Living Like a Girl: Agency, Social Vulnerability and Welfare Measures in Europe and Beyond

In recent decades, large-scale social changes have taken place in Europe. Ranging from neoliberal social policies to globalization and the growth of EU, these changes have significantly affected the conditions in which girls shape their lives. Living Like a Girl explores the relationship between changing social conditions and girls’ agency, with a particular focus on social services such as school programs and compulsory institutional care. The contributions in this collected volume seek to expand our understanding of contemporary European girlhood by demonstrating how social problems are managed in different cultural contexts, political and social systems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Release date: Aug 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781800731486

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PART I

Agency and Embodiment

Girls Gendered Experiences of Vulnerability and Social Problems

CHAPTER 1

Girlhood and Agency in a Turbulent Society

Russian Girls Caught in the Maze of a Conservative Turn

Olga Zdravomyslova and Elena Onegina

Introduction

At the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century, as girls and boys who were born in the late 1990s and early 2000s started to grow actively into adulthood, the generation gap within Russian society became clearer and the concept of ‘Putin’s generation’ took shape. Girls and boys of this generation are different from their elders: the ‘Soviet legacy’ is not part of their biography but a story they have never witnessed themselves. However, findings from multiple studies suggest that there are more similarities than differences in the values and social memory of older and younger generations (Kasamara and Urnov 2016; Radaev 2018).

Despite the significant changes caused by post-Soviet transformations, this does not seem surprising: throughout the 2000s the state has been building a policy of belonging based on continuity with the Soviet past, understood as a continuation of Russia’s centuries-old history. In the 2000s, the concept of transition to Western democracy has been revised in the West (Rose 2009; Greene 2014) and the multiple ruptures and continuities with Soviet legacy have been revealed, including the specificities of gender policies and arrangements (Gal and Kligman 2000).

A crucial rethinking and revision of the concept of the transition of Russia towards Western democracy coincides with the beginning of a conservative turn – a consistent political course of the state under Putin’s presidency. The 2000s saw the emergence of what one could describe as a refurbished quasi-Soviet model, one that is now based on a conservative set of values – ‘moral foundations’ that a citizen ‘first embraces within the family and that form the core of patriotism’ (Putin 2000). These values, closely related to the feeling of belonging to the state and Orthodox Christianity, are considered as Russian traditional values, a ‘unified cultural code’ (Putin 2012). Criticism of the West and European liberal values is an integral part of the policies of belonging, aimed at rallying the majority behind the state, which declares the protection of traditional Russian values. This drives the paternalistic discourse of the government and the church, which gets codified in legislation, affects the education concept and is promoted in the mass media.

In recent years, gender has been politicized: family values, reproductive rights as well as the rights of sexual minorities are at the forefront of an aggressive public discourse of there being no alternative to the ‘unitary model of sexual character’ (Connell 1987) and traditional model of gender relations. The demographic problem is also moving to the top of agenda¹ declared in 2019 as a priority for Russia. Since the solution is seen in driving the birth rates, girls – future mothers – become the target group for the gender, family and youth policies and propaganda.

What is particularly important is that the anti-Western, dominative conservative discourse is not monopolistic since all social groups in Russia have to adapt to lot of elements of ‘Western’ and ‘universal’ in cultural and consumer practices and in everyday life (Dubin 2010: 11). The girls and boys do not see Europe and the West as alien and hostile forces (Gudkov, Dubin and Zorkaya 2011). In recent years, despite the growing conservative trend and anti-Western rhetoric, ‘for young Russians, Europe still remains an important benchmark for opportunities and desired level of wellbeing’ (Pipiya 2018). Girls are involved in global culture much more deeply and strongly than their older counterparts, but they are sensitive to the increased normative pressure from the state and the church. This requires girls to have inner strength, independence and the ability to reflect in order to act and make choices.

The aim of the chapter is to analyse how the conflicting trends constructing the turbulent context of today’s Russia feature in girls’ understandings about themselves and their agency. First, we discuss the increasing role of the state and the Orthodox Church in the construction of conservative gender order. Then we focus on the discussion about young femininity and the growing visibility of alternative girlhoods. Finally, we analyse three interviews with girls conducted as part of the ‘Sense of Group’ Russian-French study (Kourilsky-Augeven and Zdravomyslova 2017), which was the third stage of the comparative Russian-French study about legal representations of girls and boys aged 12 to 20 years. The first stage was carried out in 1993, the second in the beginning of 2000 (Aroutiunian, Kourilsky-Augeven and Zdravomyslova 2008). In 1993, the method of spontaneous associations was used in relation to the concepts and values related to law. In the next stage of the study, this method was supplemented by a questionnaire-based survey. In the third stage, ten interviews were conducted in 2017–2018: the respondents stated their understanding of freedom, responsibility, solidarity and how these values are related to belonging to communities (family, peer group, country). In this chapter, we analyse the interviews with three girls from middle-class families. Anastasia (16 years old), Katerina (20 years old) and Alina (18 years old) discuss their ideas about family and society, the opportunities and challenges they face.

