Inequality between men and women is called. What are feminists fighting for in Russia if the rights of women and men are already equal? The Nordic countries are closest to gender equality

There is an old and very true joke: “A woman will only be equal to a man when she can walk down the street, bald, drunk, with a beer belly and at the same time completely confident in her irresistibility.”

Our generation is accustomed to hearing that all people must be equal. But if we abandon the stereotype of the 20th century and try to look at it without bias, the question can easily arise: does a woman need to be equal to a man? The difference that exists between the sexes is completely natural; we have different life purposes.

Equality between the sexes does not exist in nature and therefore fighting for it is pointless. Yes, according to the Constitution, all people are equal, but political rights are completely different. All of us, both men and women, have the right to go to the polls and solemnly cast our votes for the candidate we like. We all have the right to receive a pension after reaching a certain number of years, to live where we like. But the benefits that the Constitution provides do not turn a woman into a man.

Throughout all previous centuries, a woman remained a woman. She was a mother, took care of the house and family, and this is a huge job and responsibility. It is not for nothing that modern women want to avoid it, because it is easier to do some specific work in production for eight hours every day than to work in their home and family from morning until late at night. A woman who is a housewife has neither weekends nor holidays; she is busy at least 12 hours a day, and she is so busy that no working man could ever dream of doing so. He worked, came and lay down on the sofa, but the housewife had no time to lie down. Precisely because housework was quite serious and difficult, all previous centuries there was a clear division: the man supported the family, defended, guarded, earned money, and the woman had the opportunity to perform her female labor in the family. The woman did not complain because she was supported, taken care of, she could take care of her children and household chores without being distracted by anything else.

Now, thanks to emancipation, we have all become, as it were, equal, we all have the right to do the same thing, but in reality it turns out that a woman “has the right” to do a man’s work (earn money, protect, protect), and at the same time she must serve the family. In other words, she does everything she did in previous centuries, plus the work that was forced on her by so-called equality. But in reality there are no positive results from such equality.

Someone might object to me and say: a woman now has the right to be president. Were there not many queens and princesses in the past who ruled over their people? By the way, there are many more reigning queens in history than female presidents. For example, in such world powers as the USSR-Russia or the USA, there were not a single female president or general secretary. In the “age of equality,” men still remain in power.

A modern woman is full of illusions that she is free, and declares that only in our time she can be anyone: “If I want, I will be a socialite, if I want, I will be a miner,” as one of my opponents wrote to me. But in reality, she, this modern woman, can no longer be either one or the other. She doesn’t have enough strength to be a miner, and she doesn’t have enough upbringing to be a socialite. A woman is only deceiving herself, because for the last century and a half she has been told that she must fight “for the right to choose.”

Such phrases seem strangely infantile to me. I remember the old Soviet film "Girls", where one girl, who grew up in an orphanage, ends up in adult life and declares: “Now I do what I want: I want to eat halva, I want gingerbread.” Now such infantilism is present in the vast majority of adults. This is how they were raised throughout the 20th century, developing in both women and men the illusion that now they have more choice than they had before. In fact, a woman could work at any time: female miners existed in the 18th century, for example, in England. Only then did they become miners out of bitter need, if none of the men could provide them and their children with a decent existence. The only difference between our time and all previous eras is that now it has become “not prestigious” and even humiliating for a woman to be only a housewife. The word "housewife" has become synonymous with "loser." The man no longer wants to support the woman, but he himself strives to settle down so that someone will support him. In this situation, a woman has to take on a man's work. N.S. Leskov, back in 1870, in his novel “On Knives,” wrote: “... the importance of a woman in the so-called “our century” is hardly exalted by the fact that she, a demoted queen, was allowed to be a worker!” But now it is considered an achievement.

