- 23 minutes ago
In Russia, women can be admired for their beauty, expected to carry family life, and still dismissed when they pursue power. Writer Elvira Bary draws on her experience growing up in the USSR to unpack this contradiction, from university programs closed to women and workplace discrimination to the everyday rules that divided “men’s work” from “women’s work.”
Tracing the legacy of Soviet claims of equality into modern Russian culture, she explores how gender roles shape careers, relationships, beauty standards, and the booming market for self-help advice. This personal cultural analysis also asks why old expectations endure—and how history and survival shaped them. For viewers interested in Russian society, Soviet history, women’s experiences, and global gender dynamics, this is a nuanced look at the privileges and burdens woven into sexism.
Tracing the legacy of Soviet claims of equality into modern Russian culture, she explores how gender roles shape careers, relationships, beauty standards, and the booming market for self-help advice. This personal cultural analysis also asks why old expectations endure—and how history and survival shaped them. For viewers interested in Russian society, Soviet history, women’s experiences, and global gender dynamics, this is a nuanced look at the privileges and burdens woven into sexism.
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00:00Sexism in Russia is a peculiar paradox.
00:04Women form the majority and wield significant influence.
00:08They run schools, courts, even local governments.
00:12Yet, they are often seen as lesser humans, praised for beauty and dismissed for intellect.
00:19Who maintains this strange balance?
00:21Men who enjoy dominance, certainly.
00:24But women also contribute because sexism offers not just penalties.
00:30But surprising privileges.
00:32I'm Elvira Barry, an author born in the USSR.
00:35Today, I'll show you exactly how sexism shapes Russian women's lives.
00:40Both its hidden benefits and undeniable burdens.
00:50I first encountered sexism when I was in high school.
00:54At that time, our city, Nizhny Novgorod,
00:56was not exactly a hot spot for foreign visitors.
01:01But suddenly, all kinds of American missionaries started showing up.
01:06Religious ones, political ones, you name it.
01:10They saw us as poor, lost souls desperate for a taste of democracy and true religion.
01:17But we weren't really interested in their messages.
01:20We were just excited to see real foreigners in the flesh.
01:26And maybe practice our clumsy English.
01:29Raising your hand after their lecture to ask a clever-sounding question
01:33wasn't about impressing the Americans.
01:36It was about impressing your girlfriends, the real audience we performed for.
01:41I vividly remember attending a talk by an American woman, a professor of some sort.
01:47She was tall, strong, and had a bit of a masculine look.
01:52In her hands, she held a stack of glossy shopping bags covered with images of sexy women.
01:59These bags were wildly popular in the 1990s, imported from Turkey or Poland.
02:05And we proudly carried them to school as proof of our teenage coolness.
02:11This professor started explaining that carrying such bags was sexist and that we shouldn't tolerate it.
02:18Afterward, my girlfriends and I discussed it and quickly reached a unanimous conclusion.
02:25The women on the bags were beautiful.
02:28And the professor clearly wasn't.
02:32So, obviously, she was just jealous.
02:35None of us had any plans to fight for our rights.
02:39Our reality was this.
02:41We were smart, fast-maturing girls growing up in the ruins of the USSR.
02:47Absolutely certain our lives would be completely different and much better than our parents.
02:54We believed we'd conquer the world because we were the smartest and the prettiest.
03:00As for the boys our age, they were scrawny, awkward little chicks who had not even grown into themselves yet.
03:08The idea that they could be superior did not even register.
03:13Sexism, gender oppression, what were they even talking about?
03:18Then came the time to apply to university, and that's when things got interesting.
03:24It turned out some of the most prestigious departments simply didn't accept female applicants.
03:31These were the programs training future diplomats and interpreters.
03:37People who might someday see the world.
03:40Military, police, and intelligence programs are so close to women.
03:45Other programs weren't officially closed, but the gender imbalance was obvious.
03:51Math and engineering were mostly guys.
03:53Teaching, literature, and history were overwhelmingly female.
03:59Sure, plenty of girls excelled in math competitions at school.
04:03But the idea of a female mathematician or physicist still felt off.
04:10Unfeminine.
04:11Almost ridiculous.
04:13You'd picture a dry, slightly eccentric woman with the charm of a wooden stool.
04:19I had no plans to enroll in one of those girly programs.
04:24Thankfully, I was terrible at math, so my femininity was safe.
04:29Instead, I decided to become a lawyer.
04:32Plus, the law department was full of cute boys.
04:35After university, I quickly landed a prestigious job as an administrative assistant at a newly established foreign firm.
