# Russia most emancipated country - western countries performing relatively poor



## Alles_Paletti (May 15, 2013)

*Read: http://www.grantthornton.global/globalassets/wib_turning_promise_into_practice.pdf first. It is easy to read or even skim.
*
Russia, China and Eastern Europe are doing well. So are archipelagos Indonesia, Philippines. And Thailand.

Russia even has achieved close to 50/50 women and men in (Sr.) management. 

USA and Europe are doing relatively poor. So are India and Turkey and Brazil. Japan is bottom of the list. 

So questions: 
- What is it that makes Russia be the best performer here? Is it in the culture that women are more used to taking charge and getting what they want themselves? 
- Are (former) communist countries better at creating equality on the workfloor than capitalist ones? (E.g. Russia/China vs USA, or Eastern Europe vs. Western Europe?) 
- Why is Italy outperforming Scandinavia, Germany, and the Netherlands, in Europe? Germany and Netherlands especially are performing exceptionally poor. 
- Japan is very much on the bottom, but from what I know of the culture, that isn't surprising - it's extremely traditional. Basically you can't make a career as a woman if you have a family, as far as I understand from Japanese colleagues. 

Looking at this list, religion doesn't seem to be a deciding factor in itself either to me - e.g. Turkey is in the bottom 10 and Indonesia is in the top 10, both are predominantly muslim. Phillipines is predominantly Christian but is outperforming USA by far. 

Another thought, an active program to promote equality doesn't seem to be a deciding factor either then. I doubt Russia, China and Phillipines put active effort in that but I'd be happy to be corrected. The report continues to give recommendations on things to do to improve equality, while I feel the best performers on the list aren't doing much at all in that area and the report fails to see that. 

Anyway, happy to see some thoughts on this. 

*Also, stick to the topic please. *I especially don't want the thread to derail into yet another discussion about the pros and cons of feminism as unfortunately tends to happen on PerC.


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## FourLeafCloafer (Aug 5, 2014)

One thing that the communist countries were always good at was getting _everyone_ involved. They could impose equality in a way that democratic countries never could. It's no coincidence that Angela Merkel grew up in the DDR.

On the other hand, a quick google shows that the firm who did this research is mainly into accounting - so I don't know how good their research credentials are. The article also seems to double as an advert for their services - which might lead to a conflict of interest (Using stats to make things look worse than it is in countries where they are likely to be hired as consultants?) It would be useful to read more about this before drawing conclusions.


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## Wellsy (Oct 24, 2011)

Though I accept that there was ideology and even policy in back in the day that were great to women, I am skeptical, considering it's a convenient explanation rather than provided evidence explaining this relationship between the past and present.

* *





http://www.grantthornton.global/globalassets/wib_turning_promise_into_practice.pdf


> Eastern Europe owes some of its continued women in business success to the legacy of communist principles on equality. The maxim that men and women are equal partners seems to have sparked a trend within the business world that shows little sign of diminishing. When interviewed by the Guardian newspaper about life in Poland, Maya Mortensen, a women who grew up under communist rule in the 1950s and 60s, commented: “The regime made absolutely no distinction between men and women. I never even thought about the division – all advance in society was open to men and women equally.”2 A social norm seems to have been created in Eastern Europe under communism, where younger women do not question whether or not they could lead in the future and women in leadership are not seen as a rarity or unconventional.
> 
> In addition, in Eastern Europe it was common for women to receive higher education, including in subjects such as engineering and mathematics, providing a strong basis on which to build a successful career. And there was high-quality childcare attached to most workplaces, overcoming one of the most common barriers to women’s progression in business.


Gender Quotas Don't Boost Number of Female Executives


> Why are women in emerging markets becoming business leaders faster than those in the developed world? Increased investment in women’s education is a major catalyst. Women are graduating from universities and graduate programs at higher rates than men and are better positioned for senior management positions when they open up. For Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, this growth can also be traced back to the promotion of women within Communist regimes. In the former Soviet Union, Communist leaders promoted women within rapidly expanding services sectors, such as health, education, and accounting. Equal opportunity is deeply embedded in Chinese society, which has helped boost gender equality (Mao Zedong famously said that “women hold up half the sky”). This plus rapid urbanization and low childcare burdens from China’s one-child policy enables more women to work.
> 
> Child planning and work-life balance challenges continue to be the most common reasons why women turn down senior positions within companies. Even among the Nordic countries where social and economic policies are especially supportive of working mothers, women typically begin to drop off in the middle of management trajectories, coinciding with the time they begin to have families.





I suppose it'd be useful to look up what policies are presently in place, though I personally cbf. 
Because while Bolsheviks/Lenin/Kollontai were progressive for women in Russia, I catch word many policies went in the opposite direction under Stalin and it makes me wonder what state everything is in after perestroika since it's been a long time since the Bolsheviks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perestroika#Women.27s_activism_in_Russia_during_perestroika

For Russia specifically, I've found this for your consideration: Russian female entrepreneurs say Russia could become a model of workplace gender equality - Quartz


> At first glance, Russian women seem unusually influential in business. In a 2015 study of 35 countries by the consultancy Grant Thornton, Russia had the most women in senior management positions: 40%, nearly double the rates in the UK (22%) and the US (21%). A similar proportion is cited in surveys by PWC in 2012 (pdf, link in Russian) and by the International Labor Organization last year (pdf), though the ILO ranks Russia 25th out of 80 countries.
> 
> Look closer, however, and the picture is less rosy. PWC found that women in senior management are most often found in auxiliary roles, such as chief accountant or head of human resources. A 2013 report from Ward Howell found that Russian women account for just 1% of CEOs in the country’s top 160 firms (link in Russian); compare that to a (still meager) 4.4% in the Fortune 500 in the US. And they make up only 8% (pdf, p. 8) of company board members according to Credit Suisse (and less than 5%, according to the ILO), compared to a global average of 12%.
> 
> Still, there are reasons to be optimistic. Since 2007, the number of companies founded by women has grown by 350%, compared to 65% for companies founded by men, according to data from the Moscow-based think tank Human Capital. Overall, some 55% of Russian businesses are run by women.