So, women defended their “right to work,” no matter how absurd it may sound. Now they can add work at some factory to their household work. But even this freedom seemed not enough. What else can a modern woman fight for? For abortion, for example. That is, for a woman’s right not to be a woman and to kill her unborn children. Or you can fight for a woman's right to do plastic surgery and create the illusion that she is a man (men, by the way, are now also actively fighting for the right not to be men). All this is the result of modern education. If in the 19th century a woman was the fair sex, now, by constantly comparing her with a man, society leads her to the conclusion that she is some kind of subhuman. She went from being the fair sex to being something despised. From the plus sign she went straight to the minus sign, and that’s why some unreasonable girls want to change their gender in order to “correspond to the title of a person.” If they wanted something like that in the 19th century, they would have been considered crazy. And now they are not crazy, they are a product of the modern mentality. As a result, with the progression of “equality,” the entire society began to treat women with disdain, stopped respecting women’s housework, and stopped respecting women’s mothers. Disrespect for motherhood began with universal labor conscription, when a woman had to go to production, worked until seven months of pregnancy, and was released from work only for two last month. Maternity leave was very short: 56 days before childbirth and 56 days after, so that the woman could be involved in production to the maximum. Only in the 80s did Soviet women receive the right to additional leave to care for a child until he reaches the age of one and a half years. The woman was obliged to drop the child off at some nursery and return to production, otherwise she would lose her seniority, and sometimes her job itself. This disrespect for motherhood lasted almost the entire 20th century. And a modern woman, while remaining a woman, feels like a subhuman, unless she has made a career for herself, because family and children are not a career at all. Back in the 19th century, she was proud of herself; a man took off his hat in front of a woman. Now who will take off his hat to her?

A modern woman is perhaps more humiliated than a concubine in a harem. The wives of some sultan lived in a harem, dressed in silk and jewelry, in bliss and contentment, well-fed and fat. If anyone tried to show disrespect to the Sultan's wife, he would immediately find himself impaled or on the chopping block. Just disrespect is a sign of modernity, when a woman can be pushed, beaten, pushed away from the tram in order to rush past, curse, push her out of her seat and sit down himself. This is absolutely incredible behavior for the 19th century or previous centuries, because then only scoundrels behaved this way with women. But now it’s normal and women are sometimes even proud of it. I remember how one of my friends sincerely said that she was proud that she was not given a seat in transport, because for her this indicates that she is “considered a normal person.” This perverted concept of pride is characteristic of a modern woman.

A man and a woman cannot be equal. Everyone has their own job. A woman should not do a man's work, a man will not give birth to children. There are characteristics of gender that are given to a person; there is no point in trying to change this.

It may be objected to me that although in the 19th century there were some segments of the population in which women only worked homework(most city dwellers, for example), but among rural residents, who are the majority in any country, women are forced to participate in agricultural work. But the peasantry was also very different. There were good owners who did not drive their women out into the fields. But among the lower peasantry - bad owners, drunkards, slackers who cannot or do not want to organize work correctly - among such peasants women were forced to work in more difficult agricultural work. In a normal family, while the man is in the field, the woman must cook dinner for him, otherwise he will remain hungry. The whole point is that there must be a division of labor. If a man is not able to manage the household, if he cannot arrange it so that there is a division of labor, then his family will not be complete. How will a woman give birth and raise children if she is forced to plow in the fields? She will face the same fate as the wife from the film “The Settlers” (dir. Jan Truel, Sweden, 1972), where the head of the family, who was having trouble managing his own household in Sweden, decided to radically change his life and took the whole family to America. But in America, he just cannot create a good economy, or he does not want to change anything in the way of life to which he is accustomed. His wife works equally with him, continues to give birth to children, strains herself and dies prematurely. Even on a fertile, grateful land, where one can live much better, a person cannot organize the proper division of labor - and as a result, a woman is ruined as a weaker creature, unadapted to double loads.

A normal peasant family will not expel a woman to do agricultural work, because she has enough responsibilities around the house. What kind of fist would drive his wife into the field? He would prefer that his wife prepare food for him, sew new clothes, and keep the house and children in order. But why exactly in the peasant environment do we often see such a phenomenon as a woman doing hard field work? A man of wealthier classes traditionally married as an adult, when he had already received a good position or organized his own business, acquired a stable position in society that would guarantee his family good life. But in the peasant tradition, marriage was performed in a completely different way. When a boy turned 12-13 years old, pants were sewn for him - and he was considered a groom; the girl had her first period - she was already a bride. Such teenagers were immediately married, and no one knew what kind of husband and owner this boy would grow up to be: maybe a hard worker, or maybe a drunkard. The result of such a tradition is a large percentage of careless owners in the village who cannot adequately support their family and the entire burden of labor in such families falls on women’s shoulders. In other classes, a woman will work only if she has lost her breadwinner.

