May not different social realities, giving different meanings to similar words, prevent a viable international relationship or create tensions on the way to one.
“Working girl”, for starters, is “what you’ve thought” only in the Western reading. In Russian, emphasizing work means serious attitude to life (yet not obsession with career – the very word given some negative connotation since the Russian Empire, and much stronger in the Soviet Union).
- In general, professional women of Russian / Ukrainian culture can make good wives.
Their value as mothers and partners has deserved special praise (some explanations already given around this blog); here is space to underscore their safety.
America is stressed by office affairs; in Russia or Ukraine, the contrasting connivance to what the USA qualify as “harassment” leaves room for as much contrasting decency, however wild our corporate socials may look to a foreign eye.
Flirtation without further sexual intents is part of corporate culture, meant to add sparks to the work routine, and to let people feel being men, women, and friends, not robots.
Peers concerned, our women know that the excitement of an affair is not worth the gossip around and the awkwardness of future co-existence, to be challenged still more by the usual work-related machination that gives a team the jocular name “a terrarium of associates”. The main reason for a Russian / Ukrainian woman to get intimate with a colleague is passion or marriageability. Anyway, the stake is a union or a hurt heart that may even make one change the job (and usually this is going to be her).
“Lady-bosses” avoid involvement with subordinate men. Women’s business & managerial qualities are judged way more strictly here, and any frailty can compromise them. Also, in most cases, wooing up has strings attached. In the “normal” course of mating, the man ought to be more successful than the woman: she needs to admire and be protected, he needs to be admired and to protect. Hence the stereotypical
Mister Boss and his mistress(es). To a Russian alpha male’s power instincts, sex is an inalienable part. This makes “it” a byword additional, if not sole, function of a secretary, and suspends the sword over any attractive employee. Some women have to resign before they incur repressions for disobedience. Some put up in order to survive. Some sincerely fall in love, or just want to become next Mrs.Boss. Some other initiate affairs themselves, in order to gain material or matrimonial success.
On the other hand (the right one), there are women who excel at diplomacy, overtake with competence, observe their femininity, and stay valued for work, admired for grace, yet still morally unblemished. Also there are men who proudly focus on work. There are true family men. There are men who avoid “fouling where they feed”. And there are bosses who parade their sexy assistants or flirt with managers only to maintain the alpha image code.
- Now the glossary of Most Misinterpreted Occupations.
“Businesswomen” are not all business owners as it may sound. This word is sometimes used to indicate the office kind of work, involvement in commerce, or industrious character.
The main detriment to their private life is lack of time to seek one. (Blessed be the Internet, still regarded with prejudice yet reasonably so.)
Economists are people educated in economics, business, management, marketing. Their work responsibilities may vary from secretarial to executive or consulting.
(Don’t get started with too many “executives“. The Russian meaning of the word implies carrying out someone’s orders; the borrowing “manager” stuck to coping with a task. A firm of 6 Directors, a President, 2 VPs and 3 Managers may turn out totalling 5 persons – the boss, 2 deputies with varied functions, a secretary aka “office manager, desk officer and personal referent”, plus a morning cleaner aka “manager for hygiene”.)
Finance welcomes quite a lot of women, notably accountants, chief accountants / finance directors (the border is vague), and bank clerks – cash operations to department management. The word “financier” is rather associated with men of Dreiseresque scale – bankers, CFOs, managers of financial companies, exchange brokers, investors, influential analysts. Though there is a remarkable presence of ladies in the board league.
With transition to capitalist market, specializations in business & finance have been most popular around the Former Soviet Union, competed only by legal education (that doesn’t require so much exacting maths).
Lawyers are hugely disadvantaged in fees and powers in comparison with Western colleagues. Even at the local market, one can come across salaries below offered in other trades. Traditionally law has been a “groom-dense” department, but girl students continue outnumbering boys. Relatively few women are let, or themselves strive, to reach renown. Enthusiasts of the legal profession face many crass endemic factors discouraging hopes for fulfillment in the skill of justice or justification (after 8 years of field experience – even far from bad – yours-truly has quit the ranks, desirous to limit “lawyering” only to her cause). Else, law is treated like any other job, which is not always chosen by avocation. Progressing, one may shift to a different title.
