseminate of information on gender mainstreaming strategies of the international organizations and institutions;

• To advocate for gender mainstreaming and its integration into the National Machinery on women and ender equality;

The MCGS intends to organize three seminars within this part of the project. The first one is devoted to the issues of interaction and collaboration of women’s and human rights movements. The MCGS plans to hold this seminar together with the Moscow Helsinki Group (headed by the well known human rights advocate Ludmila Alexeyeva). It is planned to invite the experts of the international human rights organizations — the International Human Rights Watch, the International Women’s Human Rights Watch, the State Administration on Human Rights of Russian Federation. The aim of the seminar is to determine the issues and opportunities for coordinating activities of women’s NGOs and human rights organizations against women’s human rights violations and gender discrimination. There is an idea to publish all the reports and discussions in special issue of the MCGS Newsletter and on the MCGS site "Gender.ru".

The subject of the second seminar is "Women’s rights and the issues of social security". We intend to discuss the ways of interaction of women’s and human rights organizations with the policy-makers on the issues of social security in gender perspective. The focus will be made on the activity of the governmental institutions, non-governmental organizations on prevention of gender violence, trafficking in women, women’s crime and the rights of women prisoners etc. The state insuring for women’s social security its compatibility to the international human rights standards will also be the focus of discussion. The MCGS also intends to invite the members of women’s NGOs and human rights activists, state officials, deputies of the State Duma committees, representatives of mass media. The purpose of the seminar is to discuss the forms of cooperation on the issues of women’s social security and to determine the strategies on women’s human rights and gender equality and to propose the optimal mechanism for interaction on women’s human rights agenda. Reports, speeches and discussions will be also published in special issue of the MCGS Newsletter and on the MCGS’s site "Gender.ru".

The third seminar will be devoted to the topic "The International Experiences in gender mainstreaming". The MCGS intends to invite to the seminar the deputies of European Parliament, the International women’s NGO "Women in Development. Europe" (WIDE), the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Politics officials, the members of the State Duma committees on women, family and youth and international affairs. The purpose of the seminar is to get exhaustive information on the strategy of gender mainstreaming in the European Union; on the forms of cooperation between the European Commission and the European Parliament with women’s non-governmental organizations; to discuss and identify the opportunities for gender mainstreaming experiences in Russia. The experts on women’s rights and women’s empowerment policy, the women’s and human rights NGOs activists who work on gender equality and equal rights for women and men will be also invited.

Within this sub-project the MCGS will prepare the analytic report on gender mainstreaming activities in the international institutions and organizations (150 pages, 500 copies). It is also planned to issue on the site of MCGS "Gender.ru" the quarterly "Gender Digest" with the abstracts of the most interesting informational resources in Internet and mass media. The sections of "Gender Digest" are follows: Events; Women’s human rights; the Economic and Social Politics; Legislation; the National Machineries; Gender Analysis; Gender Economics; Gender and Globalization; Reproductive rights; Gender Violence; Gender Studies; Education; Women’s Movement.

On the MCGS’ site "www.gender.ru" we also publish "The "Directory on Informational Internet Resources on gender and gender equality.

Partnership

Several organizations are the MCGS strategic partners in the realization of the project. The statistical analysis of gender equality will be done together with Gender Unit of the Informational and the Analytic Department of the Council of Federation, the Department of women’s issues of the Ministry of Labor and Social Development, the Informational Center of Independent Women’s Forum.

The Federal Ministry of Education, the State Duma committee on education and Moscow High School of the Social and Economic Sciences, the Samara Center for Gender Studies, the European University (Saint-Petersburg), and the State University in Ivanovo will contribute to the sub-project on gender education.

Women-politicians (deputies of the State Duma), the Consortium of Women’s Non-Governmental Organizations, the Association of Women Journalists, the Informational Center of Independent Women’s Forum, the Moscow Helsinki group, will be the partners in the sub-project on gender politics.