04:43My duties included photocopying, printing, answering phones, and, of course, bringing coffee to the bosses.
04:52They clearly loved when a sweet nymph in a short skirt appeared in the doorway at their back and call.
04:59That was me back then.
05:01After a year, I figured my brilliance had had enough time to shine through.
05:06I had a law degree after all.
05:08Surely, they'd start taking me seriously.
05:12Nope.
05:13Nobody promoted me.
05:15Fine, my fault.
05:16If you can't appreciate my talents, you're lost.
05:20I quit and took a job at a law office.
05:23Just for fun, I brought along my then-boyfriend, tall, handsome Losha.
05:28At first, our boss gave us joint assignments.
05:32We worked together on trial strategies totally in sync.
05:36But soon, it became obvious.
05:38The boss was pushing Losha's career forward, while I got sidelined.
05:44Once again, I was expected to serve coffee with a graceful sway of the hips.
05:50Even when I did get clients, I felt they didn't trust me.
05:55One bluntly said,
05:56Sweetheart, you are the kind of girl you take to a sauna, not a courtroom.
06:03It was a cruel joke.
06:05If you were young and attractive, doors opened automatically.
06:10Men drove me home, bought me dinner, solved my problems, all without asking anything in return.
06:16I fully enjoyed those perks.
06:19But it didn't take long to see the glass ceiling and realize it hung very low.
06:31Girls from my generation were raised with one core lesson.
06:35Don't miss your chance while you are young.
06:38Marry well.
06:39Take my grandmother, for instance.
06:42If I refused to clean my room, she'd scold me like this.
06:46One day, you'll invite a suitor over.
06:50He'll check how tidy you are, look under the bed, see the dust, and decide not to marry you.
06:57I'd protest.
06:59Maybe I'll be the one checking under his bed.
07:02But she'd just laugh and say, cleaning is not a man's job.
07:07That was the rule.
07:09Soviet women were expected to serve men.
07:13At social gatherings, it was aromatic.
07:16Men went to the living room to drink beer.
07:19Women headed to the kitchen to chop salads and set the table.
07:23But grilling meat was considered a man's sacred duty.
07:28Meat was expensive, a kind of luxury.
07:31So the saying went,
07:33Shashlyk does not tolerate women's hands.
07:36Household chores were rigidly split.
07:39There was men's work and women's work.
07:43A man who did the later looked weak.
07:45I can't picture my grandfather sewing or mending anything.
07:49Laundry, cleaning, doing the dishes.
07:52That was woman's domain.
07:54The reverse was just as improper.
07:56If a woman chopped wood or did construction work,
08:00it signaled she didn't have a man to do it for her.
08:04A sign that something was wrong in her life.
08:07And yet, women still did heavy labor.
08:10My grandmother hauled water in giant buckets and rinsed laundry by hand in the river.
08:16Even in winter.
08:19Because her house had no running water.
08:22Until I was about seven, I had never seen a woman behind the wheel of a car.
08:26I still remember the first time I did.
08:28I was so shocked.
08:30I kept pestering the adults.
08:32Why is that woman driving?
08:34Doesn't she know women aren't supposed to do that?
08:37Sexism did not stop there.
08:39It seeped into the sexual sphere too.
08:43In a previous video, I talked about how Russia puts men on a pedestal,
08:48partly due to catastrophic losses in past wars.
08:52That shortage inflated men's social value.
08:55So many men felt entitled to women's attention or to their bodies.
09:01All of my Russian girlfriends from that era have stories of being harassed or assaulted.
09:07A man might smack your butt on the street and call it a joke.
09:11On packed buses, someone might grope you.
09:14There was no escape.
09:16But in working class families, there was also another reality.
09:21Women could use sex as leverage.
09:24You could give it or withhold it.
09:27Sex became a bargaining chip.
09:30Women didn't need it, supposedly.
09:32But men couldn't live without it.
09:35So he had to earn it.
09:37But I only heard this kind of thinking from people who grew up in small towns or villages.
09:43Places with deep patriarchal roots.
09:45In Soviet law, only women got maternity leave when the child was born.
09:50If a child got sick, everyone assumed the mother would stay home.
09:55Courts almost always gave custody to mothers.
09:58Men weren't seen as capable parents.
10:01And if a man was courting a woman, he always paid.
10:07Refusing to pay meant instant disqualification.
10:10Why would any woman want that kind of man?
10:13Calling him stingy was like saying he had a shameful disease.
10:18These norms have changed, but only on the surface.
10:21Today, much still depends on the woman and the context.
