MEN AND WOMEN AT THE ELECTIONS:

Gender Analysis of the Electoral Campaigns
of 1999 and 2000 in Russia

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS OF 2000

1. Candidates to Presidency and Their Platforms:
Gender Aspect

The pre-term presidential elections were scheduled for March 26, 2000. The Central Electoral Committee registered 12 candidates to presidency, 11 of them men and one woman.

It was in 1996 that for the first time in the Russian history a woman declared her intention to run for the highest position in the state at the presidential elections. It was a deputy of the State Duma and a leader of the "Democratic Russia" Party G.V.Starovoitova. But at that time she failed to gather the minimum number of electors' signatures required in order to be registered by the Central Electoral Committee. She quit the electoral campaign at its early stage, but she did create a precedent of women's participation in the race for presidency. It might have been the example of G.V.Starovoitova that encouraged the recent candidate to presidency E.A.Pamfilova who managed to overcome the obstacle that had stopped her predecessor. However, it should be noted that during the last electoral campaign the required number of signatures was only half of that in 1996, as in case of preterm elections the current legislation requires to gather 500,000 signatures versus I million signatures for regular elections.

The following men - candidates were running for presidency in 2000: Prime Minister and acting President V.Putin, leader of the CPRF G.Zyuganov, leader of the LDPR V.Zhirinovsky, Governor of the Samara Oblast K.Titov, Governor of the Kuzbass Region A.Tuleev, leader of the "Spiritual Heritage" movement A.Podberezkin, the still-not-dismissed General Prosecutor Y.Skuratov, and entrepreneur U.Dzhabrailov.

Ella Alexandrovna Pamfilova, who took the responsibility to represent her female compatriots, first was elected deputy, back in 1989, at the elections to the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR. She was elected deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation of the first and second convocations; served as Minister for Social Protection in the Gaidar government; initiated a new socio-political organization "To Civil Dignity" that took part in two parliamentary elections, in 1995 and in 1999. In neither of the elections though did the movement overcome the five-percent barrier, but this did not prevent Pamfilova from remaining among the most bright and influential politicians of the country.

Despite such extensive curriculum vitae, when entering the political battle, E.Pamfilova did not hope for victory, but rather for obtaining additional political experience the participation in such a high level campaign would bring. And she did not try to deny it in her pre-election speeches. As a result, E.Pamfilova received a bit more that I percent of the votes and took the seventh place among the candidates to presidency.

During the previous presidential elections in 1996, the main candidate to presidency Boris Yeltsin presented a comprehensive program document called "Man. Family. Society. State". His program contained a special section on women's rights, which complied with the strictest international standards in the sphere of gender equality. In his program, Yeltsin committed to "...ensuring real gender equality with great determination both on legislative and executive levels", as well as to "increasing the number of women in government structures" and "preparing women for political and governing activity". Besides, Yeltsin promised to establish gender survey of the legislation of the Russian federation, develop sanctions against most obvious forms of discrimination of women, develop measures for implementation of the principle of equal payment for the labor of equal value, eliminate the gap in the wage level between industries with predominant employment of men and women, support the creation of crisis centers for rehabilitation of victims of violence who suffered in inter-nationality conflicts etc.

If this program were implemented at least partially, Russia would make a real step forward in eliminating gender disproportion. Though the commitment to such gender-sensitive approach was also important.

In 2000, only three out of twelve candidates to presidency in this or that way paid tribute to such approach.

In her program, Ella Pamfilova included a section on ensuring gender equality. The very name of her program document that she presented during the electoral campaign was reminiscent of the name of Yeltsin's program. Her program was called: "Save yourself. Protect the Family. Revive Russia". The issue of women's rights was presented in a separate section. What was discussed there?

The section started with quite a remarkable statement: "Democracy implies elimination of all forms of women's discrimination". Further it was emphasized that liquidation of discrimination is a long-term objective and includes ensuring equality of women and men in the spheres of labor, family life, and children's upbringing. It is impossible to solve the issue without eliminating violence against women.

The major issue here, according to Ella Pamfilova, is "the issue of representation of women in governmental structures. While they constitute 53 percent of the population of Russia, women take almost no part in making economic, social, and political decisions at the state level. Our women live in the country whose mechanisms are not adjusted to protect their rights". In conclusion, E.Pamfilova promised: "I will protect women's rights because from my experience I know what it means!" But in the program there are no concrete suggestions on how these promises would be implemented.