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## Alles_Paletti (May 15, 2013)

Wellsy said:


> Though I accept that there was ideology and even policy in back in the day that were great to women, I am skeptical, considering it's a convenient explanation rather than provided evidence explaining this relationship between the past and present.
> 
> * *
> 
> ...


Thanks, Russian female entrepreneurs say Russia could become a model of workplace gender equality - Quartz is a pretty good nuance. Still a pretty positive picture of Russian company climate.


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## yet another intj (Feb 10, 2013)

TL;DR: North Korea is Best Korea.


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## Razare (Apr 21, 2009)

I'd agree, except for the notion that in Russia, if you are a news reporter that does something they don't like, you die. (edit... it's gone down since I last heard about it, not as bad as it was.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_Russia#2012
https://cpj.org/killed/europe/russia/

Then in China, if you disagree at all politically, a van shows up at your house, and rather than becoming a political prisoner, they gut you in the van to sell your organs.

China's hi-tech 'death van' where criminals are executed and then their organs are sold on black market | Daily Mail Online
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_van


So... the west has issues, but if the political powers want to shut you down, they just mock you on TV or file a lawsuit, you generally get to keep your life.


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## Alles_Paletti (May 15, 2013)

Razare said:


> I'd agree, except for the notion that in Russia, if you are a news reporter that does something they don't like, you die. (edit... it's gone down since I last heard about it, not as bad as it was.)
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_Russia#2012
> https://cpj.org/killed/europe/russia/
> ...


*AHEM*

*"Also, stick to the topic please."*


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## Derange At 170 (Nov 26, 2013)

Yeah and there are more women working in engineering in India than they do in Sweden, where women tend to gravitate more towards jobs involving taking care of people.

Reason being that while male and female brains largely work the same, there are still some differences you have to account for. One of those differences is that men are generally more interested in things and women generally in people. While these differences may be minute between a small group of individuals, they do accumulate eventually in the scale of a society and are represented by economic trends in countries where people have more economic freedoms. In developing economies such as China, people don't care so much for what they _prefer_ as much for what _gets them work_. So they may end up in engineering or similar job positions because that's what gets food on the table. Not because that's what they like doing. Also keep in mind that Chinese culture is more holistic than Western cultures are. Where public face is of more importance than individual preference. If public face requires women to get higher paying jobs for whatever reason (could be that Chinese culture demands that men take care of their elderly parents, whereas society doesn't expect that from Chinese women, where working women are of economic benefit for their parents as well), then they will do that.

The 50/50 ratio between men and women in management is pulled out of our collective asses. There is no magical objective split or ratio that we need to engineer society into because we like it.

Curious how we seem to aim to get a neat 50/50 representation there, but there's no government money or public advocacy going towards creating an equal representation in the garbage collecting and processing sector.

Western countries aren't performing poorly, they're performing according to the behaviors of relatively economically free people.


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## Metalize (Dec 18, 2014)

“Maybe sexual harassment is widespread in the US and Europe, but this is absolutely not the case in Russia,” the 31-year-old said during a recent interview at her office in central Moscow. “In modern tech society there is no place for sexism or machismo.”

Very nice, far cry from the uncivilized picture that the US/Europe love to paint. At least when I visited there, I never had an issue with sexual harassment the way I do here -- maybe there are better opportunities there.


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## Arzazar Szubrasznikarazar (Apr 9, 2015)

Alles_Paletti said:


> *Read: http://www.grantthornton.global/globalassets/wib_turning_promise_into_practice.pdf first. It is easy to read or even skim.
> *
> Russia, China and Eastern Europe are doing well. So are archipelagos Indonesia, Philippines. And Thailand.
> 
> ...


I think the reason is Soviet Union and Soviet/post-Soviet school system. I think it somehow created a bit different mentality. Though IIRC Soviet Union itself was quite patriarchal despite some lip service to feminism. In Russia it could be due to so many males drinking themselves to death in 90s.
By the way, we tend to have co-educational p.e. lessons in schools here. Is it common?

Anyway, in America, you're bypassed for promotion because you're a woman. In Poland you're bypassed for promotion because your boss hired his wife/daughter/daughter in law as a on management position. Fuck this world.



Metalize said:


> “Maybe sexual harassment is widespread in the US and Europe, but this is absolutely not the case in Russia,” the 31-year-old said during a recent interview at her office in central Moscow. “In modern tech society there is no place for sexism or machismo.”
> 
> Very nice, far cry from the uncivilized picture that the US/Europe love to paint. At least when I visited there, I never had an issue with sexual harassment the way I do here -- maybe there are better opportunities there.


I almost never see cat-calling here. I don't even recall when I saw it last time.


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## FourLeafCloafer (Aug 5, 2014)

Arzazar Szubrasznikarazar said:


> I almost never see cat-calling here. I don't even recall when I saw it last time.


I also almost never see it where I live (in the city). Where my parents live (in the country) however...


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