10:25But in most situations, women still expect men to spend money on them.
10:35The Soviet Union was one of the first countries in the world to declare that women were equal to men.
10:42And it did so way back in the early 20th century.
10:45But as with many things in Soviet life, what was written on paper had little to do with reality.
10:52What actually happened was that women were granted the right to do hard labor.
10:58Work they'd have done anyway.
11:00After several devastating wars, there simply weren't enough men left.
11:05Real equality? Not even close.
11:09Low-paid, low-prestige jobs, cleaners, cloakroom attendants, janitors,
11:14were overwhelmingly filled by women, both in the USSR and well into the post-Soviet years.
11:22Still, the authorities had to pretend they care about the women's question.
11:27Russia never had a committee for men's affairs, but it had plenty for women.
11:33There was and still is a national holiday for women, March 8th, International Women's Day.
11:39Men had no equivalent, but February 23rd, Soviet Army and Navy Day, quietly filled that role.
11:47There were whole organizations and magazines just for Soviet women.
11:56There were no men's magazines because everything serious already belonged to men by default.
12:04Science, engineering, politics, international affairs, hunting, fishing – those were male domains.
12:11Seeing a woman read about soccer or hockey would have been almost comical.
12:17The state needed female role models – symbols of equality and progress.
12:22In the 1920s, these were women in creative fields – artists, musicians, political activists.
12:30Under Stalin, a new kind of female hero emerged.
12:33To glorify sacrifice and labor, the media spotlighted working-class women – tractor drivers, milkmaids,
12:41metal workers. They were praised in newspapers, awarded medals and called paragons of socialist virtue.
12:49A few even made it to Moscow and rose through party ranks.
12:53But let's be honest, no one actually dreamed of becoming a cow milker or a cow miner just to end
13:01up in a newspaper.
13:03Real prestige still meant being an actress, a ballerina or an athlete.
13:09And if you had to be a national symbol, better to be Marina Raskova, the pilot, or Valentina Tereshkova, the
13:17cosmonaut.
13:18There was another respected role for women – the connector.
13:23In the USSR, important things didn't happen through systems. They happened through people.
13:29If you needed surgery and your town lacked skilled doctors, you had to get into a Moscow hospital.
13:37How? Through someone who knew someone.
13:41Often, that middle man was a woman.
13:44Contrary to popular belief, not everything was solved with bribes.
13:49Many things ran on favors. That was the informal economy.
13:54You help me now, I help you later.
13:57But to join that world, you needed something to offer – connections, access, influence.
14:04If you had nothing, you were useless in that favor-based system.
14:08That system was known as BLOOD, and I have a whole video on it if you are curious.
14:15No one expected women to reach high-level leadership roles in the USSR.
14:20When they did, it seemed strange, unnatural.
14:24The assumption was that something must have gone wrong in their personal life.
14:29Maybe she couldn't have kids.
14:32Maybe no man wanted her.
14:34This idea was perfectly captured in the famous Soviet film Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears.
14:41The heroine becomes a factory director.
14:44An impressive title.
14:46But she's alone. No husband, no equal.
14:49In the end, she finds a skilled working-class man who is not her social equal,
14:55but emotionally balances her out.
14:58That's what made the story acceptable.
15:01Soviet women were expected to work, but not to rise too high.
15:06Becoming a doctor, a judge, a mid-level official – fine.
15:11But if a woman made it to the top, people whispered.
15:15Even today, this thinking survives.
15:17Take Valentina Matveyenko, now chair of the Federal Council.
15:21People say she climbed the ladder thanks to her strong liver.
15:25She supposedly drank with party bosses in the 70s and 80s.
15:30Her nickname?
15:31Valentina the Vodka Glass.
15:34Or take Margarita Simonyan, head of Russia Today.
15:37The rumor is she got the job and its massive budget because of her relationship with a Kremlin media boss.
15:45Whether those stories are true doesn't even matter.
15:48What matters is that when a woman gains power, people expect an explanation.
15:54Among regular people, not much has changed.
15:58The most common job for women is still store clerk.
16:02And women still dominate roles as caretakers and educators.
16:08From birth until 18, Russian children grew up in an entirely female world.
16:15Moms, grandmas, teachers, nurses, pediatricians, librarians.
16:21Naturally, that shapes how boys see the world and themselves.
16:26They don't feel part of that female realm.
16:29But they are also not fully welcomed into a male one.
16:33At some point, they must resolve that tension.
16:37Some try to assert dominance over women.
16:40Others surrender to feminine authority.
16:43Few ever find a healthy balance.
