Abstract
Russia’s gender revolution notoriously produced women’s economic empowerment without domestic equality. Although the Soviet state vastly expanded women’s employment, this had little impact on a starkly unequal gender division of domestic labor. Such “stalling” is common, but in Russia its extent and persistence presents a puzzle, requiring us to investigate linkages between macro-level factors and micro-level interactions regarding the gender division of domestic labor. We do this by focusing on gender ideology, an important variable explaining the gender division of domestic labor that bridges the macro level of the gender order and the micro-interactional level. We use longitudinal qualitative data to examine continuity and change in young Russian women’s gender ideologies between 1999 and 2010. Based on an analysis of 115 in-depth interviews from 23 respondents, we identify traditional and egalitarian trajectories and the processes underlying them, showing how the male breadwinner schema and an ideology of women’s independence support traditionalism, while non-traditional breadwinning and interactional support from men facilitate egalitarianism. Our analysis enables us to explain the Soviet gender paradox and distinguish sources of change in the post-Soviet era. Our theoretical contribution is to situate gender ideology in a multilevel framework, the efficacy of which we demonstrate in our empirical analysis.
Despite women’s increased employment across the industrialized world, the gender division of domestic labor remains stubbornly unequal (Bianchi et al. 2012; Fuwa 2004; Ridgeway 2011; Thébaud 2010). Nowhere does men’s performance of domestic labor match women’s, although the level of inequality varies considerably cross-nationally (Fuwa 2004; Thébaud 2010). Russia is an extreme case, combining historically and comparatively high female employment with a starkly unequal gender division of domestic labor (hereafter GDDL). The Soviet state promoted women’s employment so that by 1970, 89 percent of working-age Soviet women were in full-time employment or study (Shapiro 1992, 15). But, despite men and women devoting equal time to employment, the “second shift” remained women’s responsibility (Lapidus 1978). As in the Soviet era, Russia’s gender gap in labor participation remains comparatively small (Atencio and Posadas 2015), yet women perform the lion’s share of domestic labor (Ashwin and Lytkina 2004; Kravchenko 2008), and men’s contribution is low by international standards (Fuwa 2004). Cecilia Ridgeway, summarizing the U.S. research on the GDDL, argues that women’s employment and earnings have an equalizing influence on domestic labor, but this is “blunted to some extent” by potent gendered cultural schemas (2011, 142). In Russia, the magnitude of this “blunting” is a puzzle, requiring us to understand how (post-)Soviet gendered schemas have so decisively influenced the GDDL.
We thus need to investigate the “mechanisms by which . . . macro-level factors infiltrate the micro-level negotiation of unpaid work within the home,” as called for by Lachance-Grzela and Bouchard in their review of the international GDDL literature (2010, 777). Gender ideology is a key concept linking the macro level of the gender order (Connell 1987) and the micro-interactional level captured by West and Zimmerman’s “doing gender” (1987), as well as an important variable explaining the GDDL (Coltrane 2000; Lachance-Grzela and Bouchard 2010). Following Davis and Greenstein (2009), we understand gender ideology as individuals’ support for particular gendered configurations of market and domestic work, such as the breadwinner-homemaker schema (see Blair-Loy 2003). We use longitudinal qualitative data to examine continuity and change in young Russian women’s gender ideologies between 1999 and 2010, analyzing how they relate to the gender order and micro-level interactions. Our theoretical contribution is to situate gender ideology in a multilevel framework specifying links between macro and micro levels, while our empirical contribution is to use this framework to reveal the processes through which Russia’s gender revolution stalled, as well as how it is changing.
We find four different trajectories in women’s gender ideologies, two traditional and two egalitarian. Traditionalism is buttressed by the male breadwinner schema, and an “ideology of independence” that serves as an outlet for women’s dissatisfaction, while reproducing the feminization of domesticity. The development of egalitarianism is supported by experiences of nontraditional breadwinning and encountering interactional support in the form of egalitarian-leaning men. We show how the processes we identify contribute to an explanation of the Soviet gender paradox while distinguishing sources of change in post-Soviet Russia.
Russia is a revealing context in which to analyze how macro changes in the gender order influence gender ideology and micro interactions surrounding the GDDL. Soviet women’s economic empowerment through employment was decades ahead of countries such as the United States. But in the Soviet era, state-approved cultural schemas had a virtual monopoly ensured by comprehensive censorship, and feminism was suppressed (Browning 1987). While feminism has gained little ground in post-Soviet Russia (Sperling 2015), alternative gender schemas can be published and discussed (e.g., Issoupova 2000). Our research captures processes of continuity and change in this transforming environment.
Gender Ideology: A Multilevel Framework
As well as theoretically bridging macro contexts and micro interactions, gender ideology is an important approach to explaining the GDDL, along with time availability, relative resources, and macro accounts of cross-national differences (for reviews, see Coltrane 2000; Davis and Greenstein 2009; and Lachance-Grzela and Bouchard 2010). Time availability and relative resources theories assume that household labor will be reallocated as women’s working time and earnings increase, leading to a more equal GDDL. These approaches make significant contributions to explaining women’s housework time, but they cannot account for the resilient inequity of the GDDL because they neglect the gendered and symbolic nature of household labor (Bianchi et al. 2000; Coltrane 2000; Hook 2017). Gender ideology adds a gender-cultural dimension to analyses of the GDDL, which we extend by situating it in a multilevel framework.