Girlhood and Power

In the 1990s, the ‘patriarchal renaissance’ that replaced paternalism in women’s policy and the official ideology of gender equality became a common phenomenon for Russia and the post-socialist countries of Eastern Europe. In all these countries, there was a clear trend towards women’s and girls’ exclusion from high-income groups, with them becoming socially vulnerable and facing increased risks of failure and poverty (Zdravomyslova 2003; Bento-Ribeiro 2015). In gender studies, the ‘patriarchal renaissance’, or revival of the traditional gender model in the private and public sphere is defined as a phenomenon expressing growing gender inequality in transitional societies. The perception of man as the breadwinner of the family and the subject of power in the public sphere intensified in the 2000s and was successfully passed on to the younger generation (Gradskova 2015).

In 2000, a liberal model of family and private life as a sphere of women’s self-realization was built in Russia. This model is being implemented in middle-class families, where ‘a strong autonomous woman wants to plan her sexual life, family relations, reproductive behaviour, and childbearing. She wants to be financially independent and be able to take care of her loved ones. At the same time, the polarization of gender roles persists’ (Zdravomyslova and Temkina 2009: 13–14). This model, being addressed to girls, approaches the concept of girl power. This phenomenon can be defined as encouraging girls to be ‘simultaneously traditional objects and powerful subject’ (Tormulainen, Mulari and Voipio 2017: 49).

From ‘Patriarchal Renaissance’ to Conservative Gender Order

Notably, during the Perestroika era and the 1990s, neither Russian cinema nor literature brought forth a strong, independent girl protagonist capable of becoming a new role model (Inggs 2015). In fact, we saw numerous versions of the girl character who had no choice: the girl was most often depicted as a victim of social cataclysms and personal circumstances she could not influence. There was an increased public discourse of a girl-at-risk in need of control and care.

This is a direct continuation of the Soviet tradition, in which the gender order was framed by the state (Zdravomyslova and Temkina 2003). Girls were seen as subjects to the disciplining influence of the state and the school (Gradskova 2015).

The modern Russian state continues this tradition, adding to it the significantly increased influence of the Orthodox Church. The Church has become an ideological and political actor. It actively intervenes in matters related to the framing of gender socialization. The Church seeks to limit sexuality education² in schools by eliminating the topics of ‘non-traditional sexual orientation’ that are considered imposed by Western propaganda. The Church seeks to limit women’s and girls’ right to abortion, at least removing it from the general medical insurance plan. Although experts argue that the number of abortions among girls under 18 has been decreasing since the 1990s, the rate of teenage pregnancy remains high (Sakevich 2018). President Putin supported a proposal by the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) to enshrine in the Constitution the concept of marriage as the union of a man and a woman (TASS 2020). Thus, heterosexuality is becoming a constitutional norm, opening up the possibility of the ROC further strengthening its role in institutionalizing a gender order.

Russian family policy is an important area in framing a conservative gender order. The family policy has evolved from the predominantly liberal model of the 1990s, focused on supporting low-income families, to the modern pronatalist model. The latter seeks to address the country’s demographic problems primarily through financial support and is focused on large families as an ideal norm (Chernova 2011: 108). The gender analysis of family policy demonstrates the state’s focus on supporting a single model that is recognized as normative and described as a ‘happy young family’. It includes a legal marriage; it also assumes that ‘a family needs to have as many children as is required to support the region’s expanded reproductive potential’ (Chernova 2011: 110). Thus, the modern family policy only ‘sees’ and supports the traditional family type, excluding the diversity of family forms, and actually pushing them beyond the norm.

In the 1990s, the ‘patriarchal renaissance’ was largely the result of the economic crisis and was in conflict with family and gender policies, which were geared towards the liberal model and gender equality norms. In contrast, in the 2000s the state framed the norms of a conservative gender order, which became formalized in law and sought to impose the traditional norms of young femininity defining motherhood as a woman’s natural destiny and main goal in life. In this regard, one can refer to gender researchers Oleg Riabov and Tatyana Riabova who highlight an important feature of the Putin regime that contributes to its popularity. This is the ‘remasculinization of Russia’, achieved by creating attractive images of national masculinity and attributing masculine characteristics to the country (Riabov and Riabova 2014).

