Feminism in Vladimir, Russia. Sort of.

In my conversation class, I'd been thinking that I wanted to give my students things that would not only stimulate discussion, but that would give them glimpses into American life, thus letting them learn about American culture while practicing their speaking skills. Wednesday was my fourth conversation class, with the prior three using myspace.com, song lyrics, and an article about my mom as topics. Last week, when trying to decide what to give them to prepare for this week's class, I decided that I would like to give them a post from someone's blog, something written by a normal American, not a journalist or a famous writer. I tried to think about things that have appeared on friends' blogs that were both interesting and that would stimulate discussion (I really wanted to give them something from a medical examiner friend's blog, but I figured the corpses might gross them out. Besides, one student had specifically requested that we not discuss violent crimes.) I may still use some of you bloggers in my blogroll as yet... but as it was, I decided on a post from a now-defunct blog written by a childhood friend of mine using the pseudonym Maggie Grace. (She started this blog long before the TV show LOST appeared on the scene and rocketed actress Maggie Grace to stardom, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the actress of that name.) I chose the post that I chose because it was well-written, contained a lot of idioms that I knew would be new to my students, and because I hoped it would be a good topic to stimulate discussion. I could summarize the post for you, but I think it would be best for you to read it for yourself before reading the rest of my post. So CLICK HERE and read it.

Okay - read it? Good. So yes, I wanted to discuss feminism with my class. Despite the utter crazies who think that the sole reason I came to Russia was to subvert this nation's women into FemiNazi Bitches, I had no desire whatsoever to preach my views. I was simply curious as to what my students thought about the topic. So what *are* my views on feminism? Well, I tend to ascribe to the dictionary definition of the word: the belief in the social, political and economic equality of men and women. I am well aware that there are some total whack-jobs out there who have identified themselves as feminists and who have then gone on to say some pretty psychotic stuff, but I am not one of those women. I used to blog about the issue of feminism a lot, and to debate the issue with anti-feminists until I got sick of it. It was like beating my head against a wall. Or arguing with a wall, trying to convince it to change its color. No matter how strong an argument you put forward, the wall isn't going to repaint itself. Anyway, one of the claims made by the anti-feminists was that American women en masse were essentially horrific, and possessed of a long list of ill qualities - all of which were a result of the fact that all American women were FemiNazi Bitches. Meanwhile, American men could do no wrong, and were in need of non-feminist women to love them... and such women could be found in places like Russia. I was curious as to what Russian women would think about this issue. Would their beliefs about feminism truly be so substantially different from mine? As my conversation class consists of ten women and two men (one of whom was absent Wednesday, leaving the other one feeling awkwardly outnumbered), and I looked forward to hearing their views.

After explaining the various idioms and expressions from Maggie's post ("hemmed and hawed" "good ole boys" “schmooze" etc) I asked them to talk about the first half of Maggie's story. (What? You didn't read it? Silly you. Here's your second chance.) First, let me say that while I do believe that situations like this do happen in the US, I know that we've come a long way in the past 40 years, and such situations are becoming rare. Conversely, the majority of my students said that they believe that situations such as this are very common in Russia. One woman did say that she thought it was rare, and another one said she didn't think there was anything *wrong* with such situations. (!) Discussion pretty much just spouted out of everyone about this, and I just sat back and listened.

All but one of the women in the class said that they thought women should have equal chances, equal opportunities in their studies and in their workplaces, and agreed that Russia has a long way to go before reaching this goal, although some thought the situation was worse/better than others.

Two women told of teachers discriminating in favor of male students in both their school and university experiences, although others insisted that this wasn't true, and that women were better students than men. (!)

The one woman who thought that there was nothing wrong with the decision of Maggie's boss said that while she thought that a woman could run a small business, women were simply not capable of managing large firms/companies/factories and that those jobs should therefore be reserved for men.

My one male student said that there were certain positions that were better suited for women to hold than for men, like the position of Advertising Manager. Um, why Advertising Manager? Well, because when you want to get a company to advertise your product, and you send a woman over to talk to the boss of the company, *he* will agree, because a man doesn't like to say no to a pretty woman. You're kidding me right? Oh wait, no. He wasn't. I asked if he though Advertising Managers could only be *pretty* women, but he declined to answer.