Gender ideology is usually seen as varying between traditional and egalitarian (Davis and Greenstein 2009). Egalitarian beliefs are associated with a more equal GDDL, with couples sharing egalitarian beliefs the most likely to share domestic work (Greenstein 1996). Bolzendahl and Myers (2004) provide an overview of individual-level predictors of gender ideology that they summarize under the headings “interest” and “exposure.” In relation to the former they show that women, particularly when employed, have a greater interest in egalitarianism, reflected in their elevated support for this ideology. Meanwhile “exposure” to factors such as education and employment also influences gender ideology. The findings are intuitive: more egalitarian parents shape children of similar persuasions; women’s employment is associated with greater egalitarianism, as is higher education, while marriage and parenthood can reduce egalitarianism, as does religious practice (see Davis and Greenstein 2009 for a detailed review). Our research, however, relates to a context in which these factors, particularly employment, did not have the anticipated influence. This directs us to macro influences on gender ideology.
Theories of gender and change (Chafetz 1990) suggest gender ideologies are reciprocally related to the macro-structures of particular societies, an idea supported by empirical findings. For example, Gerson (2010a, 2010b) and Pedulla and Thébaud (2015) show how in the United States egalitarianism is constrained by institutional deficits. Thus, the macro-environment moderates the influence of individual-level interest and exposure factors on gender ideology.
Turning to the relationship between gender ideology and behavior, two different bodies of research—macro and micro—show how this link can be disrupted. First, macro contexts influence the individual’s ability to enact gender ideology. Fuwa (2004) found that women’s individual-level characteristics, such as gender ideology, income, and work hours had less impact on their housework hours in less egalitarian countries such as Russia than in more egalitarian countries. Second, micro-interactions influence the enactment of gender ideologies. It is well established that interactional pressure to “do gender” appropriately (West and Zimmerman 1987) can override material considerations in relation to housework (e.g., Hook 2017) and breadwinning (Anderson 2017; Potuchek 1997; Tichenor 2005). Likewise, it can inhibit the enactment of egalitarian gender ideologies (Hochschild 1989). The gap between consciously espoused ideologies and semi- or unconsciously enacted, interactionally enforced schemas is another way of conceptualizing Hochschild’s “on top” and “underneath” ideologies (1989). This review highlights how macro- and micro-level factors moderate the influence of gender ideology on the GDDL. First, the macro context will moderate the influence of individual-level factors on gender ideology formation. Second, the enactment of gender ideology will be facilitated or disrupted by macro-level factors and/or, third, by micro-interactional pressures to “do” or “undo” (Deutsch 2007) gender.
Our analysis thus situates gender ideology in a multilevel framework. We conceptualize the gendered macro structures of a society as its gender order (Connell 1987). The gender order is constituted by schemas and resources (an adaptation of Ridgeway and Correll 2000). Under the heading “schemas” we include gender status beliefs (Ridgeway 1997), as well as what Blair-Loy refers to as “schemas of devotion”—shared cultural models in relation to which individuals construct identities and meaning—which in the United States comprise competing models of devotion to work and family (2003). By resources we refer not only to the relative material assets of men and women, but also to institutions such as law and welfare arrangements. Resources and schemas are not always aligned (Pfau-Effinger 1998), which can, but does not necessarily, facilitate change.
Alongside individual-level factors, gender ideologies will be shaped by a society’s gender order. As well as resources, the content of available schemas is crucial. For example, as Chafetz argues, women need access to “gender-conscious” schemas such as those provided by feminism to utilize the micro power they potentially gain from employment (1990, 173–92). Fuwa (2004), in a similar vein, demonstrates that the ability to enact particular ideologies depends partly on the character of the local gender order. Interaction is a key mechanism through which the local gender order is reinforced, with individuals at risk of “gender assessment” by others who hold them “accountable” to the competent assertion of membership to the appropriate sex category through “doing gender” (West and Zimmerman 1987, 136). Crucially, they are held accountable to dominant local schemas (Ashwin and Isupova 2014). In this way, interaction influences the development of gender ideology and its enactment. These links are reciprocal, such that the accretion of individual action, whether shaped by gender ideology or interactional pressure to do gender, can eventually influence the gender order. We thus provide a framework linking the gender order, gender ideology, and doing gender to specify links between macro factors and micro-level negotiations of the GDDL.
Gender in (Post-) Soviet Russia: Contextualizing Gender Ideology
How does our multilevel framework apply to our case? The Soviet state instituted a distinctive gender order (Ashwin 2000), which we link to the formation of gender ideologies and modes of doing gender in our empirical analysis. Crucially, Soviet policy explicitly rejected the “separate spheres” ideal dominant in countries such as the United States (Williams 2000). Revolutionaries derided housewives as “labour deserters” (Kollontai [1921] 1977, 271), advocating socialization of child care and domestic labor to facilitate women’s employment. This vision, however, was only realized in relation to child care (Ashwin 2000), leaving a traditional GDDL intact and Soviet women with a notorious “double burden” (Lapidus 1978, 232-84). The state was silent on the domestic and paternal duties of men (Kukhterin 2000).