Not all lawyers work at law firms or have to join the bar. In-house attorneys are common practice, to employers and to women. Generally, the market is overstaffed: “lawyers many, good are few”. Some pursue second education. In turn, other professionals or, the more so, businessmen have to be good at law. (Some think they already are. When they call for the lawyer, the case is often incurable.)
Design is not an euphemism for prostitution (our “night butterflies” would claim to be models or masseuses). To deserve the definition “fashion designer”, one does not need to be some Donna Karan, or even a big fish in the local pond, – just a tailor qualified to construct clothes and talented to devise with imagination. There are also accessories designers (creative craftswomen), interior designers (many short-term courses available), graphic / computer designers etc.
Models number over 200.000 girls only in Russia (enough to populate a regional city like Zhytomyr in Ukraine!), only jobs are few. In the industries associated with model business, the Former Soviet Union simply does not produce enough – it imports the goods, or carries out franchise. Belief in being able to live just on demonstration takes an ingenue scanty IQ, often divided by cynicism – intrinsic or forced – but sufficient to develop hunting skills, in perusal of professional chameleonage. Market life is short, VIP marriage is the goal, entitlement by physique is the logic: “Am I second to Natalia Vodianova?!”
Numerous schools and courses graze on rustic ambitions for dolce vita. Time waste on castings alone and the cost of maintenance up to standards – neither paid for – are disproportionate to actual offers and fees. Non-global agencies barely care to disguise wholesale escort procurement. Gangsters acting businessmen and businessmen not far from gangsters create most active demand, and keep up the fashion for collecting “legs” as girlfriends, wives and bedhead records.
Let this not turn you off “model” quality pictures. Russian women’s indulgence in photo sessions is another thing – one of favorite feminine entertainments or a serious approach to agency dating, especially with Western men.
Philologist is a somewhat mockingly vague definition for linguistics and literature studies, because in many colleges they evidently teach more “love of language” than actual knowledge of it. )
Humanitarian education like philology, paedagogy, history, philosophy, give a launch to translators / interpreters, journalists, advertisers, technical writers, operators and managers of client or public relations, teachers to teachers to teachers, and many other occupations… unless the tough labor market sends the women to share odd jobs and retail stands with fellow graduates and postgrads in sciences.
NB: “science” in Russian is the umbrella word for all branch studies & research.
Unfortunately, in the Former Soviet Union, “unemployment has female face and a university diploma”. Some women, though, get reborn as entrepreneurs (self-employed, small business owners). Others may chair startups by their contacts’ contacts, in the lucky course of social / family networking that makes Eurasian economies go round.
It is quite common here to earn outside one’s field of studies. Some people have multiple jobs, or change occupations. Others mourn lack of opportunities, abandon steering their lives, wait for a free ride from the fate, and then complain on the place and the driver.
Loyalty to occupation, institution, team, profession has been encouraged in the Slavic and Soviet culture. Many Russian women value comfortable work regime, their own manner of performance, friendly atmosphere and respect above achievement. And even a bog can be scary to part with.
Doctors and teachers, shamelessly underestimated and pressed into corruption, still provide the highest yield of perfect wife material, due to the women’s motivations that make them choose these professions. Some of them also develop outstanding managerial qualities.
In Russian or Ukrainian terms, not all medicals are MDs. Any practitioner is “doctor”, unless a “medical sister / brother”, “nurse” or specialist in some bodycare.
“Teacher” and “school” are words primarily associated with minor children. “Trainer” and “training” – with sport or business.
College faculty could be translated as lecturers, docents, professors, assistants according to their positions. Not “academics”, – “academician” (member of an Academy) is a lofty title in the scientific / scholarly hierarchy, though many current “academies” give limited training in the English sense of the term. Finally, “college” as a type of institution (preparatory or vocational) may not make Bachelors and Masters. This is what “universities” and “institutes” do.
Earlier, medicine and education belonged to the class of “Noble New Poor”, except professors and surgeons recognized as “elite”, and some go-getters. With the progress of the Post-Soviet society, with legalization of commercial medicine, tutorship and private education, with the development of competition under the conditions of quality awareness and word-of-mouth recommendations, many specialists remained noble – but grew quite well-earning, or saw their budget-bound salaries and bonuses dwindle.