I asked my students what they would have done, had they been in Maggie's position. About half said that they would immediately begin looking for another job. The other half said that they would stay where they were and work twice as hard as before, so that the boss would realize that he *had* to give her the promotion.

I asked the male student to think about it in reverse: he and a less-qualified woman applied for the same job. She was hired and he was told that he didn't get the job because he was a man. What would he do? He didn't answer the question directly. Instead, he said that if the woman got the job, it was because she slept with the boss. Grrr.

In general, nearly all of my students agreed with Maggie's point of view about both the work situation and the Sears-power-tool situation. They also seemed to agree with *my* view of feminism (both sexes receiving equal opportunities), although when I finally brought the word "feminism" into the discussion, well...

None of my students consider themselves Feminists. They seem to think that all feminists are cold, hard and unfeminine, with no desire to have men in their lives in any aspect. A lot of them said that a "woman must be woman" (direct quote) which, according to them, meant being weaker, being taken care of, having things paid for by men, having doors opened by men, and being able to cry. Several of them agreed that being able to cry was a great asset for a woman at work, saying that if a man makes a mistake on the job, he will get fired; however, if a woman makes a mistake, she can cry. Then the boss will feel sorry for her and she won't lose her job. (!) Conversely, they all agreed that men should always be strong, never cry, never cook, always pay and always open doors. I was really shocked by this turn of the discussion. I mean, while I'm not going to be offended in the least if someone opens the door for me, I don't demand it. I'm a firm believer in splitting costs 50/50, I've known guys who cook far better than I do, and I have definitely known guys who have cried in front of me - and yes, I still respect them. But like I said, I wasn't there to preach, I was there to listen to their opinions and to let them have a conversation. They had a fantastic conversation, so my original goal of getting them to talk was met. And I learned a lot about the minds of the women of Vladimir, which was definitely interesting.

VEMZ, Fems and Astronauts

Part I: VEMZ

I know I have not written in a while, but I see no point in giving you all a blow by blow account of things which most of you will find really boring, and all week we have essentially just been doing teacher training seminars. (Useful, but hardly prime blogging material!) The main thing of note that I have to share is this: I will be teaching one of my classes at VEMZ, the Vladimir Electric Motor Factory (the Russian word for factory is zavod, thus VEMZ not VEMF). This is a small international company, and they are looking to train their employees in business English in order to make the company more competitive in the global sector. I will (most likely) be teaching VEMZ employees with very, very low levels of English, although these will be adults who are all interested in learning English for the purpose of furthering their careers. I find the fact that I will be teaching at VEMZ to be very exciting for some reason. Plus I think it is interesting how I was selected for this task. K taught one class at VEMZ last year, so she is going back to teach there again this year (we are offering two classes at VEMZ), and they needed to pick one other teacher to do the other class. Other than K, only Male B, B and I have actually worked before, other than things like summer and part time jobs. The others have all just graduated from college. And Male B and B have worked as teachers, so I’m the closest we have to someone with experience in the business world. So, twice a week I will be teaching VEMZ employees business English. 