The State is trying to create an education and upbringing programme for teenage girls on this basis. In 2008, a boarding house for girls aged 10 to 18 was opened in Moscow and the second one was created later in St Petersburg by the Russian Government’s Decree and the Order of the Russian Ministry of Defence. The boarding house cooperates with fifteen of the country’s leading universities. During their stay at the boarding school, girls should develop a ‘full Russian identity’, learn ‘female behavioural patterns’ and ‘understand the meaning of motherhood’ (Rotkevich 2019). On the one hand, the boarding school education claims to provide the basis for girls to continue with their education and make a successful career in the future. On the other hand, the principle of separate education and segregated upbringing of boys and girls is being implemented. Methodology-wise, the ideology is based on essentialism, which over the past two decades has become a common view of the gender approach in Russian education (Isupova 2018).

This pedagogical approach can be viewed as part of the wider trend towards replicating the disciplining practices of the Soviet school and to framing a continuity between pre-revolutionary, Soviet and post-Soviet models of femininity.

Towards the Discussion about Young Femininity

In contrast to the West, where since the 1990s, the public and researchers have consistently focused on girls moving into adulthood (Harris 2003), ‘the idea of the girl as a site of both resistance and conformity’ (Driscoll 2008: 20) is just beginning to be discussed in Russia. The conservative discourse is becoming the predominant ‘way of speaking about girls’ (Driscoll 2002: 5). This was evident at the very beginning of the conservative turn – in the first half of the 2000s.

A statement by a liberal public opinion leader, Russian author Viktor Erofeyev, is significant in this regard. His essay ‘Why are Russian Beauties Becoming Cheaper?’, published in 2004, actually echoes the reasoning, logic and invectives found in Eliza Lynn Linton’s essay ‘Girl of the Period’, written in Victorian England. In 1868, Linton spoke in defence of the ‘old’ ideal of a noble and humble girl threatened by both the ideas of women’s emancipation and of the ‘new woman’, and the new consumption practices winning the minds and hearts of girls: ‘No one can say of the modern English girl that she is tender, loving, retiring, or domestic’ (Linton 1868: 339–40). Linton was urging the girls to return ‘to the old English ideal’. Linton’s essay is remarkable in that it highlighted the transformed status of girlhood in the era of modernity: girl adolescence was recognized as a problem associated with the crisis of the traditional ideal of femininity, undermining its perceived invariability and monolithic nature. There is evidence to suggest that in the 2000s in Russia, the comprehension of girlhood was at a similar stage.

In 2004, and later in 2011, Erofeyev begins his reasoning with calling ‘new Russian girls’ the destroyers of femininity and blaming them for having lost their bearings – ‘the philosophical basis of life’, which is embodied in the image³ of the ‘Turgenev girl’, whose meaning in life is love and sacrifice. The writer is repelled and frightened by the aggressiveness of girls, which is manifest in their desire to compete in the sex market (Erofeyev 2004). The writer reproaches the ‘new Russian girl’ for craving pleasure and earning to ‘make an impression of being’ rich if not actually ‘being’ rich (‘she lives beyond her means’, ‘is drawn to the life of the middle class’, ‘increasingly wants money from men’). Erofeyev warns that ‘new Russian girls’ build a model of female behaviour that ‘consists of mutually exclusive concepts. The girl is romantic and pragmatic, naive and calculating, chaste and lustful. . . . She stands with her one foot in the field of Russian classical culture, in its ruins, and at a disco with the other’ (Erofeyev 2011). To paraphrase Raewyn Connell (1987), we can say that the conservative rhetoric is a measure to judge the tensions inherent in the gender order. Erofeyev quite accurately recorded the destruction of the traditional mode of girlhood, the emergence of new ways of being a girl and the lack of public discussion.

In the 1990s the Russian media market saw the emergence of publications seeking to capture the audience of girls-teenagers (Azhgikhina 2018). However, the priority of the mass media targeting girls was to transform them into consumers and promote goods and services through commercial exploitation of the topic of girlhood. In her research, Nadezhda Azhgikhina noted that since the early 2000s, the space of girls’ free reading where the feminist agenda was present started to shrink rapidly as the range of commercial publications filled with advertising and aimed at promoting consumerism was expanding. These publications, as well as the growing number of girls’ blogs (the most typical blogger is a 22 year old girl living in Moscow), offer the image of a ‘stylish girl’ and post recommendations by psychologists, makeup artists, chefs, etc. (Azhgikhina 2018). The desire for commercial success and emphasis on sexuality is combined with freedom as far as the norms of traditional femininity are concerned.

