Regina A. Yavchunovskaya
International Center "Future of a Woman"
Moscow, 3 ul.Yamskogo polya, 14/16
RUSSIA
TEL: (095) 257-0436
FAX: (095) 257-04-36
Current developments in the poly-ethnic areas of Russia are certainly gender-specific. Women are most critically affected by the deep crisis in state policy, by economic instability and marketization. Meantime, women have a special role in overcoming social crisis, and, in particular, a crisis in national relations. Each ethnos has its own precious "codes", such as language, customs, traditions, skills of ancestors, memory of generations, life-style and psychic sense. Traditionally, woman is a bearer of these "codes".
Currently, fear of inflation and unemployment, migration and destruction of traditional moral values aggravate feelings of ethnic discomfort. Sixty percent of poll respondents prefer to live in mono-ethnic families, one third - to work in mono-ethnic environment. These data testify to the trend of ethnic homogeneity in living and working places. In practice, the majority of these people live (80%) and work (69%) in multi-ethnic environment. Every third marriage is mixed by national origin of spouses.
When the national idea presents the rights of the nation as prevailing over the rights of individual, excesses of exasperation, instincts of envy, greed, hatred, and even war conflicts emerge. In the complicated polyethnic socium of contemporary Russia a woman, a bearer of national "codes", should become an "instrument" of social control over such processes.
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