16:46After the USSR collapsed, the roles began to shift.
16:51Many women stepped up, became breadwinners, got degrees and entered fields previously reserved for men.
16:59Like law, finance, even programming.
17:02But society was far more comfortable with women in roles requiring precision, attention to detail or nurturing.
17:10Traits that didn't threaten gender expectations.
17:14So, yes, a woman could be a banker or a business owner.
17:19But an inventor, a political philosopher, a president, still unthinkable.
17:26As one of my elderly relatives once said, we don't need some broad running in the country.
17:31In 2004, Irina Hakamada ran for president.
17:35She got less than 4% of the vote.
17:39Of course, it wasn't free election.
17:41But the real obstacle wasn't voters.
17:45It was the bureaucracy.
17:47You need regional officials to back you.
17:50Without them, your campaign goes nowhere.
17:53Even the language itself shows the divide.
17:55Some job titles are gender neutral – teachers, judge, notary.
18:00Others are strictly male – soldier, officer, shepherd.
18:05Others are purely female – milkmaid, nanny, nurse.
18:09You can add feminine endings to masculine job titles.
18:13But they often sound silly or dismissive.
18:17Professor becomes professorsa.
18:20Poet becomes poetessa.
18:21Professor – engineer, inventor, director – all become subtly diminished when feminized.
18:27In literature, women are accepted.
18:30But only in certain genres – children's books, romance, family sagas, light fiction.
18:36Women's literature is still an insult.
18:39As if women can't write great sci-fi or serious historical fiction.
18:44But you don't have to take my word for it.
18:46Read my novels.
18:47Especially the Russian Treasures series.
18:50Or just sample the tone and style on my YouTube channel Elvira Bari Forbidden Books.
18:56See for yourself.
19:02Nothing I've described so far lead to real happiness for anyone.
19:07Women don't feel fully seen or valued.
19:10And men?
19:11They are stuck in an endless loop of trying to prove they are masculine enough.
19:16At the root of all this is something deeper.
19:20Our world has changed dramatically.
19:23But our behavioral scripts have not.
19:26We are still running on old code.
19:29Take success, for example.
19:31Most people's idea of success today is not based on reality.
19:34It's based on curated snapshots from social media.
19:39From Polish influencers, glossy TV dramas, and endless streams of lifestyle content.
19:46Everyone has a smartphone.
19:48Everyone scrolls.
19:50And even though Instagram is officially banned in Russia, everyone uses it anyway.
19:56Imagine living in Puchish, a crumbling little town in Ivanov region.
20:02The roads are broken.
20:04The men are half drunk.
20:06Your prospects are bleak.
20:08Then you open Instagram, and suddenly it's Paris, Dubai, Moscow nightclubs.
20:16You are not just poor anymore.
20:18You are invisible.
20:20You start to ask, what did I do wrong?
20:24Why do they get to live like that?
20:26And I don't.
20:28For some women, the dream becomes simple.
20:31Send your husband to fight in Ukraine.
20:34Hope he brings home something.
20:37Money, status, or just a new future.
20:40Anything.
20:40This tension leads to mass frustration.
20:43And where there's frustration, there's always a market.
20:47Look at Russia's booming self-help industry.
20:50It reveals what people secretly crave.
20:53There are endless online courses for women.
20:56How to fix your relationship.
20:59How to attract the right man.
21:01How to unleash your feminine energy.
21:03How to become magnetic.
21:05Some courses teaches you to channel female magic.
21:08To subtly influence your man and make him more successful.
21:13Others teach you to reinvent yourself as a resourceful man magnet.
21:18There's even a word for it.
21:21It describes a woman so irresistible, men notice her the second she enters the room.
21:28That's the fantasy.
21:30That's what many Russian women want to become.
21:33And why wouldn't they?
21:34Many women would love not to work at all.
21:37They want to focus on family, art, or personal projects.
21:42But that requires a certain kind of man.
21:45One who can provide, stay loyal, and not run off with the first 20-year-old who smiles at him.
21:52Others do want careers.
21:54They want to build something of their own.
21:57But they keep hitting invisible selling.
22:00Because at the highest level, Russian power remains a man-only club.
22:06Real decisions still happen behind closed doors.
22:10In private restaurants.
22:11In exclusive gyms.
22:14Or in saunas.
22:15The message is clear.
22:17This space is not for you.
22:19Even successful women often get treated as accessories.
22:22Trophies.
22:23Not partners.
22:24That's why you still see so many Russian oligarchs with stunning wives.
22:28Or at least glamorous mistresses.
22:31A beautiful woman is still considered a man's status symbol.