During the last electoral campaign, Grigory Yavlinsky presented his comprehensive declaration on ensuring women's rights in Russia.

On March 7, the "Komsomolskaya Pravda" newspaper, in its "Open Tribune" section, published the article called "Women can do everything", where the leader of "Yabloko" for the first time openly claimed his commitment to the constitutional principle of equal rights and opportunities for women and men.

Yavlinsky criticized Boris Yeltsin for the fact that the program statements and decrees of the latter remained nominal, and expressed his readiness to implement not only in word but also in deed the constitutional provision for equality of men and women. Among the measures that "Yabloko" ("Apple") was ready to undertake, Yavlinsky mentioned the promotion of women to legislative authorities of various levels; adoption of special legal acts that would ensure women an opportunity to fully participate in work and political activity; gender analysis of the labor, social, and family law; and provision of social guarantees for women in the sphere of labor and employment.

The following statements were presented in italics: "Let men receive their rights, not more than that; let women receive their rights, not less than that!", "Yabloko"'s principle to protect the weak and support the strong can be applied to solving women's issues".

This article is clearly an important contribution to, and further development of the social-liberal program of "Yabloko" ("Apple"). As it was mentioned earlier, lack of gender-sensitivity had been one of its obvious drawbacks. Grigory Yavlinsky succeeded in filling in this gap under the conditions of the tough race. It is possible that he did it under the pressure of the circumstances, and must have targeted women electors who, based on preliminary sociological surveys, constituted the majority of those who were going to support him during the elections.

With a certain stretch of imagination, among gender sensitive documents we can list Stanislav Govorukhin's program statement called "Make the wrong choice! A personal letter to the elector". In one of the chapters Govorukhin emphasized the necessity of having the "dictatorship" of law and responsibility. "During Mr.Yeltsin's rule, laws existed as separate norms that were isolated from and barely related to life in the country which was governed by convention... Just take a look a the main law - the Constitution of the Russian Federation and compare it to what happens in reality... Would you agree that women and men have equal opportunities?"

The very mentioning of the issue of gender inequality in such context looks promising, especially because S.Govorukhin also promised "to dramatically change the situation" and establish the rule of the law. It can be assumed that his promise also pertains to the constitutional provision of the equality of women and men. There is nothing specific in Govorukhin's program in terms of ways of ensuring equal rights and opportunities for women.

Program documents and statements of all the other candidates to presidency do not contain any special provisions on ensuring the equality of the sexes. In order to attract women, they use other notions and language, although such approach provides evidence for traditional understanding of the role and place of women in society rather than for the commitment of candidates to the principle of equality.

The major presidency seeker Vladimir Putin, as it is known, avoided to make any direct program statements, with the only exception of his "Open Letter to the Russian electors" ("Komsomolskaya Pravda"). The letter discusses the main problems of the Russian society as well as priorities for the state policy of V.Putin as a candidate to presidency.

In the section called "On our issues" the acting president focused the attention on his understanding of the idea, or value, that would be able to unify the country. He said that that "for a Russian citizen moral values bear much importance; these values are first inculcated in the family and later form the core of patriotism".

In the section "On our priorities", the task "to defeat own poverty" is listed as the first. Among the poor in our country, as it is known, there are primarily older people, pensioners, among whom women constitute two-thirds. V.Putin promised that they will receive on-time retirement benefits, and those in most need will receive special care.

Before Women's Day, March 8, V.Putin paid tribute to the tradition by visiting Ivanovo, "the city of brides", where he met with weavers and visited an orphanage. Besides, in the course of the electoral campaign he made several comments, such as "intelligence, intuition, beauty, and kindness make women different from men", and "development of society is impossible without women".

During the electoral campaign, when providing arguments for his decisions, V.Putin twice mentioned famous Nekrasov's lines about Russian women who "can stop a running horse and enter a burning house". For the first time when he suggested that Lubov Sliska should take the position of the Chair of the State Duma, and for second time when he decided to support Valentina Matvienko in her race for the position of the Governor of Saint Petersburg.

It is hard to draw a definite, not to mention comprehensive, conclusion about V.Putin's attitude to the issue of equality of women and men, but what is clear is that the elimination of gender disproportion is far from being on the list of his priorities.

For the analysis of the position of G.Zyuganov, we chose the following two documents called: "This can be done today: Seven Program Statements of Gennady Zyuganov" and "Appeal to People by Gennady Zyuganov, Candidate to the Position of the President of Russia".

