Do women need a strategy?

The Government of the Russian Federation approved the National Action Strategy for Women until 2030. It was a continuation of the 2017-2022 strategy. The goals of the new document are quite good: “ensuring the implementation of the principle of equal rights and freedoms for men and women, creating equal opportunities for their implementation by women in all spheres of life and increasing economic independence, political activity and opportunities for self-realization of women.” However, if you think about it, the question arises: will the implementation of the plan lead to the fact that women will more often prefer career and personal independence to family and children? We talked about it with the experts.

Implementation strategies among other things, it proposes the formation of women’s “interest in technical and technological specialties, the involvement of women in the digital economy, the formation of a system of continuous education and advanced training, the development of distance forms of employment, and the expansion of women’s participation in entrepreneurship.” Meanwhile, it is recognized that “working women spend 1.5–2 hours, or 2–2.5 times, more time on housekeeping than men. This creates difficulties for women to combine family responsibilities and work.” What, shall we start accustoming husbands to housekeeping and caring for other family members? It is hardly possible. Although, of course, there are men who help their wife around the house, and are ready to go on maternity leave instead of their spouse, and generally prefer the role of a householder, while the other half performs labor feats. But there are few such families. Basically, the household and care for children and elderly parents remain on the shoulders of women. And if, according to the strategy, the representatives of the once weaker sex begin to work more and participate in social and political life, will they have time for themselves, their families, and children? And is it really necessary to involve more women in the economy?

The opinions of experts on this issue differed. Thus, Sergey Gataullin, Candidate of Economic Sciences, Dean of the Faculty of Digital Economy and Mass Communications of the Moscow Technical University of Communications and Informatics, believes that the initiative of the authorities, reflected in the National Action Strategy for Women until 2030, is aimed primarily at eliminating existing gender discrimination and an imbalance in the representation of women at the decision-making level in relation to men.

“It should be noted that there is a significant gap between the remuneration of women and men at the level of 30% in favor of the latter in almost all industries, which does not contribute to the development of the domestic digital economy and does not correspond to the tasks of national development,” the expert notes. – At the same time, in the majority, women are aimed at full employment and career growth, combining these goals with raising children and maintaining family values.

So, according to the expert, the main task of business and the state is to create comfortable working conditions for women employed in jobs with technically difficult working conditions that require special skills and training.

This point of view is also supported by Dina Ashrapova, Director for Government Relations of IT holdings T1 Group.

– If you study the gender composition of most IT companies, approximately 40% of the staff are women, about 60% are men. But, for example, among developers, according to many employers, women make up only about 10%. More often they are employed in such areas as public relations, business intelligence, and management. We all understand that the abilities of men and women are the same. It means that something stops women from choosing this profession. The national strategy should help integrate them more actively into the digital agenda and explain that IT professions are now convenient for them, allow them to generate high income and be able to work remotely, being close to their families. Now there is a widespread opinion among Russians that professions in the IT field are more suitable for men than for women – this misconception is typical for almost every fourth (24%) resident of the country. I am sure that in the next few years it will be possible to change the situation with the stereotypical perception of the profession, which will contribute to an even more active development of the IT industry in Russia.

Anna Zolina, deputy executive director for marketing and strategic development of the Association of Managers, also considers it a good idea to involve women more in the field of information technology. After all, many of the digital professions are ideal for those who need a flexible schedule – for example, mums on maternity leave. However, in her opinion, this is not a problem anyway.

– In many companies, women work in a variety of IT positions: team leaders, developers, system analysts. In top management, the ratio of men and women is 50 to 50. Today, many Russian companies are ready to hire the best analysts, GoLang, Java and Python developers, mobile and DevOPS engineers, while the quality of the specialist’s knowledge remains paramount, not gender. Today, to move into IT, it is enough to have the desire and motivation. Large employers are implementing special programs that help increase the proportion of women in IT professions, launching training modules with leading Russian universities. There are many free training and retraining programs, although, unfortunately, there is a lack of information about their existence and accessibility.

But according to the adviser of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, candidate of economic sciences, psychologist Natalya Kaurova, women are already too involved in the economy, which harms them.

