Gender Tendency of Russian Political Activity from the Perspective of Jurisprudence

Abstract

The article Russian women is considered as a subjects of constitutional and administrative law and studies different characteristics of their political activity: Conservation of patriarchal tendency as precondition of actual inequality of men and women in the political sphere; formal indices of women's political activity in the Soviet times, their quantitative and qualitative reduction during perestroika and in contemporary times; disregard of different recommendations given by international organizations on the issue of gender parity and overcoming evident gender gap in politics and power-holding structures; retardation of legislative decisions on gender quotas and contradiction between the real practice and the principle of gender equality stated in the legislation on political parties. The article examines the contradictory phenomenon of civic engagement of Russian men and women: The average quantity of women in the Public Chambers of the Russian Federation reaches the level of one-third; the quantity of men in the grass-roots opposition movement prevails; women vote generally for the governing party showing conservatism rather than a thoroughly taken decision. The article claims that unsteady gender situation in the given sphere is the result of a certain impact of the following factors: Marginal condition of gendered discourse, the authority's interest in conservation of the traditional gender roles, the same influence of the major religious denominations on public opinion and indirectly on policy decisions.