Moreover, although Soviet wage scales assumed a dual-earner family (Lapidus 1988, 92-93), the concept of “breadwinner” was preserved in popular culture (Kiblitskaya 2000a), acquiring the meaning of the highest, rather than sole, earner in the household (Kozina 2000). State policy tacitly supported the preservation of this more limited form of male “breadwinning”; the presumption that women’s income in the family should amount to two-thirds of men’s was “so widespread in Soviet economic writings as to be virtually axiomatic” (Lapidus 1978, 194). Although the causality is complex (Katz 2001), this was reflected in the gender wage gap with Soviet women estimated to earn 65 to 75 percent of men’s wages (Lapidus 1978, 192-94). Despite having a somewhat ersatz status in comparison to the sole earner of the separate spheres ideology, the privilege of Soviet “breadwinners” was secure. Men’s chief domestic challenge, given endemic alcohol abuse among Russian men (Leon, Shkolnikov, and McKee 2009), was sustaining the (relative) sobriety expected of the ideal breadwinner.
The available evidence—Soviet-era interviews (Hansson and Liden 1983), research (reviewed in Lapidus 1978), and retrospective interviews conducted in the post-Soviet era (e.g., Kiblitskaya 2000a, 2000b; Kukhterin 2000)—suggests that Soviet gender ideologies accorded with prescribed gender schemas. Soviet women’s support for a model that prescribed them full-time employment but left a traditional GDDL intact is puzzling. But it accords with Chafetz’s theory that women need the support of “gender conscious” ideology to take advantage of their economic empowerment (1990). The outlawing of feminism in Soviet Russia deprived women of this resource, freezing their gender ideologies in what Hochschild defines as a “transitional” state of support for women’s employment alongside an unequal GDDL (1989, 15-16). Nevertheless, such unbalanced gender relations were not harmonious. Divorce rates climbed steeply 1 and single motherhood was progressively legitimized (Utrata 2015). Chafetz perceives such trends as symptoms of a “transitional state” in which the GDDL is incongruent with the “division of resource-generating labor” (1990, 181).
Soviet gender ideologies and relations would thus be classified as “transitional” within Hochschild’s (1989) and Chafetz’s (1990) frameworks. This has two implications for our argument. Theoretically, it shows how gender orders shape gender ideologies. Empirically, Soviet delegitimization of “separate spheres” means measures based on this conception imperfectly capture gender ideology in Russia. In the post-Soviet context, “traditional” implies support for a “transitional” model in which the man is the breadwinner (highest earner) and the woman is employed and takes primary responsibility for domestic labor. Separate spheres are the preserve of a wealthy minority.
In contemporary Russia, key facets of the Soviet gender order have persisted alongside important changes. Women’s employment is no longer quasi-compulsory but remains high (Atencio and Posadas 2015). Although child care provision became less generous through privatization and budget cuts (Teplova 2007), the 2007 policy of “maternity capital” reaffirmed the Soviet themes of pronatalism and maternal employment, as well as state silence regarding fathers (Rotkirch, Temkina, and Zdravomyslova 2007). Finally, analyses of survey data—the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) (Kravchenko 2008), the Institute of Comparative Labour Relations Research (ISITO) Russian Household Survey (Ashwin and Lytkina 2004), and the Russian Public Opinion Research Centre data (VCIOM 2011)—suggest an unequal GDDL persists, with men’s contribution low by international standards (Fuwa 2004). But political and economic liberalization created contradictions between the schemas and resources of the gender order. Notably, unemployment and falling real wages threatened men’s breadwinning potential (Ashwin and Lytkina 2004), while freedom of expression and association—albeit progressively weakened during the Putin era—have allowed alternative gender schemas to be advocated and discussed. We discuss the implications of this for gender ideology in our results sections.
Methods
Our longitudinal qualitative data is from a project examining gender differences in adaptation to Russia’s transformed labor market. The sample was drawn from four groups facing distinct labor market transitions at the beginning of the research in 1999. These were employees of economically struggling organizations (in Moscow); new graduates from university and vocational training institutes (in Ul’yanovsk); the registered unemployed (in Samara); and state social assistance recipients (in Syktyvkar). The original sample of 120 men and 120 women was divided equally between the four groups (for more details, see Ashwin 2006). Russian research team members conducted four in-depth interviews with respondents at six-monthly intervals between 1999 and 2001 (Time 1 [T1]—Time 4 [T4]), focusing on respondents’ aspirations, labor market behavior, domestic circumstances, and gender ideology. We resumed the research in 2010 (Time 5 [T5]), interviewing 126 of the original sample (59 men and 67 women). Attrition occurred for a variety of reasons, from death to change of address. We use pseudonyms throughout, indicating the wave of research of quoted interviews in brackets.
For this article, we focused on a subsample of women aged 17-31 at T1 who were still in the sample at T5: 23 individuals (115 interviews). We focused on younger respondents to capture longitudinally how gender ideologies developed as they entered the labor market and (in some cases) marriage and motherhood.
Eleven respondents in the subsample came from Ul’yanovsk, and four each from Moscow, Samara, and Syktyvkar. Respondents were evenly distributed between vocational and higher education at T1 (11 each), with one respondent having a school-level education. By T5, five respondents had acquired higher education (through part-time or correspondence courses), changing the proportion to 6 with vocational and 16 with higher education. The educational, occupational, and family profiles of our respondents are presented in Table 1. Our subsample is skewed toward women with higher education, and correspondingly includes fewer working-class women. This limitation is mitigated by the fact that we are interested in processes of change in gender ideology rather than trends.
Respondent Summary
Our sample was predominantly ethnic Russian, aside from Lada, a Komi, and Zoya, a Tartar. They did not noticeably differ from other respondents with regard to the themes of this article. All respondents self-identified as heterosexual.