Two out of the seven program statements could be described as a kind of message addressed to women. They are: statement five that runs as follows: "People have been humiliated enough. Immediate two-fold increase of pensions, social benefits and salaries of budget-funded employees will be done"; and statement number six: "To the future of the nation!... Special programs to support and develop family, motherhood and childcare, as well as housing construction, will be implemented". It is true for both the statements that the main receivers of G.Zyuganov are most likely to be women rather than men. But it is obvious that the candidate is not interested at all in the issue of women's rights, despite the fact that the Left take advantage of the systematic violation of these rights, making use of it in their pre-elections propaganda. Not only do the communists refrain from going into the issue, but also forsake the tradition of "targeted" appeals to women, with their patemalistic promises.

These facts only confirm the conclusion we drew from the analysis of the program documents of the CPRF, prepared for the parliamentary elections, the conclusion that the communists began to disclaim the idea of equal rights and do not include the requirement to pursue equal opportunities for women and men in their priorities.

The other seven candidates seem to be completely unaware of the existence of the issue of equal rights and opportunities for women and men in our country, in other words, of the issue of gender asymmetry that prevails in the sphere of politics, labor and employment, family etc.

When starting to prepare the material, the Consortium of Women's Non-Governmental Associations envisioned the situation. That is why it prepared and distributed among all of the candidates to presidency a special Appeal in order to, first of all, find out about their approach to the issue of practical implementation of the principle of equal rights and equal opportunities for women and men, and secondly, to clarify their attitude towards women's organizations as an integral part of civil society.

To state it simply, the Appeal was a kind of a test. We assumed that if a candidate would respond to the Consortium's Appeal, it means that he or she is aware of the need for a dialogue both with his or her constituency and with the structures of civil society, no matter how weak and insignificant at this point they may seem to the candidate. But of course, the content of the response was very important for us, too.

It is not coincidence that the following questions should have been at the core of the Appeal: whether the candidate is ready, first of all, to recognize that women should be given at least one-third of the positions in electoral tickets with lists of candidates for deputies to the country's Parliament, and secondly, if the candidate would agree with the necessity to adopt special legislative acts to enforce the norm. The agreement with the necessity of the adoption of such legislation and regimentation of the activity of political parties and movements should be, to our mind, viewed as recognition of the necessity of taking practical measures aimed at eliminating gender inequality in politics, and as readiness of men - politicians to actually share their power with women. In other words, readiness to get the formula of power division to its highest expression. As long as all discussions on the topic of equal rights and equal opportunities for women and men are not accompanied by the agreement to formalize them with a set of procedures, we can only talk about wishful thinking.

Dear...

As the International Women's Day, March 8, is approaching, THE CONSORTIUM OF WOMEN'S NON-GOVERNMENTAL ASSOCIATIONS - a coalition of 99 women's organizations from 37 regions of Russia involved in the promotion and protection of interests of Russian women, would like to appeal to you.

You are running for President of Russia - the country where women represent 53 percent of the population, 47 percent of the people's economy, and the majority of your constituency.

As you know, the Constitution of Russia guarantees equal rights, freedoms, and opportunities for women and men (Article 19, Section 3). Nonetheless, in reality this constitutional principle is not observed in any public sphere. In particular, there is an obvious disproportion in the representation of women and men at the highest authority levels.

We, representatives of women's non-governmental associations, are concerned about the distinct tendency of the intensification of the above said disproportion. If in 1993 there were about 14 percent of women among the deputies of the State Duma, in 1995 their representation dropped to 10 percent, and in 1999 - to 7,7 percent. Thus, the constitutional principle of equal rights, freedoms, and opportunities for women and men in our country has been severely violated. Many international conventions on equal rights for women, signed by Russia, are being violated as well.

The Russian legislative power remains a closed club for men, and often social interests of their female constituencies are neglected, as shown m the analysis of the lawmaking activity of the State Duma deputies of the first and second convocations.

Russian women's organizations are extremely worried about the present state of affairs.

That is why we insist on the need for urgent measures to overcome the discrimination of Russian women in politics.

We think that it is necessary to adopt a special amendment to the Law on Elections, that will establish concrete mechanisms and procedures aimed at overcoming the discrimination of women in the decision-making process. There are two options for introducing the amendment:

• prohibition by the Central Electoral Committee to register parties and socio-political movements whose lists of deputy nominees contain more than 70 percent of people of the same gender; or
• refusal to provide state funding and free television and radio time to such parties and socio-political movements. We would like to know your position on the issue: Are you ready to support such legislative initiative? If yes, which of the two options would you prefer? We are interested to know your point of view, even if you do not consider any such amendment necessary.