22:35But if she dares to stop acting like one.
22:38If she refuses to play along.
22:40It's seen as disrespect.
22:42An insult to male pride.
22:44She's not viewed as someone with her own ideas or dreams.
22:49She's viewed as someone who dared to diminish a man's importance.
22:53That's why we keep seeing brutal scandals online.
22:57Where powerful men retaliate against women who left or rejected them.
23:02It's not about love.
23:04Not even about jealousy.
23:06It's about humiliation.
23:07Because deep down, they believe no woman should have the power to define a man's worth.
23:13And if she tries, she must be punished.
23:18Men's self-help courses, by the way, are a different story.
23:22Learn to invest.
23:23Learn to code.
23:24Build muscles.
23:26Get shredded.
23:27Get rich.
23:28Fast.
23:29They focus on image repair.
23:32How to become respectable.
23:34How to win back power.
23:36In this game, women are either a reward or a tool to get there.
23:41Meanwhile, relationships are in full-blown crisis.
23:45Roughly 70% of marriages in Russia end in divorce.
23:50Even among couples who stay together, happiness is rare.
23:54The real issue.
23:55Men and women have wildly different expectations.
23:59For women, it's
24:00Which resourceful, desirable man will fall in love with me, give me his resources, and make me his number one
24:09priority?
24:10For men, it's
24:11Which attractive woman will run my household, support me in everything, admire me, and never challenge my authority?
24:19In both cases, people want to feel so uniquely valuable that someone else will sacrifice everything just to keep them.
24:28But that's not love.
24:30That's a childhood wound.
24:32The only people we sacrifice everything for unconditionally are our children.
24:38And that's the heartbreaking truth.
24:41Millions of people in Russia are still trying to fill the hole left by the love they never received.
24:48They are emotionally orphaned.
24:51Still looking for someone to adopt them.
24:53Someone to say,
24:55You matter.
24:56You are safe now.
24:57And after everything Russia has lived through in the past hundred years,
25:02is it really any wonder?
25:08You'll still hear it said, casually, confidently, often.
25:12Women will never be equal to men.
25:15They've never created anything great in all of human history.
25:20To which I always want to reply, that includes your body.
25:24But let's be honest, this bias didn't come out of nowhere.
25:29For most of human history, people did not live past 35 or 45.
25:35And during those short lives, women got pregnant anywhere from 8 to 15 times.
25:42Many of those pregnancies ended in miscarriage, caused by overwork, malnutrition, or infection.
25:49And many babies did not survive.
25:51So, to keep the population from collapsing, women had to be pregnant almost constantly.
25:58That was your great-grandmother's life, surviving childbirth, again and again.
26:03And I can say this from personal experience.
26:06Pregnancy and breastfeeding change everything.
26:09Your energy drops.
26:11Your focus narrows to your child.
26:13Your hormonal sleep-deprived, overwhelmed.
26:16And yes, your decision-making suffers.
26:20I breastfed a baby for nearly a year.
26:23Could I have done anything great during that time?
26:26Of course not.
26:28My body and mind were fully occupied.
26:32Now imagine spending most of your adult life either pregnant, giving birth, or nursing.
26:37No anesthesia, no antibiotics, no support systems.
26:41It wasn't just hard, it was deadly.
26:44Look up royal biographies on Wikipedia.
26:47Count how many queens died in childbirth.
26:50And they had access to the best doctors available.
26:54Now imagine what it was like for ordinary women.
26:57If you had a daughter, you didn't know if she'd survive her first birth.
27:03And even if she did, she might die during her 5th or 15th.
27:10So people saw their daughters as fragile, high-risk investments.
27:15Add economic pressure to the mix.
27:18In harsh climates like Northern Russia, a man could survive long.
27:22A woman without a man?
27:24Much harder.
27:26She couldn't cut firewood or plow fields.
27:29She needed protection, physically and economically.
27:32So daughters were often seen not as future earners, but as mouths to feed.
27:38A liability.
27:39Seen in that brutal context, sexism made perfect sense.
27:43It was a survival strategy.
27:45But that world is gone.
27:48Women stopped dying in childbirth.
27:50They stopped having a dozen children.
27:52They learned to earn their own money, build their own lives.
27:56And yet, the old norms didn't disappear.
28:00They are still quietly shaping our assumptions about what women should be,
28:06what they can do, and what they are worth.
28:10If you found this deep dive helpful, subscribe for more honest explorations of Russian society,
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28:25I value your time and your curiosity.
28:30More knowledge in ÀP
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28:32Wake up.