We conducted multistage coding focused on respondents’ accounts of domestic labor, family relations, and work and family aspirations. To assess gender ideology, we used formalized questions asked at T2 and T5: “Who should take primary responsibility for providing for the family?” and “Who should take primary responsibility for domestic labor?” We supplemented this with analysis of respondents’ attitudes to women’s employment. Where respondents preferred “shared” domestic labor we interrogated whether this implied equal sharing, or gendered “sharing” with most routine tasks assigned to the woman. In the latter case, we categorized the response as traditional. Following the convention in the literature (e.g., Bianchi et al. 2012; Coltrane 2000), we focused on housework, excluding child care from our analysis. Motherhood did not change gender ideology in our data (see Table 1).
To contextualize our qualitative arguments, we used ISSP survey data (ISSP Research Group 2016) and data from the VCIOM “Sputnik” telephone survey in October 2017 using a random probability sample of 1,800 participants into which we were able to insert questions on gender ideology.
Continuity and Change in Gender Ideology
Below we introduce our qualitative findings, contextualizing them using survey data on gender ideology in post-Soviet Russia. The survey findings support our arguments regarding the dominance of a “transitional” gender ideology in Russia and highlight a gradual increase in egalitarianism.
Table 2 presents trends in gender ideology 1994 to 2012 using ISSP data. These data support our argument that the “separate spheres” understanding does not map well onto Russian society. The separate spheres statement “a man’s job is to earn money; a woman’s job is to look after the home and family” obtained majority support at all time periods. But this is at odds with even greater support for shared breadwinning: at all time periods over 70 percent of women agreed that women should contribute to household income, as did approximately three-quarters of men in 2002 and 2012. We interpret these contradictory findings as indicating support for the “transitional” model of women’s employment alongside a traditional GDDL. The data also show that traditionalism is declining, with a bare majority of men and women (53 percent) supporting men’s responsibility for breadwinning and women’s for home and family in 2012.
Russian Gender Ideology Trends 1994–2012 (ISSP Data)
The 2017 VCIOM findings, which used the same questions as our qualitative data, suggest continued decline in support for Soviet gender schemas. Approximately three-quarters of men and women now endorse equal sharing of domestic labor. These findings may exaggerate levels of egalitarianism because “equal” running of the household may be understood as a gendered division of labor in which women are assigned the more onerous routine tasks such as cleaning (Ashwin and Lytkina 2004) but nonetheless suggest increasing egalitarianism. Only 45 percent of women supported male responsibility for breadwinning by 2017, although nearly two-thirds of men did (Table 3).
Gender Ideology in Russia (VCIOM Sputnik October 2017, n = 1,800)
Turning to our qualitative findings, we identified three gender ideologies in our data: traditional, egalitarian, and an ideology of women’s independence. As noted, “traditional” in the Russian context implies support for a transitional rather than a “separate spheres” ideology, which we did not encounter in our data (i.e., there was unanimous support for women’s employment).
Analyzing respondents’ gender ideology over time, we identified four trajectories of continuity or change: consistent traditionals (n = 9), respondents moving toward an ideology of women’s independence, which we categorize as a subtype of traditionalism (n = 3), respondents moving from traditionalism to egalitarianism (n = 4), and consistent egalitarians (n = 7). Respondents’ trajectories are presented in Table 1. We do not claim generalizability regarding the prevalence of these trajectories, although the overall shift toward egalitarianism accords with above-cited survey data. Rather, using our coding we identify the processes underlying these different paths. In so doing we showcase our multilevel framework.
In all trajectories except the ideology of independence, there was a mix of class statuses, higher and vocational education, and mothers and childfree respondents (see Table 1). The clear outlier was women adopting an ideology of independence, all of whom were working-class lone mothers with vocational education. We discuss this in the relevant section. A mix of marital statuses was found among consistently traditional and consistently egalitarian respondents, but there were no divorcees among women who moved toward egalitarianism during the research. No respondents had paid domestic help.
Upholding Tradition: The Centrality of the Male Breadwinner Schema
How did consistently traditional respondents sustain their position at a time when Soviet schemas were losing their monopoly and contradictions were emerging between the schemas and resources of the prevailing gender order? We found traditional respondents still have ample cultural resources to draw on to support their gender ideology, with the male breadwinner schema vital in enabling traditional women to legitimize an unequal GDDL.
Soviet schemas were readily visible in these respondents’ accounts of their gender ideology. For example, Vera, who in the second wave was a postgraduate from Ul’yanovsk studying ecology, enthusiastically endorsed the Soviet vision of successful womanhood: Work, family—they are both as important as each other, because if you just focus on the family you become somehow dissatisfied with yourself. If [you focus] only on work—that’s also impossible. . . . A woman must do something, both to work and earn money insofar as she’s able, but she shouldn’t be the primary [breadwinner], because a woman already has a very big load: the children and the house all rest on her.
The congruence of our consistently traditional respondents’ ideology with dominant schemas is apparent in their confident naturalization of their position, their accounts peppered with the term “of course [konechno].” For example, Valentina and Zoya, recent vocational education graduates from Ul’yanovsk, were committed to work, Valentina memorably noting that without a job she would “find a fifth corner in the apartment already.” But both were equally categorical when asked who should take responsibility for breadwinning. Valentina responded, “The man, of course, that’s self-evident. It’s been established since time immemorial” (T2). Zoya exclaimed, “The husband, of course, not me!” (T1).
