"The Fiction of Aggrieved Women" or "Extra Help is not Harmful"? Do Women Academics Need any Social Protection?

Abstract

During the second half o the twentieth century (1950-2010), a large number of female researchers forged careers in what had formerly been male-dominated academic structures, reaching positions of prestige in their disciplines. This article is dedicated to the history of gender asymmetry in one paticular community: the Russian Academy of Sciences. The author focuses on emotionally-saturated data taken from biographical interviews and autobiographies written or retold by academic and professional women and female scientists who have played or still play a visible role in the public arena and scientific life of contemporary Russia. It soon became clear in the research that women remain largely invisible as a separate group. A demand was often made for separate structures based around research by women, about women, and for women. Some respondents (as is shown in the interviews) promote gender equality in scholarship and advocate the creation of a new and more gender-aware academic public sphere. They underline the importance of, women organizations in achieving this. Other respondents in the Academia took the opposing position; they rejected the idea of protection for women from women organizations and unions, taking the position that, as they have already been integrated into the mainstream of their departments, they are not interested in any particular assistance.

The main conclusion of the author is to explain the reasons for the marginalization of women in the academic community less in the abstract spheres of cultural dispositions and traditions of academia in Russia, but most of all in the concrete everyday practices of the academic environment, where women retain little hope of improvement in their life and work conditions. This article builds on previous long-term research efforts on gender issues within the scientific community of the Soviet and modern Russia, revealing a strong degree of gender asymmetry, which acts as the basis of gender discrimination in modern Russian society.