Do you intend on taking any other steps towards increasing women's participation in the bodies of authority; and if yes, what will these steps be?

You may not agree with the principle of equal rights and opportunities for women and men at all. It is important for us to know about it before we elect the supreme executive officer for the country.

Your responses will be distributed among women's public organizations and mass media.

Respectfully,

Enclosed please find the list of member organizations of the Consortium

Vladimir Putin, Ella Pamfilova, Stanislav Govorukhin, and Vladimir Zhirinovsky responded to the Appeal. A representative from Grigory Yavlinsky's electoral offices called the Consortium and explained that Yavlinsky's program article whose content was reviewed above, published in "Komsomolskaya Pravda", could serve as his response to the Appeal.

In other words, five out of twelve candidates replied to the Consortium's Appeal, which can be viewed as a sign of recognition of the role of women's organizations and citizens' initiatives both by these candidates and public opinion.

Going to the content of the responses, we consider them important and representative, and therefore these responses are given below in their full length.

Dear Ms. Ershova,

We confirm the receipt of your Appeal. We recognize that your critical comments are justified. There are still issues, including those you raised, that need to be solved.

We have no doubt that your support of our candidate during the elections and our cooperation in eradication of shortcomings and mistakes in our policy will help us to get rid of these drawbacks and find more effective ways for the development of our country.

DEAR ELENA NIKOLAEVNA!

DEAR REPRESENTATIVES OF THE CONSORTIUM OF WOMEN'S NON-GOVERNMENTAL ASSOCIATIONS!

I am glad to write to you as the most advanced part of the female population of our country, carrying out a noble mission of protecting interests of Russian women.

I see you not only as people who target the highest humanistic standards and my allies in the area of development of civil society and democratic values, but also as practitioners protecting women's rights.

I expressed my position on the women's issue in the "Rights of Women" chapter of my elections program. I am sure that one of the means to save Russia is to use creative and social potential of our women. And I will fight the discrimination of women both at authority levels and at the labor market; I will concentrate on establishing real, not nominal alimony rates for divorced women; on reforming the law machinery that now does not protect women from sexual harassment and domestic violence, and on many other issues that prevent women form getting real, and not just declared, equality.

I am ready to review the amendments to the Law on Elections, that you propose, and to support their adoption. However, as you rightly mentioned, today's politics is unfortunately, a "club for men". Based on my extensive experience in the Parliament, I am afraid that it might take years to introduce such amendments. It is a long-term program, but together we will undoubtedly be able to implement it.

Sincerely,

Enclosed please find the chapter from the electoral program on the Rights of Women.

Dear Elena,

Thank you very much for the Appeal and for women's trust in me. I have the deepest respect for women; well, I just love all of you, and I am really ashamed that we, men, are unable to ensure a decent life for you, so that you had no need to be involved in politics, experience humiliation and inequality.

To adopt the amendment to the Law on Elections will not be enough to solve the issue of inequality in politics. I think that it is necessary to create socio-economic conditions for women to express themselves in all spheres of human activity, but most importantly, to create secure and comfortable conditions for the woman to carry out her natural function of the mother. The future of Russia depends on you, dear women; our future well-being, including that in politics, depends on what kind of children will be born and raised.

You know it very well that with a prohibition to register parties it is impossible to decrease a number of the existing ones; besides, it is not prohibited for women to create women's parties without any men's participation. As for the refusal to fund "male" organizations that do not respect women or demonstrate indifference to women, I would support your proposal. And if I were elected President, I would increase a number of women participating in bodies of authority.

Dearest Elena!

I am pleased with the attention of the better half of the Russian population represented by you and expressed in your Appeal as the Coordinator of the Consortium of Women's Non-Governmental Associations.

First of all, I would like to assure you that I have been consistently following the principle of equal rights and opportunities for women and men. At the same time, let me disagree with your statement that Article 19, Section 3 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, is being violated. There is no discrimination of women in politics. As women constitute the majority of voters, they elect men to legislative bodies, thus expressing their will. They do not want to elect women, and that is why they vote for men. Women like men more than women. Most women do not want to dominate, they want to obey; they need care and attention, family and beloved husband.

Only those women who are devoid of men's attention want to assert themselves in some kind of equality; a charming woman has power over men without any constitutional provisions.