In line with research on the intergenerational transmission of gender ideology (see Davis and Greenstein 2009), these respondents generally had parents whose marriages conformed to Soviet gender schemas. The mothers of Lyuba and Vera had occasionally been breadwinners, but, drawing on dominant cultural schemas, these respondents presented this as an unfortunate aberration. They perceived deviations from male breadwinning not as evidence against gender traditionalism but as an individual failure requiring correction. As Vera explained, she would only support a faltering breadwinner if the situation was “temporary” and he acted swiftly to remedy the situation (T1).
How did these respondents sustain their traditionalism when confronted by the reality of the second shift? Analyzing the fifth-wave interviews, by which time all but two consistently traditional respondents had married, the key justification for an unequal GDDL was the husbands’ status as breadwinners. The cases of Vera and Larissa provide effective illustration. By T5, both respondents had realized their ambitions at T1. Vera worked in the state environmental protection service and was married with two daughters. Larissa was an academic scientist married to an academic historian with whom she had a son. Despite working full-time in demanding jobs, both respondents identified their husbands as “breadwinners” (Larissa disclosed her husband’s income, revealing that she received 60 percent of his wage, while Vera declined to do so). Both women performed the lion’s share of domestic labor. They declared themselves fully satisfied with an unequal GDDL, citing their husband’s superior earnings as justification. Summing up her life at T5, Vera embraced domestic inequity: Of course I’m satisfied—a family, children, work, I’ve got it all; I’m satisfied. . . . The husband should earn money, the wife bring up the children and do the housework. That’s how it is with us—it suits us, everything’s good with us.
Larissa likewise explained her domestic load at T5 in terms of her husband’s income:
I remember that you adhered to a traditional scheme in which a woman is the housekeeper . . .
And that’s how it’s remained. It all comes from me probably. My husband is from the sort of the family where there’s also a traditional view of family life … He’s the breadwinner. He gets [paid] more. And therefore the house rests on me.
The simple statement “He gets paid more. And therefore the house rests on me” is not based on precise calculation. The 40 percent wage gap in Larissa’s marriage does not match the yawning household labor gap. And since both she and her husband are full-time academics, any differences in “time availability” are a choice rather than a hard constraint. Larissa loved her career and acknowledged the demands it placed on her: “You really have to think about it constantly . . . not get distracted . . . sit up [working] until eleven at night” (T5). Given the time pressure she faced, Larissa’s readiness to let her husband off the hook requires explanation. We argue that her husband’s symbolic status as “breadwinner” is essential in allowing Larissa, an accomplished scientist working at a prestigious institute, to overlook the inequity in her household and present it as a “rational” exchange.
In our data, we found that the male breadwinner schema served as a linchpin of traditionalism. Obscuring and justifying the inequality of the GDDL, it enables women’s gender traditionalism, blunting the domestic impact of their employment.
Gender Disillusionment: Women’s Independence as Ideology
In the post-Soviet context, an important subtype of gender traditionalism is an ideology of women’s independence, captured in the frequent declaration, “I depend only on myself!” Women adhering to a traditional gender ideology can accommodate deviations from their ideal, but when these become too stark—because of sustained deviation from male breadwinning, alcoholism, or a combination of the two—women may weave an ideology of self-sufficiency, drawing on a pervasive cultural discourse celebrating strong women and excoriating drunken men (Utrata 2015). We see this as a conscious ideology that merits separate discussion, as it reveals an important mechanism through which gender traditionalism is reproduced in Russia. Three of our respondents, all working-class single mothers from Syktyvkar, had embraced this ideology by T5. This recalls the “fallback” position of Gerson’s young women respondents planning for the possible breakup of their future relationships (2010b), though our respondents’ relationships had already ended.
Galina, Maria, and Lada had entered adulthood hoping a man would rescue them from poverty. As Galina put it, “I really wanted to be behind my husband like a stone wall . . . to have a man as a support, defense and all that sort of thing” (T1). That a husband should be a “stone wall” is a Russian adage expressing men’s duty of physical, but also financial, protection. Maria expressed similar aspirations rather less poetically: “A man could earn the money and I would spend it [laughs]—the most honest division of labor” (T1). Despite her teasing tone, Maria did see finding a breadwinner as her most likely route out of poverty at T1.
Through bitter experience, these respondents gradually abandoned their dreams of prosperity through marriage. Lada, for example, indignantly reported how one boyfriend had turned out to be “a complete gigolo . . . I had to provide for him, I even ended up buying him shoes!” (T3). By T5 they voiced an ideology of women’s independence deriding local men as infantile drunkards or drug addicts:
No, I don’t need anyone [laughs]. . . . There was a period they were all drug addicts; it was scary to get acquainted with someone. . . . A relationship—no, I don’t even want it. I’ve even put on a ring as if to say, “I’m married, leave me alone all of you!” [Laughs]
I live alone. I don’t want those drunkards, I don’t even need to look at them. . . . Now it’s hard to find a normal man. Very hard. It’s very rare that a family stays together long.
