Women power in Russia? Not with Putin in charge

In the early 1960s, the Soviet Union decided that the time was ripe to spice up its space program. Sputnik capsules and Vostok spaceships had sent dogs, rabbits and the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into orbit already. The Americans were lagging behind; the Kremlin wanted to stay ahead. Russia had a proposition: It would send a woman into space. On June 16, 1963, Valentina Tereshkova was jettisoned out of the earth’s atmosphere. “If women can be railroad workers in Russia, why can’t they fly in space?” she famously said later. Her flight came at the culmination of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s thaw, a series of reforms that relaxed repression, ushered in change and propelled women to new status.

Thus, the Soviet Union gave birth to the token Soviet woman: a convenient, one-size-fits-all woman who ticked the boxes of enlightened gender equality and appeased the communist ideologists, for whom the abolition of capitalism included ending women’s exploitation. “You think we’re not advanced?” Soviets could say to the West. “But look how liberated our women are.”

Can there be such a thing as two token women? In Russia’s presidential election next year, President Vladimir Putin is widely expected to run and win, which would extend his 18-year grip over Russia by another six-year term. But contesting him — sort of — is the 36-year-old television personality Ksenia Sobchak, the daughter of Putin’s late mentor, and a member of the opposition. Another familiar face from TV, the 37-year-old journalist and lawyer Yekaterina Gordon declared her candidacy two weeks after Sobchak’s mid-October announcement. (A handful of other candidates, too, including the 73-year-old leader of the Communist Party and five-time presidential contender, Gennady Zyuganov, have also announced bids.)

At first glance, Sobchak and Gordon appear almost interchangeable; both are persuasive and articulate with wide grins and shoulder-length blond hair. From the start of her campaign, Gordon has sought to distance herself from her rival, saying that, unlike Sobchak, she was not “born with a silver spoon in my mouth.” (Sobchak comes from a political dynasty; her father, Anatoly, was mayor of St. Petersburg). Gordon was born to well-educated parents, but had a comparatively humdrum upbringing.)

This year marks the first time a woman has declared her intention to run for Russian president in 13 years. In 2004, the role was played by Irina Khakamada, at the time a liberal politician. (She later became a member of Putin’s advisory Human Rights Council.) Before Khakamada, there was Ella Pamfilova, who in 2000 became the first woman in Russia to run for president in a long-shot campaign that she hoped would encourage others to come forward.

Sobchak and Gordon are both running on pro-women platforms. Sobchak graced the cover of Russian Glamour in November, punching the air with her fist and wearing a T-shirt scrawled in English with the words “Women Power.” Inside the magazine, she bemoaned the country’s 30% gender pay gap and the sidelining of women in the workplace. “When you’re missing out on freedoms like speech and elections, gender equality takes last place,” she said in a long interview, interspersed with photos from a fashion shoot. Gordon, taking a leaf out of her Bolshevik foresisters’ playbook, has been championing the rights of women and children. “We are a country of single mothers whom no one cares for,” she said in a campaign video.

Almost no one in Russia takes seriously the idea that either Sobchak or Gordon is truly attempting to challenge Putin. To get a place on the actual ballot that Russians will see in March, a candidate needs to collect 300,000 signatures in order to register — an almost impossible goal without the aid of the Russian government. This ensures that Putin will face off only against opponents of his choice. (Sobchak, in particular, is viewed as a Putin puppet.) So the question, in this case, is not why two women have finally decided to run for president in Russia but rather: Why does Putin want to run not only against women, but against women talking about feminist issues?

The timing of the two women’s political entrance comes as Russia embraces a wave of traditionalism, one in which women have not fared well.

The timing of the two women’s political entrance comes as Russia embraces a wave of traditionalism, one in which women have not fared well.

In a move that won the backing of a resurgent Russian Orthodox Church, domestic violence legislation was softened earlier this year from a criminal to an administrative offense. (The bill was pushed by the same female lawmaker who advocated for the country’s anti-gay laws several years ago.) Abortion, which has been legal and common in Russia for decades, is also increasingly under attack, with the full support of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, who wants the practice banned.

But if Sobchak and Gordon were sent out to talk female power on the notion that the Russian public could be developing an appetite for women’s issues, it appears that the Kremlin may have misinterpreted. The campaigns of Sobchak and Gordon are hardly gaining any traction. Two months ago, it was reported that the Kremlin was searching for female sparring partners for Putin to satisfy the “tired people” of the Russian electorate, who needed the diversion. On International Women’s Day last March, dozens of women protested in St. Petersburg and Moscow in a rare feminist demonstration. They held posters with “radical slogans,” according to state-run media. Among the signs? “Men, out of the Kremlin!” and, “A woman for president!” Someday, maybe. But not next year. — New York Times

Amie Ferris-Rotman is a journalist based in Moscow