Now, Gentlemen, about the Main Profession. ) Got to forewarn one ironic faux pas over the language barrier. You might think, isn’t it sweet for a woman to hear: “I don’t need a wife, I seek love”? Ouch. In Russian / Ukrainian context, it isn’t.
(Long live translators, said Joseph. – And they would, said Natalia.)
To Russian women, the pure meaning of the word “wife” implies married status, with all the positive associations and implied difficulties. They believe that love is a natural and primary part of it. Seeking love apparently apart from marriage suggests the woman that the man confesses pursuing sheer entertainment, only to reconfirm the stereotype that Men Shun Obligations. To bring you advantage instead of disappointment, the idea should sound like “I am not seeking a domestic servant, I want to marry a woman to love”, if this is the case.
- There is the other side of the coin.
Men of labor professions, of secondary or vocational education in the Former Soviet Union rarely make husbands to “white collar” women. (Although there’s one trend notable. Many bureaucrats, actively advancing upon their ideopogically correct “proletarian” background, sought after daughters of “intelligentsia” and especially ex-aristocrates, even though de-privileged by the Revolution. Finer breed made such a wife some elevating trophy, and promised smarter children. The ladies responded not just for love’s sake, along the public’s favorite plot “Young Miss and Hooligan”, but sometimes it was the only chance for them to survive or benefit).
I don’t know what’s going on overseas, but here in Eurasia the tale usually ends with sad truth. When cross-class alliances happen, the partners have to suffer, if not eventually break up, from dramatic moral, cultural and intellectual disparity that exists. On this ground, the wives incur abuse – not even necessarily physical, and barely conscious – by the hubbies seeking to assert superiority with all the excesses of accustomed “macho” attitude.
Not in vain have folksays remained: “berries of one field”, “baked of same dough” (birds of feather flock together), “boot and glove no pair” however good both.
This presets the Russian / Ukrainian brides’ search filters for so-called “higher education” (college diploma, or ongoing studentship for the young) as a vital characteristic of the possible partner. Officially-recognized education is regarded as certain warranty of humanistic values embraced by the training programs and by the preceding family upbringing.
More observations on social differences in the East and with the West follow here:
Virgin Village & Smalltown vs. Babylon City?
Russian Brides Background Effect
Best regards and wishes to all!
© Comrade Natalia
(…please link this page around, if using some info from here ;)
March 10, 2008 at 3:48 am
And, of course, there are no “affirmative actions” in the Former Soviet Union comparable to conveniences catered to Western women. Moreover, employers got used to ignore, or learned to bypass, even the labor safeguards inherited from the Soviet Union (the labor regulations as a whole interfering both with management and productivity.).
Yes, legally a Russian (Ukrainian…) has a right to return to her job after a leave for maternity. But this very possibility is standing in her way to getting or holding the job, to begin with. After all, where should the stand-in worker go, having deserved importance while filling the gap? So the preventive solution resembles the Japanese rule: if you can be done without for a while, you can be done without.
Yes, by the Constitution and specific laws, sex and age must not be grounds for discrimination. But it’s sex and age that usually open the lists of requirements for job vacancies in Ukraine.
This is a figure from 2007’s summary press conference held by Ukrainian State Committee of Statistics. It has displayed serious concern about gender issues.
For example. Although HR psychologists witness that most responsible and productive workers are middle-aged divorced mothers, urged to work around the clock for a place beneath the sun, it doesn’t impress employers much. The management may peruse such workforce but eagerly economize on the reward, reasoning that “she has no escape anyway”.
Here’s one more peculiarity of the new Eurasian market: lacking connectivity between research, development and investment. Fast money is pursued ahead of fundamental advance. Educational effort, from a routine test paper to a degree project, can be delegated to boiler rooms of “literary slaves”. So academical credentials are bought as “status decorations” by businessmen and officials, – who are usually 2 in 1, – whereas diligent researchers, untrained in enterprising, have to look for jobs at the open-air rag or veg mart.
Would point out that most our women just are not that vain as to delve in the bureaucracy and rat race of titles, because of different mindset and personal priorities, but there is one more factor. Modern economy sets work demands regardless of gender; traditional society leaves all traditional woman’s duties on the woman; add the overwhelming advertising of model beauty…