These respondents were strongly committed to the idea of family but portrayed men’s involvement as dispensable. As Galina put it, “When I worked at the kindergarten, every third child was fatherless. There aren’t many real men left, ready to take responsibility for the family. But that’s not a reason not to give birth!” (T2). Galina and Lada did have boyfriends, but both of them were emphatic that they did not want to live with them—their family was their children. This “fallback” ideology of independence is facilitated by institutional resources such as women’s access to employment and divorce. It is also a product of interactional constraint—a perceived deficit of local men able to offer women either sober breadwinning or equality. This perception may be more prevalent in working-class communities where the problem of male alcoholism is particularly acute (Leon, Shkolnikov, and McKee 2009). Utrata (2015), however, encountered women’s self-sufficiency throughout Russia’s social hierarchy, so our data are likely not representative in finding this ideology only among working-class women.
In articulating their ideology of independence, respondents drew on Soviet cultural schemas, particularly linked to working motherhood, weaving a gender ideology that validated their travails, empowering them with a sense of dignity and strength. Maria, for example, took pride in her work ethic, celebrating her self-sufficiency with a familiar “strong woman” trope (Kiblitskaya 2000b): “I’m not afraid of any work” (T5). Meanwhile, Galina focused her identity on motherhood and saw providing and caring for her children as “the point of life … All else is vanity” (T5). Work and motherhood form the center of this ideology: men are absent.
Such avowed self-sufficiency should not be mistaken for a feminist utopia (Utrata 2015, 218). Russian single mothers often endure great hardship and insecurity. Moreover, in terms of our argument, women’s ideology of independence does not challenge the wider GDDL. While it cements women’s attachment to employment, it also sustains the resilient feminization of domestic labor and care. Men are left outside the sphere of social reproduction, unchanged and often demoralized (Ashwin and Lytkina 2004). Thus, the heroic efforts of single mothers can serve to reproduce the wider gender order, as Lada’s lament regarding her teenage sons illustrates: To wash the dishes—it’s a problem for them. I leave in the morning or come home late from work in the evening. . . . I’m not up to doing the dishes. I am barely able to stand. I get up at six in the morning and wash the dishes. I go to work. I get home—same thing. They don’t want [to do] anything. They don’t help. . . . It drives me crazy. . . . You bring them up and what’s the use? Look what you get back. (T5)
The ideology of independence is born out of constraint at an interactional level: negative experiences with partners and pessimism regarding the availability of what our respondents called “normal” or “real men . . . ready to take responsibility for the family.” It draws on the worker–mother schema, embellished with a strong woman motif that has been an important cultural resource for mothers faced with disengaged and/or drunken husbands since the early Soviet era (Utrata 2015). Looking backward, the prominence of this discourse did nothing to change Soviet men, while leaving women overburdened (Ashwin 2000). Likewise in the contemporary era, while sustaining the dignity of individual women this ideology leaves the feminization of domesticity intact. In this sense it acts as a safety valve; the overall impact is to reproduce the gender order of which it is a product.
Embracing Egalitarianism
If the ideology of independence reflects despair regarding local men, respondents who shifted from traditionalism to egalitarianism had their hopes raised by experience. Four respondents—Anastasia, Svetlana, Ksenia, and Tanya—moved toward egalitarianism in the course of our study, although in Svetlana’s case only in the domain of domestic labor. Interactional support from egalitarian-leaning men was a key factor in this shift. In Tanya’s case, change appeared to be rooted in an unconventional breadwinning arrangement in her parental family. In the remaining cases, the shift toward egalitarianism facilitated by interactional support from partners expanded respondents’ perceptions of the “limits of the possible.” This process can be illustrated by the cases of Svetlana and Anastasia, which reveal how gender ideologies can be transformed by perceiving new possibilities.
At T1 Svetlana, an unemployed seamstress, perceived the injustice of the prevailing gender order but could not see beyond it. Asked about her parents’ GDDL at T1, she broke down in tears: My mum works, goes to the market, washes, cleans up, cooks—all that is up to her. And he comes home, lies on the sofa and watches the television. On top of that he doesn’t let her watch the television: he chooses which channel to watch. Well, is that right? In addition he wears out our nerves with his drinking.
In the same interview, Svetlana endorsed the very GDDL under which her mother was suffering, asserting that a woman should be responsible “for cleanliness, for order, for the upbringing of the children all the same. Because the man should provide for the family for the most part. It’s a primitive point of view, but yes.” Svetlana’s initial endorsement of “primitive” traditionalism highlights her inability to imagine alternatives. Her view gradually shifted after she met her egalitarian-leaning husband. Abandoning her idea that domestic labor was women’s responsibility, Svetlana embraced her husband’s participation.
Likewise, Anastasia endorsed a traditional GDDL at T1, a position seemingly based on her assessment of the compromises required by marriage. Asked who should be responsible for domestic labor she responded:
: Well, probably me more.
: Why? Because your mum is quite domestic, or you are?
: Well, I don’t know. It’s rare when that kind of husband comes along. Ready. Well, simply, I like the kind [of men] who don’t do domestic work.
Anastasia considered egalitarian men a rarity and doubted their attractiveness. Contrary to her expectations, however, she did find a “ready” man to her taste. We do not know whether her perspective changed before or after she met him. Nonetheless, her comments reveal how the perceived difficulty of finding an egalitarian man can influence gender ideology.
These findings highlight the influence of the perceived limits of possibility on gender ideology, a process noted by other researchers in the context of institutional constraints (Gerson 2010a, 2010b; Pedulla and Thébaud 2015). In our findings, the constraints are interactional: if egalitarian men are perceived to be “rare,” women seeking heterosexual marriage may consider egalitarianism impossible. By contrast, encountering egalitarian men can enable women to voice and enact an egalitarian ideology.
