Influential Women of Russia

Modern feminists, take note. A woman can achieve anything in Russia, but it helps to be standing next to a big man.

1. Elena Baturina, owner of the Inteko conglomerate and 45th on the Forbes Russian billionaire rankings. But her surname conceals the fact that she is married to one of the most powerful men in Russia: Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov.

2. Olga Belyavtseva appears to be self made, having cashed in on Pepsi’s $1.4 billion acquisition of Russia’s biggest juice manufacturer in which she held shares.

3.  Natalya Fileva, head of  Russia’s leading domestic airline S7.... the company used to be run by her husband Vladislav Filev.

1.Svetlana Medvedeva, whose main political achievement seems to have been… marrying the Russian president.

2. Valentina Matvyenko ...rather than pursuing, her political ambitions: on the ‘advice’ of Putin, she cancelled a 2000 presidential bid (in which she would have been a strong female opponent of Putin) and was duly rewarded with the St Petersburg governorship in 2003.

Even well-educated, intelligent and tolerant people in Russia react somehow nervously and embarrassedly if to begin a talk about feminism with them. And the word “male feminist” perplexes and bewilders. Russians are deeply convinced that a man can’t be a feminist like a bulldog can’t be a cat. 

… In contrast to Europe and America, women in Russia don’t fight for their rights to work and earn money equally with men. They fight for their right to spend the money that their husbands earn.

...Sooner or later feminism will win, since the equality of men and women is much more profitable for all, than dependence of one sex on the other. And the expression “the stronger sex” will be as indecent as the expression “higher race”. Both men and women will have to put up with it.

Present day Russia needs a renewal of the feminist movement

18 January 2009

In the Soviet Union feminism was elevated to the status of official state policy and ultimately was destroyed as an ideology and a social movement.

“The interviewees were so wonderful,” Holmgren says. “They are impassioned about women’s rights in Russia. They speak with such authority and drama about what happened, what went well, and what they might have done differently. They’re not saying everything turned out wonderfully; the film presents their disagreements as well as their achievements.”