I do not think it is possible for me to support the special amendments to the Law on Elections, that you proposed. Should we discriminate by gender, as you suggest, by refusing to register or fund organizations whose lists of nominees contain more than 70 percent of people of the same gender, it will be women's organizations that naturally do not include men, that will suffer in the first place.

Thus, I am for women's organizations and movements. You can create your political parties and nominate women as candidates to President, and if all women support them, they will win the elections.

But to establish quota and proportions is to violate democracy. It means preventing citizens, including women, from expressing their will.

I wish you all the best. To all women of Russia I wish good health, love, and happiness.

Sincerely yours,

What do these responses mean? If we leave the position of Grigory Yavlinsky that we discussed earlier aside, we should admit that none of the men candidates actually took the position that would comply with the Russian Constitution. As far as the response from Putin's office is concerned (clearly, the candidate simply did not receive the Appeal), its complete lack of content does not attest to the fact that the acting president's team wants to preserve gender inequality, but rather to the notorious inability of governmental structures to have a dialogue with public organizations.

Stanislav Govorukhin responded in a very eloquent manner, as a politician standing at the head of "Otechestvo" ("Fatherland") that, as was mentioned above, turned out to be the only influential political organization to adopt a gender-sensitive program document ("Fatherland for Women"). The candidate to presidency is ready to support the "soft" version of the amendment to the Law on Elections, which is to increase women's representation in governmental structures, and promises to support the implementation of the amendment if he wins the elections. At the same time, he demonstrates absolutely traditional and patemalistic approach to the issue of women's involvement in politics: he is "very much ashamed" that men who have the power are not able to ensure "a decent life" for women when women would no longer need to be involved in politics. In other words, to his mind, ideally politics should be exclusively men's activity.

Unlike S.Govorukhin, V.Zhirinovsky is not ashamed. He declares himself to be a consistent follower of the principle of equal rights and opportunities for women and men, but he is convinced that in Russia this principle is being observed. The leader of the LDPR does not see any institutional obstacles to eliminating gender disproportion, and a small number of women in governmental structures can be explained, in his opinion, by women's reluctance to dominate, or to vote for female candidates. It is clear that in practice such approach is aimed at advocating the status quo.

2. The Electorate at the Presidential Elections: Gender Analysis

Just like three months before, at the presidential elections women demonstrated higher electoral activity compared to men. 72 percent of women and only 66 percent of men took part in these elections. As a result, like in December, among the participants of the elections there were 56 percent of women and 44 percent of men.

It was women who determined the outcome of the elections on March 26: less than half of the representatives of the sterner sex voted for V.Putin, and if women were less loyal, the second tour of elections would be needed.

As a result, the winner received 35 percent of the votes of the constituency, while all of his opponents together received 32 percent of votes. However, many of those who voted for other candidates were satisfied with the results of the elections. Even among those who voted for Gennady Zyuganov, the main opponent of Putin, 28 percent, or more than one-third of the surveyed who expressed their attitude towards the outcome of the elections, feel satisfied. As for those who voted for the outsiders, they express their satisfaction with the outcome of the elections even more often than dissatisfaction.

Overall, the surveyed almost three times more often felt positive than negative about V.Putin's victory. It would have been impossible if those who voted for Putin's opponents had seriously believed in a different scenario of the outcome of the elections. But because the vast majority of those who supported other candidates, as shown in pre-elections survey statistics, had no doubts in the acting president's victory, they could not be bitterly disappointed. Nonetheless, such positive reaction to this victory is an evidence of the trust level Putin achieved.

Women especially often mention how satisfied they are with the outcome of the elections. Besides, they more seldom than men express their doubts in the reliability of the results: among men there are 24 percent who think that the results were falsified and 45 percent who disagree with that, while among women these numbers are 20 and 51 percent respectively.

It would be natural to assume that high percentage of women who voted for Putin as well as their more positive, compared to men, attitude to the outcome of the elections won by the acting president, could be explained by the same factors that influenced women's electoral behavior in December, 1999. As we observed, at the last round of the electoral campaign most of the women who had not taken any final decision before, voted for the "party of power", which determined the success of "Edinstvo". The crucial factor then was the fact that women turned out to be more perceptive to the influence of the mass media.

In March 2000, they again demonstrated higher trust to the latter.

The above cited statistics clearly demonstrate that critical attitude towards the mass media is more typical of men, while higher readiness to follow the mass media advice is characteristic of women. Such readiness though actually implies higher loyalty with respect to the "ruling party". It is not coincidence that those "thankful" to the mass media for clearing up the situation, or those who state that their choice was determined by the mass media, voted for V.Putin more often than for any of his opponents.

