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Gender
in Russian Advice Literature
Òranslation
îf a website for the unit on gender in contemporary Russia entitled, "Ãåíäåð
â "ïîëåçíûõ ñîâåòàõ," designed for the college-level fourth-year
Russian course
Click
here for the Russian version
Designed by Olga Livshin (o-livshin@northwestern.edu)
Introduction
In the study of culture, gender, or a
society's ideas about how people should be, depending on their sex, is
very significant. Whereas sex is
understood as biological distinctions between men and women, gender is formed
(constructed) in society.
Gender concerns almost all aspects of society. For example, if we are
to say that in post-Soviet Russia, the "elite" (typically well-to-do,
influential businesspeople), makes up a small percentage of society,
this does not mean that the women in the families of these
businesspeople have access to money or bear influence in society. In
the years following the fall of the Soviet Union, for example, it was
considered a sign1 of great wealth among
businessmen to have a wife who stayed at home with the children. In
these families, men made financial decisions.
It would not be right to say that such inequality2
is pure evil. But many gender ideas that society prescribes to us are narrow
in their understanding of what it means to be a human being. "(During
the time of the Soviet Union), my husband and I would decide together
about
how much to spend on what," one homemaker, the wife of a
wealthy businessman, says. "Now I don't know how much he earns, I
am not allowed in on those matters..." Nevertheless, this woman
considers
her situation normal: "As a normal woman, I have to create favorable
conditions for my husband to work, so that he can keep moving up in
society..."3
What, then,
does the Russian society prescribe to the "normal woman"? Are the same
gender
norms now in Russia true for all the representatives of one sex? What
role is played by advice literature, a highly popular
genre in Russia currently, in shaping gender norms? During
this unit, we will study the widespread4 Russian gender stereotypes and some common contemporary practices that
diverge from the stereotype. Then we will analyze together two examples
of advice texts. Àt
the end of the unit, you and your classmates (in groups of two) will
put together a PowerPoint presentation, in which you will analyze the
ideas about
what it means to be a "normal" man or woman, as per the texts
available online.
______________________________
1. Sign (translated
into English)
2. Inequality (translated
into English)
3. Anna Temkina and Anna
Rotkirch, "Ñîâåòñêèå ãåíäåðíûå êîíòðàêòû è èõ òðàíñôîðìàöèÿ â
ñîâðåìåííîé Ðîññèè" [Soviet Gender Contracts and Their Transformation
in Contemporary Russia," online
at http://eu.spb.ru/gender/publications.htm, viewed January 9, 2005. Print version in Sotsis 11, pp. 4-15.
4. Widespread (translated
into English)
In the
Russian-speaking Internet, in the last few years, many
sites have appeared with texts offering advice, paralleling the
popularity of such texts in magazines and books. Often advice made
separately for the two sexes. Àdult authors advise men on women on how
to behave in a given situation, or how to abide by the rules of
etiquette;1
boys and girls create websites2 about fashion, dates, cars,
sports. For your final presentation, you
will study the norms of behavior3
and normative qualities4 of
character advised to men or women. Here are the directions for your
task:
-
Your
presentation should be both informative and easy to
understand. Break complex knowledge down into small bits and use
the PowerPoint software to present it gradually to your peers.
-
Your
presentation should be àt
least 10 - 12 minutes long (no longer than 20 minutes).
-
Choose two sites. You are
encouraged to use the Resources for the Final Presentation on this
website. You may also locate your own websites through the search
engine Yandex (http://www.yandex.ru);
however, if you choose to do this, the websites that you have
selected must be
approved by your instructor.
-
Both
sites have to be about the same sex (i.e., advice only to women or only
to men).
-
Analyze one text on each website.
-
Choose two sites that contrast or differ. This way, you will
be able to give your peers the opportunity to learn more about
different kinds of femininity and masculinity in contemporary Russia.
You should not only compare, but also contrast the sites that you have
chosen. If you wish, one partner can speak about the first site, and
the other partner about the second site.
-
In your comparison and contrast, you have to use:
-
at
least twice: the expression, "whereas" [òîãäà êàê]. We will go
over this expression in Lesson 3. An example of how this expression is
used is as follows: "On site A, the author advises women not to
appropriate men's traditional roles, whereas on site B, the author
recommends precisely this).
-
at
least once: -
the connector "ànd/but" [à], which you already know. For example, "At
the site "[name of the first site]" the author is speaking about
traditional femininity, and at the site "[name of the second site]" the
author is speaking about non-traditional femininity."
-
Choose one interesting question / aspect
of the sites and tell the audience about it. In addition, provide the
following minimal information
about åàch site, in response to these questions:
-
Does this site concern masculinity or
femininity?
-
What kind of masculinity or femininity do you
think the author recommends (stereotypical, traditional,
non-traditional, etc.)? Explain your answer.
-
What normative qualities and/or types of
behavior does this site recommend? Cite examples.
-
What are the means by which
this text convinces the reader to follow its advice?
_________________________________
1. Abide by the rules of etiquette
2. Websites, sites
3. Behavioral norms
4. Normative qualities
Back
to the top
Quiz: Masculinity and Femininity
What normative qualities and behaviors are identified in a popular
Russian quiz as femininity and masculinity? Take the quiz to find out!
Webquest: Russian Masculinity
Who is he, the contemporary male Russian? To what extent
do gender stereotypes work? What behavior norms and normative qualities
are recommended for Russian men? You are offered an excursion across
the Russian-speaking Internet to find the answer(s). Imagine that you
are an American journalist whose newspaper is sending you to Russia in
order to write a feature article about the Russian masculinity.
Ready? Go ahead and click here!
Resources for the Final Presentation
Based
on a template from The WebQuest Page
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