Challenges of the Alternative Girlhoods

The year of 2012 is considered a turning point in the politics of the Putin regime, which was faced with the problem of finding a new ideological justification for its legitimacy. Fidelity to traditional values (Orthodoxy, the authority of the family and the state) was designated as the essence of politics (Budraitskis 2019: 16–19). It is directly related to an aggressive campaign which began against the girls’ punk group Pussy Riot who were accused of hooliganism after their protest action in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. The conviction of Pussy Riot showed the rise of the authority of the Church in defining the rules of public behaviour and moral norms for girls and women. It is no mere coincidence that the conservative turn policy⁴ was legally framed immediately after the Pussy Riot performance.

Sociologist Elena Gapova describes the performance as ‘a political and feminist protest (girrrlpower!)’ (2012: 13). In particular, the provocative rally of Pussy Riot made ‘other girls’ visible. The majority of Russians did not understand what feminism or alternative girlhood had to do with it. At the same time, they condemned them for the attack on traditional values and institutions (whether it be the state, the Orthodox Church, the family), and heterosexuality. The reaction of authorities, the church and a large part of society to the Pussy Riot performance was a sign of a cultural division. Gapova emphasizes the fact that Pussy Riot produced a symbol that has proved to be ‘global’ due to a number of factors at work in the post-material world. These are first of all the politicization of the (girl) body/body image and the availability of digital media and social networks as channels for rapid information dissemination (Gapova 2012: 15).

Since July 2016, when the ‘I Am Not Afraid to Say’ flash mob was held across social networks, the Russian discourse of girlhood has embraced the topic of resistance to violence. The flash mob, launched by Ukrainian journalist Nastya Melnichenko, was joined by hundreds of girls and women in Russia, who told, via social networks, their stories of harassment, violence and rape. Through social networks, girls participate in discussing situations of violence that girls themselves or their friends have faced. In February 2018, three female journalists accused a State Duma deputy, Leonid Slutsky, of sexual harassment. The emerging public conflict revealed that Russian society is divided but is ready to discuss it (Zdravomyslova 2018). Thanks to feminists and the solidarity of girls and young women in social networks, harassment has broken out of the zone of silence although the legal mechanisms of addressing it have been blocked.

The ‘I Am Not Afraid to Say’ flash mob and the Slutsky case have become landmark cultural and political conflicts, showing that coercion to remain silent is an effective form of control of girls and women, and that a struggle against a ban on discussion about girlhood is a struggle for agency.

The gap between the realities of girls’ life and neo-traditionalism, actively pursued by the state and the church in the second decade of the twenty-first century, is growing. However, independence, freedom of choice, non-acceptance of violence have become unconditional priorities for girls.

Girls about Themselves

In searching for a balance between the requirements of a conservative policy and liberal norms, girls demonstrate different logics; they focus on different behaviours to expand their space for agency.

Girlhood under Multiple Demands (Anastasia)

Girls today face conflicting and tougher social demands. These include many criteria, including readiness for motherhood, beauty, sexuality, fidelity, independence and emancipation (Gentina and Chandon 2014: 16). These demands become imperative for Anastasia, a 16-year-old schoolgirl, who describes in her interview her image of a desired future. The absolute requirement is to be the mistress of the house, a good mother:

You should be a good housewife; you should be exactly the ‘keeper of the hearth’. You have to be a good mother. Having kids is very important. You should also be able to be aggressive and, if necessary, stand up for yourself and your loved ones. You need to have the strength of character, and you also need to look beautiful, well-groomed.

An equally imperative requirement for Anastasia is a career: ‘You can’t, just marry a rich man and stay at home. You have to fulfil yourself, move up the career ladder. You have to be a leader and not to hope that someone will do something for you’. Anastasia sees a woman who does not meet these requirements as a negative role model. The traditional idea of girlhood as a binary opposition of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, turning here into the neoliberal opposition of a successful and ‘unsuccessful’ woman, who does not expect to succeed in life and who manifests low ambitions, is extremely persistent.

She is a woman without higher education, single, not sociable, does not want to start a family, to get married. She is content with whatever little she has. Constantly working as a waitress or a sales assistant, for example, and she is ok with it. She doesn’t want to study, make a career and then earn good money and help her parents when they get old. She doesn’t stay in touch with her parents at all.

Anastasia describes the difference between the positive and negative role models, which basically represents the unequal chances of girls and women from different social groups. Nevertheless, for Anastasia a failure to succeed is seen as individual weakness. The negative role model is a woman who has refused or was deprived of family support, so she does not have enough resources, she is a failure, while the value of success is important for Anastasia.