Part II: My Feminist Attitude

I was walking down Bolshaya Moskovskaya (the main street) today at lunch time with my American coworkers, and we were discussing the clothing habits of Russian women. Russian women generally tend to dress nicer than American women. I suppose I should qualify what I mean. Today, I was wearing a nice pair of jeans, and a cute little top under a fitted black cotton sweater (for warmth when I was outside). I was also wearing sneakers. Everything I was wearing was clean, and nothing was wrinkled or ripped or in any way sloppy. This would be a perfectly acceptable and rather average outfit for a woman in her mid twenties in America. Over here, that outfit is definitely a little too casual for leaving the house. If I chose to replace my very comfortable sneakers with pointy toed heels (currently very popular here), I would definitely stand a chance of being mistaken for a Russian. If I exchanged the jeans for skin tight pants or a short skirt, and perhaps a diaphanous top, then I would fit right in. Additionally, If I were to dress more like I were, say, going to the theater on a daily basis, I might also fit in a little better. In addition to more clothing, the average woman (under 40) on the street here definitely has a lot more of the sexpot look going than the average American woman. I do not think that this is a sign of Russian women necessarily taking better care of their appearance, it simply has a lot to do with style and with what is accepted. (Ex: In the US if you are planning to wear a skin tight white top made of a thin material, you wear a white bra under it. I have seen a lot skin tight white (or simply see through) tops without any bras underneath. Think of the typical reaction people in the US would have to a woman wearing this getup and going to the grocery store, or to work, or to visit friends. No one here has that reaction; it is simply the style. They probably wonder why we are all so covered up. (I dressed a lot more like a typical young Russian woman the last time I was here, although even then I never got into displaying my nipples in public. I definitely have a culture induced impediment to that built into my brain.)

But back to my walk down Bolshaya Moscovskaya. We were walking along, commenting on how the Russian women all dress very nicely and obviously put a lot of care into their appearance, and talking about how uncomfortable it must be to walk for long distances in those pointy toed high heeled shoes, when one of the guys (this is a group of Americans, remember), made a comment that it is generally a lot harder for women all over the world, because we are in general expected to put a lot more into our appearance than men are. I agree, women all over the world are expected to put a lot of time and effort into clothing, hair and makeup, whereas men are generally not held to any standard of appearance. Anyhow, at this point, one of the other American dudes (who is a very nice guy; I’m not trying to bash him online or anything) stated very matter of factly that it is not just in clothing; women have it a lot harder in general. I was wondering where he was going with this, but unfortunately he did not take the conversation in a turn I particularly liked. He said something along the lines of: I mean, if a woman works, she has two shifts. When she comes home from work, then she has to cook and clean and do all that stuff. I gave him one of my looks. I could not help it. (I have never been a recipient of one of my looks, obviously, but I have been told that I can make some very telling facial expressions.)

I decided not to comment. Did I really want to end up getting into what could very well become a heated argument in English while walking down a provincial Russian street? No. (Some of the group had a small anti-American incident the other day, so we have been trying to be as unobtrusively American as possible.) However, later in the afternoon, while we were in the teachers office, working on lesson plans, he brought it up: So I checked, just to make sure I understood him. Did he really mean that if husband and wife were both working full time, when they came home at the end of the day, the dude could plop down in front of the TV while the woman had to make him dinner and clean the house? At this point, two of the other American (female) teachers joined in, and we asked him if he were married, and he and his wife worked, would HE sit on the couch and watch TV while she waited on him hand and foot. At this point he began to waffle. Like I said, he is a nice guy. I do not think he wanted to piss us off. And I also do not really think he had ever thought about it too much before. (He did not know how to use the AH washer/dryer because when he was in college, he was one of those people who brought dirty laundry home to mom.) He never did give a straight answer on whether or not he would help in the housework if he were married.

Part III: Welcome to Cape Canaveral

The AH has five classrooms. Each year, the teachers decide on themes for each of the classrooms, and then decorate them in accordance with the theme. Each room then gets a kitschy name, and everyone then refers to the classroom by its name instead of by a number or something. Anyhow, we were told to come up with ideas for names/themes. I decided to think about the attic classroom. Last year they named it the treehouse, because it is up high. What else is up high? Well, you know I’m a bit of a space nut. Space is up there. Anyhow, we decided that the attic would be Cape Canaveral, and that I would decorate it. I am having way too much fun with this. The reason why I made that sitcom promo thing yesterday, was that I was working on Cape Canaveral decorations. I have actually made each headshot into a head inside a helmet on a space suit, to go all over the ceiling. I am way too proud of this; I am such a geek. I totally will post photos when the project is finished. (And for anyone who might be interested, the other rooms are: Haight-Ashbury, Hollywood Blvd, Pennsylvania Ave, and Main St. We could not come up with a space related street, so we simply used Cape Canaveral.)