Let's go back to the twentieth century. With general leveling, various problems arise. As long as the woman remains the mother and keeper of the family hearth, raises the children, and the man works, everything is fine. Of course, there are and have been a lot of men who cannot support a family, and yet strive to create one. Nothing good comes of this. Nowadays you see this very often. A man cannot or does not want to provide for his family. In this situation, a woman is forced to work, and work very hard. And a woman learns from her own and other people’s mistakes and thinks: “Why do I need this? Why do I need a family when I have to drag my husband and children along with me, and plus work several jobs to feed them all?” As a result, modern family, created on the basis of gender equality, becomes very short-lived. According to information from Demoscope, for every 1,000 registered marriages in 2012, there were 529 registered divorces. Every third child is born out of wedlock. The family becomes unnecessary, and because of this, the whole society falls apart.

What is the root of trouble? Some say: “The women are to blame, they took all the leadership positions.” In fact, we see that in previous centuries there were much more empresses than today’s female presidents, and in this our equality is not progressing at all, but it is progressing in another way - a man is increasingly too lazy to support his family and he burdens the woman with his own responsibilities in addition to her own . Family becomes meaningless and very difficult for a woman, and therefore she increasingly abandons it. The man ceased to fulfill his function as the head of the family, the person who must support his wife and children and ensure the division of labor. He no longer wants to “earn bread by the sweat of his brow” - and the woman has to get it herself, because bread is needed, and there is no one else to get it.

A man now often does not start a family because he does not want to bear even a small responsibility for it. He likes chaotic relationships much more; he strives to settle down so that the woman supports him. But such men existed at all times, and they simply did not marry. And society condemned them. And now, with “equality”, such behavior seems to be normal.

Since a man, due to his physiological characteristics, still needs a woman, he will strive for sex, but at the same time strive to avoid responsibility for the family. This desire was reflected in contemporary art(cinema, books, music) and media mass media. A woman is carefully taught in every possible way that she needs sex and that the family exists only to satisfy the physiological need for sex, and not at all for procreation. A full-fledged, real family is becoming a thing of the past; a child, if he is still born, will be forced to raise and educate one mother, and this is difficult and expensive. This is where women's desire to have abortions comes from. Increasingly, in relationships between men and women, sex comes first. A woman is told: this is necessary “for health”, “in order to be a full-fledged woman”, “so that her friends do not look at her as a loser”, “so that everyone respects”... And the woman, as a being who tends to obey, agrees and She is already beginning to convince herself that she “needs sex.” And if she doesn’t have sex, she begins to hide it, feel shy and have a complex. There is also a logical explanation for this pliability: a woman was created for a family, the desire to have a husband, a man in whom one can find protection and help, to be a continuer of the human race, is still alive in her. She may not realize it, but her primary purpose has not yet been completely killed in her - to be a wife and mother. She subconsciously needs at least some kind of family, which means at least some kind of relationship.

The concept of family is too often replaced by the concept of "sex". Probably, such rampant homosexuality now is also the result of the need for sex: you don’t need a family - you need a sexual partner, and it’s better to have sex with someone who is infertile, without burdening yourself with children. Yes, homosexuals sometimes have a strange desire to adopt someone else’s child. But the underlying reason for this is not at all that a homosexual man wants to feel like a mother, or a woman wants to get a child without giving birth herself. Most likely, this is simply a desire to raise another homosexual with whom you can have sex.

Let's move away from the topic of homosexuality and return to the so-called "freedom" modern woman.

The main misconception of our time is to believe that a woman is free for the first time in the entire existence of mankind, and before that she was almost in slavery. Supposedly she was not free, but now she is free. Right now they are trying to force a woman from all sides to do something that has always been alien to her. They convince her that she should have free sex without family and marriage, that she should have an abortion and kill her unborn children, they convince her that she must provide for herself, and at the same time provide for her husband, she must work, she must have a career, otherwise she will look like a loser . Even in such a powerful means of influencing minds as cinema, a housewife is often given a contemptuous look, because she is not a candidate of science or a businesswoman. A woman begins to feel defective to herself because she gave up her career as a violinist or a scientist for the sake of her family and children.

