Women in the Domain of Law in Russia: Emancipation and Counter-Emancipation

The emancipation of women in Russia, while it began quite fruitfully, during some periods of the development of the Russian (Soviet) society and Russian (Soviet) statehood had obvious failures that eventually reversed it resulting in counter-emancipation. To this day, these phenomena remain in an unfriendly interaction. This is most clearly demonstrated in political and social activities, labor (restrictions on the right of access to a profession; harassment), criminal policy (gender differentiation in the penal system, inefficiency in counteracting domestic violence), legal regulation of family relations (no legal recognition of de facto marriage; de facto polygamy; surrogate motherhood; property insecurity). The draft law on guarantees of equal opportunities for men and women and their implementation has been given a “red light”. The sociocultural context of the relations under consideration is heavily burdened by a patriarchal parlance. The authors suggest that despite the obvious fact that public opinion and legislative decisions are not generally oriented towards maintaining discrimination and/or counteremancipation, we have yet to see a clear and efficient breakthrough that would equalize the legal and actual statuses of men and women in the Russian legal system and in Russian society as a whole.