As the gap between wealthy and poor families becomes more pronounced, a family’s social capital not only becomes significant but is often the only factor determining the girl’s aspirations and their life chances (Gudkov, Dubin and Zorkaya 2011). Anastasia believes that the most reliable model is the traditional multi-generational family, in which resources, women’s skills and a clear division of gender roles are inherited:

From grandmother to mother, important qualities are passed on to the next generations of women. In our family, a man (a grandfather) is the head of the family and the boss, he earns money and owns everything – the apartment is registered in his ownership, as well as the country house. And this is right. And grandmother is in charge of everything that is done at home. That is, grandpa is the breadwinner, and grandma keeps the house.

Thus, Anastasia’s choice to respond to the pressure of multiple demands is a deliberate acceptance of the traditional family and the patterns of behaviour shown by her elder family members. It is characteristic that in her reasoning, there is no place for the society and the state. She relies on the help and resources of the parental family, counting on the support of the husband – breadwinner in the future. This is, it seems, exactly the type of reasoning that a policy of conservative turn implies. At the same time the value of individual success compromises traditional ideals of femininity by forcing Anastasia to follow the idea of an independent ‘can-do’ girl.

Urge for Agency as a New Way of Living (Katherina and Alina)

By denying the conflict of generational values, Katherina, a 20-year-old student, recognizes changes. The most important for her is the discovery of new spaces of choice in the private and public areas that are inaccessible to older generations:

Our generation is different from my parents’ generation – it’s not a difference in values, but rather in tools. A family has a dominant role; it’s a fundamental value. I want to have stable employment, to have two children, just like in the Soviet times. And to have some partner who would understand me, appreciate and respect me. Nothing changes in term of values overall. But the practices we use are different. They cover family, childbearing.

The availability of new contraceptives dramatically changes the attitudes of young women towards their decisions about having a child, which are now made in a more thoughtful way. This is a clear break from the reproductive abortion-driven culture of their mothers’ generation: ‘I understand that I don’t need to have a child at 20–22 and can postpone it until you are 30, for example. And I’ll be using contraception that’s more accessible than in my parents’ days’.

Katherina says that Internet platforms such as Youtube and Instagram are becoming convenient tools for discussion, fostering solidarity and at the same time building an autonomous space of freedom from the state. New areas of social, non-political activity, unknown to the Soviet generations, are emerging for girls to get involved:

The possible field where we can express our activism is charity. Girls also more often and more willingly engage in charitable activities than their male peers. Girls even think that charity is a potential field where we can express our activism. But charity in this sense is not seen as political activity. A lot of girls do it with passion and consider it an important part of life, and civic experience and communication. But this is not a political experience, politics is not interesting.

Sociologists claim that this generation of girls and boys is a generation of individualists. They are focused on material prosperity and are not interested in history and politics (Kasamara and Urnov 2016; Pipiya 2018). Katherine says that she and her friends do not discuss the events of country’s past or the Soviet history: ‘It seems to me none of us even wants to ask the question: What has really happened?’ At the same time changing everyday practices create new opportunities, and compared with older generations, girls form a more reflective approach to the future. Speaking about the importance of charity, Katerina, in fact, recognizes that girls create together a space of freedom and responsibility. The urge for agency is combined here with a deliberate urge for civic non-political activity.

An interview with Alina, an 18-year-old student, shows how the urge for agency emerges from experiencing a lack of freedom that she wants to explain and overcome:

I don’t feel free. I think it’s every person’s need to search for freedom. And they try to create a way to be free wherever they are. And they’ll always be looking for a way to become free. Everybody needs freedom in equal measure. Everyone wants to have freedom. But not everyone achieves it. I don’t know how one can live without having the freedom of self-expression. I feel bad when there’s no such freedom.

For Alina, as well as for Katerina, the circle of friends and togetherness is important. The concept of solidarity appears in her reasoning. For her, solidarity is freedom and support in the circle of friends who feel and think the same way she does. As Caroline Humphrey notes, speaking of a specifically Russian mixture of freedom and embeddedness: ‘freedom here melds svoboda (freedom) with mir (community) producing an emotion of security, warmth and expressiveness’ (Humphrey 2007: 3).

Alina partly echoes this understanding of freedom, unconsciously referring to the traditional Russian concept: ‘Solidarity means having shared views. But it is more than shared views; it’s also a support. Not only do you think alike, but one supports the other. Solidarity emerges at rallies, for example. It [solidarity] is best seen when people unite to achieve something’.

For Alina, the experience of a lack of freedom is associated with vulnerability in a repressive Russian state.

In Russia, people working in the government, who are representatives of the state, are trying to transform into a different class: they think of themselves as being the ‘aristocracy’. This is a system of inequality, but it’s not