In particular, women more seldom than men distrusted analytical television programs shown on the three national channels.

It should be observed that women watched S.Dorenko's and N.Svanidze's programs that explicitly supported the acting president as often as men, but E.Kiselev's program that was in the opposition to the acting president they watched less often.

The difference between the way the electoral campaign was perceived by men and women finds its expression in their attitude towards TV debates. With approximately equal level of interest to the candidates' TV battles, men more seldom than women admitted that impressions left after these debates could influence their choice at the elections.

Lower stability of electoral preferences of women can be partly explained by the fact that they are usually not very much interested in politics. During electoral campaigns, the level of their political activity dramatically increases, however, they have more vague, compared to men, notion about the main actors of the political scene and their interrelations.

But what can be equally important is the fact that women perceive politics more emotionally than men do. It is representative . that women more often than men should have admitted that they expected the outcome of the elections either with hope, or with worry, concern, or fear.

Despite their higher involvement in politics, men were less emotional. They more frequently said that expected the outcome of the elections calmly or even with indifference.

It would be too simplistic to say that this has to do exclusively with biologically determined psychological differences between men and women. Social position of women, who are discriminated at the labor market and have significantly fewer, compared to men, opportunities to effectively adapt to new conditions due to the gender asymmetry of the Russian society, dictates their higher dependency on the state policy. It is natural, therefore, that women should more often express their hopes and concerns when it comes to potential changes in this policy.

It is not surprising that they more often than men should have made a decision whom to elect based on their belief that a given candidate would "'help them live better". Behind this somewhat, naive statement is their hope for the state's care and protection.

While men more often cited rational reasons (the candidate "will be able to get Russia out of the crisis'" and "I like the candidate's political program'"), women tended to explain their choice by their trust or sympathy for the candidate they voted for. In other words, women demonstrated rather affective style of their political behavior.

Moreover, women were likely to expect that election of V.Putin "would bring about radical changes in the life of the country" more often than men were. At least, a month before the elections 34 percent of men agreed with this point of view, and 49 percent disagreed; among women these statistics were 39 percent and 41 percent correspondingly (only Muscovites were asked this question, but there is no reason to believe that this opinion is not representative of that in the whole country).

To conclude, the following are the main characteristics of the political behavior of women during the parliamentary and presidential elections in 1999 - 2000: high electoral activity and higher sensitivity to image-building propaganda of the mass media; relative instability of political preferences; tendency to paternalistic expectations, and prevailing of affective motivation over rational. All of these attest to the fact that one of the premises for the gender disproportion in politics is the inert and conservative political consciousness of the "average female elector", that is ultimately dictated by the syndrome of social powerlessness.

When starting the analysis of the gender dimension of the electoral campaigns of 1999 and 2000, we wanted to understand how the constitutional principle of equal rights and freedoms and equal opportunities for women and men is implemented in practice, and whether article 19, section 3 of the Constitution really works, without any reinforcement in the form of second-tier laws, or in the form of special amendments to the Law on Elections and Law on Political Parties, or introduction of the special Law on Equal Rights and Opportunities for women and men.

The answer is obvious. The Law does not work. Moreover, politicians and state figures at the highest level pay little attention to this issue. Without pressure from those interested in expanding the rights for Russian women, they can simply "bury" the equality issue as socially insignificant.

If that happens, Russia will remain the country with men having unlimited control over the government. Such gender disproportion, as proved by world and national experience, binders sustained development and stability, and promotes unwise use of human potential of women and men, as well as natural resources.

The gender disproportion in the government authorities largely determines priority structure of the Russian State. Increased representation of women would most likely help to shift focus in determining these priorities. Such issues as education, healthcare, social security, culture, and science could become high-priority issues. The country's resources would be finally channeled to improvement of the quality of life of all citizens and to the strengthening of social security, as it happens in the countries where women and men equally participate in the determination of goals and objectives of social development.

The current political elite of the country is primarily responsible for the preservation of today's situation of gender disproportion, and especially the part of the elite that is united within political parties and movements, as well as their leaders. Our analysis showed that they are not willing to change the rules of the game, i.e. to work on creating equal opportunities for women and men in politics. Meanwhile, this issue is getting more urgent, because, once again, sustained development of society can be observed only when citizens actively participate in the life of their country. All citizens - both men and women.