Sustaining Egalitarianism: A Cold Climate?
Cultural support for traditionalism is still strong, but as noted above, in the 1990s contradictions began to emerge between the schemas and resources of the gender order, while alternatives could be publicly explored. This impacted our consistently egalitarian respondents, who shared exposure to nontraditional breadwinning arrangements. This, we argue, sensitized them to the social construction of the gender order. In relation to the enactment of egalitarianism, their experience highlights the importance of interactional support or constraint.
Rather than invoking feminist arguments that remain outside the mainstream, our consistently egalitarian respondents advocated gender flexibility and equal sharing. As Nadezhda, a working-class respondent with vocational education, asserted: I want everything to be equal . . . I don’t want to divide up domestic tasks. I want it so that everything is like: you come home, you help. If you’re tired, OK, I’ll do it. But as to the idea that “you do this, I do that”—I don’t like it. (T1)
How did such views develop? Our consistently egalitarian respondents had diverse experiences of the GDDL within their parental families. But strikingly, with the exception of Margarita, who refused to discuss her divorced parents, all respondents reported experiencing either maternal or avowedly shared breadwinning. This contrasts sharply with the experience of our consistently traditional respondents.
When men falter as providers—as frequently occurred during post-Soviet economic turbulence—there is potential for the male breadwinner schema to be undermined. Nadezhda’s mother, for example, enjoyed a period of breadwinning during the turmoil of economic transformation, which Nadezhda favorably compared to the leaner period in which her father was chief earner. Her recognition of her mother as an erstwhile breadwinner appeared to heighten her disapproval of her father’s domestic disengagement. Speaking at a time when her mother was unemployed, Nadezhda nevertheless portrayed her mother’s heavy domestic load as unjust: Basically my mum does everything. You won’t get dad to do it. He sits reading the paper and that’s it. We’re always arguing about those domestic duties. . . . I start to feel sorry for her. She runs around, does everything. (T1)
The experience of our consistent egalitarians reveals the diminished potency of cultural schemas when these diverge from “resources” within the gender order—in this case relative spousal earnings. As we saw above, such divergence does not automatically lead to change in an egalitarian direction, but, as other researchers have argued, where women’s contribution to breadwinning is recognized it has the potential to do so (e.g., Potuchek 1997).
In terms of enactment, most egalitarians who married secured interactional support from their husbands, and this may reflect growing egalitarianism. Our findings coincide with research showing that husbands’ gender ideologies constrain or enable the enactment of wives’ egalitarianism (Greenstein 1996). Nadezhda, for example, portrayed her marriage as infused with a spirit of mutuality: We always do everything together. We try to do everything together everywhere. We rest together, we work together, we travel everywhere together. Well, I don’t know, I like it, together and together. (T5)
This did not appear to depend on relative income. Margarita, for example, reported, “My husband earns a lot more [than me]. But all the same we’re equals in resolving family questions and we split the housework equally” (T5). We are not claiming that these marriages were fully equal. In Nadezhda’s case, for example, it was clear that her husband, several years her senior, led their family business. Nevertheless, all our married egalitarians maintained their gender ideology, most achieving a GDDL not based on male breadwinner privilege. Successful enactment was facilitated by interactional support from egalitarian-leaning husbands.
Not all consistent egalitarians secured this, however. Inna and Rita faced spousal resistance and were pushed to “do gender” in traditional ways. Inna, a senior researcher in microbiology who was married with one child, avoided confrontation with her more traditional husband, since her coresident mother performed the domestic labor. Utrata (2011) sees such behavior as “doing gendered age”: gendered age schemas in Russia dictate that grandmothers should help their children, while younger women naturalize older women’s burden. Such arrangements facilitate young women’s careers but do not challenge the feminization of social reproduction. The consequences of this are evident in Inna’s case—by T5 Inna’s mother had aged and the domestic load had fallen to Inna. Disillusioned, she complained, “These [gender] frameworks should already be erased from the face of the earth.” They persisted, she reflected, “because men think that’s how it should be,” an analysis that suggested she perceived her husband’s resistance as insurmountable.
Rita’s husband Dima, an aspiring entrepreneur, had a more extreme patriarchal perspective: I don’t know where it comes from with him: a woman should stay at home and not go anywhere. And wear a burqa. . . . [To wear a top] with a décolleté is impossible. . . . A short skirt is impossible, a summer dress with spaghetti straps—impossible. I should wear a burqa and wait for him at home with open arms and cook. I am like his property, like a bird in a cage, and he covers or removes the shawl [over the cage] as he wants. (T1)
As the knowing terms in which she discussed Dima suggest, Rita was self-possessed and determined. While ridiculing Dima’s traditionalism, however, she was not immune to it. Although endorsing shared breadwinning, Dima’s prospects as a provider were important to Rita and she confided that should his business prosper she would focus on helping him. Moreover, she held Dima accountable to the male breadwinner schema, finally divorcing him only when he had decisively failed as a provider nearly ten years after the above-quoted interview. While she had accommodated a marriage that contradicted her avowed gender ideology, at T5 Rita reported that Dima’s failure to provide was “the last straw.” Although she also was unemployed at the time she divorced him, Rita laid responsibility for the “empty fridge” squarely on Dima’s shoulders. Notably, Rita only acted to escape Dima’s domestic despotism once he was discredited as a breadwinner.
