The interviews conducted in 2016 in Russia include many of the women who pioneered gender and women’s studies in the Russian academy. According to Natal’ia Pushkareva, who coordinated the Russian project and conducted the interviews, the team sought to find interviewees who would talk openly about their experiences in women’s and gender studies and how they have connected their research to activism. The team looked for respondents across generations, disciplines, and professions, but the effort to create a representative cross-section was limited by some potential interviewees’ refusal to speak on camera. The interviews conducted in Russia include many of the women who pioneered gender and women’s studies in the Russian academy, and include their reflections on changes in the political landscape over the period up to and including Putin’s leadership. The Russia episode of Contextualizing Feminist Voices, recorded in 2021, provides additional information on the country site.
Elena Iarskaia-Smirnova
Elena Iarskaia-Smirnova, born in 1963, had dual degrees in social work and sociology. She is a professor of sociology at the Higher School of Economics at the National Research University in Moscow, Russia, where she is a leading research fellow and the editor of the Journal of Social Policy Studies. Her professional research interests include social policy, sociology of professions, gender and disability, family and children, and qualitative research methods.
Keywords: academia and women's studies, art/writing as activism, education
Media: Transcript (English, Russian), Video (Russian), YouTube Video (Russian, English), Name Pronunciation Audio
Natal’ia Iur’evna Kamenetskaia
Natal'ia Iur'evna Kamenetskaia was born in Moscow in 1959 and is an art historian, an exhibition curator, the author of critical articles on issues of women in art, and a curator of international and regional art projects. She was one of the first organizers of feminist exhibitions and conferences on gender issues in Russia in the early 1990s. She is also co-founder and director of an independent non-profit cultural organization, Creative Laboratory AAE (Art, Academics, Education).
Keywords: art/writing as activism, academia and women's studies
Media: Transcript (English, Russian), YouTube Video (English, Russian), Name Pronunciation Audio
Yelena Viktorovna Kochkina
Yelena Viktorovna Kochkina, born in 1956, began working in gender research in 1990. Her work focuses on a gender analysis of legal reform in Russia, structural adjustment programs and the implementation of equal opportunity policies in Russia, as well as gender in the Russian education system. She is a research fellow and professor at the Institute of Social and Economic Studies of the Population at the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Keywords: academia and women's studies, politics and the law, intersectionality, community activism, reform of domestic/family roles, feminist conferences
Media: Transcript (English, Russian), YouTube Video (English, Russian), Name Pronunciation Audio
Mariia Grigor’evna Kotovskaia
Mariia Grigor'evna Kotovskaia, born in 1952, is a professor, ethnographer, and anthropologist. She began to research issues related to women and gender in the 1990s and became one of the founders of the Group for Ethno-Gender Research (at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology at the Russian Academy of Sciences). She is on several councils and commissions, particularly for issues such as migration and immigration, family and youth, and women in leadership.
Keywords: academia and women's studies, international rights, feminist conferences
Media: Transcript (English, Russian), Video (English, Russian), YouTube Video (English, Russian), Name Pronunciation Audio
Marina Mikhailovna Malysheva
Marina Mikhailovna Malysheva, born in 1957, is an economist, and at last contact was working as a senior researcher at the Institute of Social Economic Studies of the Population at the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISESP RAS). She was involved in the creation of the Moscow Center of Gender Research in 1990, which was founded to conduct research on essential social issues, to perform gender analyses for social projects and legislative frameworks, and to address gender discrimination in all spheres of society. Malysheva’s professional interests included gender and economics, and gender and family sociology. The GFP staff note with sadness Marina's death in 2019.
Keywords: academia and women's studies
Media: Transcript (English, Russian), Video (Russian), YouTube Video (English, Russian) Name Pronunciation Audio
Mariia Viktorovna Mikhailova
Mariia Viktorovna Mikhailova was born in 1946. At last contact, she was serving as a Distinguished Professor at Moscow State University in the Department of History of Russian Literature of the Contemporary Period and Modern Literary Process. Her focus is the literary creativity of women, women’s literary criticism, and women playwrights of the Silver Age of Russian Literature (from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of 20th century). She was a member of the editorial board of the first feminist literary journal in Russia, Transformation.
Keywords: academia and women's studies, art/writing as activism, education
Media: Transcript (English, Russian), Video (Russian, English Subtitles), Name Pronunciation Audio
Natal’ia L’vovna Pushkareva
Natal'ia L'vovna Pushkareva was born in 1959 in Moscow. A historian by training, at last contact she was the director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology at the Russian Academy of Sciences. Pushkareva is considered to be a principal founder of the field of women’s studies in Russia and served as a collaborator for the Russia portion of the Global Feminisms Project, conducting the majority of the interviews.
Keywords: academia and women's studies, reform of domestic/family roles, education
Media: Transcript (English, Russian), Video (English, Russian), Name Pronunciation Audio
Natal’ia Mikhailovna Rimashevskaia
Natal'ia Mikhailovna Rimashevskaia was born in 1932 in Moscow and is a professor at Moscow State University, and at the Academy of Labor and Social Relations. She helped to create the Laboratory on Issues of Gender at the Institute of Social and Economic Studies of the Population, where she worked until 2005. She is a member of the Russian Academy of Life Sciences and editor of Human Population magazine, and works on issues of demography. The GFP staff note with sadness Natal'ia's death in 2020.
Keywords: reform of domestic/family roles, gender and health
Media: Transcript (English, Russian), Video, YouTube Video (English, Russian), Name Pronunciation Audio
Liubov Vasil’evna Shtyleva
Liubov Vasil'evna Shtyleva, born in 1956, was a teacher of history in public schools before going back to get her doctorate in education. She then taught educational science and psychology at the Murmansk State Pedagogical Institute, worked at the Institute for Social Pedagogy at the Russian Academy of Education, and was the principal research associate at the Institute of Childhood, Family and Upbringing at the Russian Academy of Education. She has worked on issues of education and gender in Russia and internationally.
Keywords: academia and women's studies, reform of domestic/family roles, community activism, feminist conferences
Media: Transcript (English, Russian), YouTube Video (English, Russian), Video (Russian), Name Pronunciation Audio
Olga Aleksandrovna Voronina
Olga Aleksandrovna Voronina, born in 1957, is a writer and philosophy professor at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She was one of the first researchers who began to study feminist theory and women’s movements, and from 1987 to 1990 she was a member of an early feminist grassroots group, Lotus. In 1990, with other colleagues, Voronina helped to found the Moscow Center for Gender Studies (MCGS), where she was director from 1994 to 2015.
Keywords: academia and women's studies, reform of domestic/family roles, feminist conferences
Media: Transcript (English, Russian), Video (Russian, English Dubbed), Name Pronunciation Audio