– I will refer to the provisions and statistics from the strategy. Women today are the basis of the economy and the implementation of social policy (30% of SMEs are headed by women, and women’s entrepreneurship in the social sphere reaches 90%, in the service sector – 58%, among the self-employed – 40% women). A socially oriented economy, in fact, lies on women’s shoulders. At the same time, the legislator recognizes that “the social disadvantage of women covers a wide range of life situations, which include a significant decrease in income, job loss, deterioration in health, intra-family and domestic conflicts, and violence against women. The risk of falling into the poor for women, including single mothers with children, remains high.” For me personally, these are not empty words, but personal experience. But how can this trouble be healed? Putting responsibility for economic growth on women’s shoulders, even greater involvement of women in the reproductive cycle of the economy? I see that this will entail significant strategic risks – a reduction in the reproduction of the population. In the long run, this is a loss for Russia’s national interests. I have over 20 years of leadership experience in major corporations, a degree, title and hundreds of published scientific papers. Has it made me happy and happy my loved ones? Only in the second half of my life I was able to answer this question and make an important decision for myself – to choose myself. The legislator, however, in the Strategy argues that the role of women in the life of society is insufficient and needs to be “increased” and proposes to do this, including through “improving and confirming qualifications in the field of economics” and creating “motivation to master technical and technological professions and specialties. Did the legislator ask what a woman wants when he introduced these norms to “form new points of economic growth”? the expert asks.

The best solution, according to Natalia Kaurova, would be to support the formation and functioning of women’s communities in which they could help each other understand themselves, understand their desires and preferences, develop their talents and preserve traditional family values.

Demographer Ustin Chashchikhin also disagrees with the goals of the National Strategy regarding the increase in the economic independence of women. He is confident that this will only exacerbate the demographic crisis that began in our country back in the Soviet years, when “gender equality and work for women were introduced,” and “alimony slavery” was created for men.

“Today, men don’t want to get married, and women want to get divorced. In the regions of the Russian Federation, where the majority of the population is Russian, the birth rate is two times lower than the death rate, and the number of divorces reaches 70%, he said about the results of his study.

Demid Kornev, head of the Father’s Control public movement, also expressed his concerns.

– I believe that focusing women’s attention on the career component of life while completely ignoring the family one only leads women away from self-realization as a wife and mother. Without the realization of herself as a wife and mother, a woman cannot get satisfaction from life, which leads to an increase in the level of stress for both an individual woman and the female community. Together with the active covert propaganda of divorce (in the media, on television and in social networks), the direction of women in the direction of career self-realization leads to the destruction of the institution of the family, and, consequently, to a decrease in the birth rate, and, even worse, to the fact that growing children do not see normal family relations between parents, do not understand what it means to be a man and a father, a woman and a mother. Growing up, these children, at best, create a family for 1-3 years, followed by a divorce, at worst, they completely abandon their family and children.

The project director of the Interium digital agency, Aita Luzgina, is also concerned about the demographic issue.

– Women who pay great attention to career aspirations are postponing pregnancy and childbirth to an increasingly later date. Some sociologists, based on statistics, have come to the conclusion that the higher the level of a woman’s intellectual capital, the later she is ready to have a child, she said. – In addition, in families that have a higher level of income, education and social status, the desire to have children is replaced by a high level of consumer goods. This stereotype is fixed from generation to generation. It is worth noting that the change in the role of women in society against the backdrop of an unstable economic situation in the country also contributes to postponing the birth of a child, due to which one can notice an increase in the average age of a mother at the birth of her first child. In Russia, he is already close to 29-30 years old.

So, in her opinion, more dense employment and career aspirations of a woman negatively affect the birth rate. Which, by the way, is completely at odds with the goals of the Demography national project, which the authorities also call a priority.

In general, as they say, how many people, so many opinions. And everyone is right in their own way. It remains to be hoped that the authorities will be able to strike a balance between their strategies and national projects so that women can build a career without problems and obstacles, and family worries are not a burden for them, but a joy.

Alena Bodrienko.

Photo Freepik