These cases illustrate several processes. First, they highlight the difficulty of enacting egalitarianism in the face of interactional constraint. Second, they show how individuals can revert to “doing gender” according to dominant schemas when alternative paths are blocked. Third, however, Rita’s eventual escape reaffirms that a disjuncture between schemas and resources—in this case claiming masculine privilege in the absence of breadwinning—can catalyze change. Thus, as well as highlighting the pervasive influence of the male breadwinner schema, Rita’s case reveals a potential mechanism of transformation. We found that our consistently egalitarian respondents shared exposure to non-traditional breadwinning, which contradicted dominant schemas. Meanwhile, in the more open post-Soviet climate, several of our egalitarians were able to find like-minded men enabling them to enact their egalitarian ideology.
Conclusion
Answering the call to investigate how macro-level factors influence micro negotiations over domestic labor (Lachance-Grzela and Bouchard 2010), we have focused on the reproduction and transformation of gender ideology, proposing a multilevel framework that shows how gender ideology relates to the gender order and “doing gender.” Our analysis of our respondents’ trajectories allowed us to identify processes supporting traditionalism and egalitarianism. On this basis, below we propose an explanation for the Soviet gender paradox, and identify sources of change in post-Soviet Russia before drawing wider conclusions.
Our processual analysis showed how the breadwinner schema and the ideology of independence are central to reproducing a traditional GDDL. We propose that these processes would have been even more potent in the Soviet era when the gender order was underwritten by state ideological and institutional domination. The male breadwinner schema was buttressed by full employment and gender-biased state wage scales, meaning exposure to “failed” male breadwinners was less common. Equally important, women were prevented from developing or accessing feminist ideas, limiting their ability to problematize men’s privileges as “breadwinners.” Micro-interactions thus generally enforced traditionalism, inhibiting the adoption of egalitarianism. Soviet women’s gender ideology remained frozen in Hochschild’s “transitional” position of support for women’s employment alongside an unequal GDDL. Tensions arising from the unbalanced GDDL were expressed in rising levels of divorce accompanied by an ideology of women’s independence, which, as argued above, acted as a safety value which ultimately served to reproduce the feminization of domesticity.
In the post-Soviet era the resources and schemas of the gender order have diverged, while the state ideological monopoly has ended. Our processual analysis shows that this had variable impacts. Some traditional women draw on the still-potent resources of the male breadwinner schema to sustain their ideology. Researchers in the United States have found comparable processes (Potuchek 1997; Tichenor 2005). Women despairing of local men developed an ideology of independence, akin to the fallback position Gerson (2010a, 2010b) encountered among young U.S. women. Despite its dignity-enhancing properties for individuals, this stance serves to reproduce the feminization of the domestic sphere. Finally, witnessing men falter as breadwinners acted as a catalyst of change for egalitarian respondents. Enacting egalitarianism, however, depended on interactional support from men.
Our findings regarding breadwinning have wider salience. An increasing proportion of male breadwinners in industrialized societies match the ersatz Soviet “highest earner” definition, while more women are becoming chief earners. Our findings show that domestic inequity can be challenged when men’s breadwinner privilege lacks material foundation, but this is not automatic. More homogenously traditional gender orders inhibit such change as occurred in the Soviet case. In more pluralistic gender orders, gender inequity is more easily problematized and interactional enforcement of traditional gender schemas is less uniform. In this way there is a feedback loop between the macro gender order and micro-interactional level which occurs via changes in individual gender ideology. Thus, for example, greater pluralism in terms of schemas at a macro level will facilitate individuals’ adoption of egalitarian gender ideologies, which in turn will result in less uniform pressure to “do gender” according to traditional schemas at a micro level, further facilitating the development of egalitarianism among women who discover the availability of men “ready” to share the domestic load. This reinforces Deutsch’s (2007) argument that the intensity of pressure to “do gender” varies, as does the content of the gendered schemas to which individuals are held accountable. By specifying links between the gender order, gender ideology, and the micro-interactional level, our framework incorporates such contextual variation.
Our multilevel framework enabled us to explain the Soviet paradox of women’s economic empowerment without domestic equality. Using longitudinal qualitative data, we revealed the processes of continuity and change during the post-Soviet era highlighting the relationships between macro schemas and micro interactions, and the ways these interact to produce different gender ideologies. Our analysis reveals both the power and the limits of gendered cultural schemas—varying depending on the gender order and micro-interactional context—to blunt the capacity of women to realize their economic gains by developing and enacting egalitarian gender ideologies.
Footnotes
Authors’ Note:
The first four waves of research were funded by INTAS grant 97-20280, and a top-up grant from Sticerd (LSE). The fifth wave of interviews was funded by the LSE Research Committee Seed Fund. Support from the Basic Research Program of the National Research University Higher School of Economics is also gratefully acknowledged. We thank VCIOM for including questions in their October 2017 Sputnik Survey. We are indebted to Paula England, Katherine Keenan, Irina Tartakovskaya, Daria Ukhova, Jennifer Utrata, and Christina Von Hodenberg for valuable comments.
Notes
Sarah Ashwin is a professor of industrial relations in the Department of Management at the London School of Economics. Her recent publications develop different aspects of gender theory by interrogating Russia’s stalled gender revolution.
Olga Isupova is an assistant professor at the Institute of Demography of the Higher School of Economics Moscow, Russia. Her research interests include the gender division of domestic labor, motherhood, reproductive technologies, fertility issues, family policy and patients’ research.