The fight for a woman’s right to be “like a man” is the humiliation of women. We are already equal before God, we will be equally responsible for our actions, good and bad. Another thing is that we have different purposes. From time immemorial, a woman has been a man’s assistant, a mother and teacher of his children, a keeper of the hearth, and an inspiration for heroic deeds. The man knew that there was a strong rear behind him, a house in which he was expected, and it was his duty to protect this house, provide financially, cherish and preserve it. The woman was proud of the man, her husband, just as the man was proud of the woman - his wife and helper, thanks to whom his family line is not interrupted. A man shed blood on the battlefield, a woman shed blood giving birth to his children. The man made discoveries, invented new machines to make life easier, the woman took care of his house every day and raised new men who became successors to the work of their fathers. Both man and woman worked and shared the fruits of their labor. They understood each other's need. Now this is almost gone and I cannot believe that women’s emancipation has achieved something good and useful for humanity. The emancipation of women has only led to the fact that now women and men have ceased to need each other in everything except sex. This is not just sad, it is a real disaster, which for some reason is considered a “victory.”

Alas, a modern woman has no choice; she has already been placed in conditions where it is easier for her not to be a woman. Personally, I do not want to do what men do: participate in elections, engage in politics, lead anyone, serve in the army, etc. A man is a leader by nature, let him remain one. If a man is in modern world cannot fulfill the role of a leader - that is his problem, I am not going to replace him. If men have become so weak that they cannot be the first, then let them mobilize and learn again what they have forgotten. And when men learn to be men again, women will be able to become women. Only under such conditions do we have a chance to avoid the complete degradation of human society.

Incredible facts

"No society treats a woman the same as a man." This was the conclusion reached by the United Nations Development Program in 1997.

More than 60 years ago, in 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which stated that every person, regardless of gender, has the right to the same freedoms. However, the 1997 Human Development Report suggests that no state is succeeding in achieving this goal.

Moreover, the level of “underachievement” in each country is different, but still the countries of Northern Europe, such as Sweden, Norway and Iceland, are the states in which the level of gender inequality is the lowest.

In developing countries, however, women often face injustices that are sometimes difficult to understand.

In this article we will make trip around the world to explore 10 examples of gender inequality.

Professional obstacles

Women have been fighting for decades to take their place in the workplace on an equal footing with men, and the fight is not over yet. According to the most recent U.S. Census statistics, women earn only 77 percent of what men earn for the same amount of work. In addition to this gender pay gap, it is very rare to find women in leadership positions in large companies. Women who went on maternity leave were often unable to re-enter the workplace because they faced discrimination or outdated beliefs that a woman could no longer achieve anything once she became pregnant and became a mother.

It's also worth noting that traditional women's jobs such as teaching and child care are among the lowest paying positions. Still, working women have one advantage over other women from some countries, who are prohibited from even leaving the house.

Limited mobility

Saudi Arabia is the most striking example of limited female mobility: in this country, women are not allowed to drive cars or ride bicycles on public roads. Strict Islamic laws in the country prohibit women from leaving their homes without their husband's permission, as this could potentially expose them to strange men.

Although Saudi Arabia is the only country that prohibits women from driving, some other countries, for example, have restrictions on women leaving the state, and even women in developed countries may complain of limited mobility. Even though these women have the legal right to drive or fly on an airplane, they themselves choose not to leave the house in the evening due to the risk of rape or assault.

Violence

In 2008, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon reported that one in three women in the world has been beaten, raped or otherwise subjected to violence in their lifetime. In both developed and developing countries, violence against women in the form of rape, abuse or even murder is such an everyday routine behavior that such events are rarely reported in the media. In conflict zones, rape of women and children is often used as a weapon of war.

In some countries, marital violence is not even considered a crime, while in other countries there are laws that require the presence of a certain number of male witnesses in order for the court to admit that rape actually took place. Even in developed countries, women's testimony about rape is often questioned. Because of the stigma of reporting any form of violence, we will never know the extent of this problem.

Abortion and infanticide

You can often hear from future parents that it doesn’t matter to them who they have, a boy or a girl, the main thing is that the child is healthy. In some countries, such as China and India, male children are valued more than female children, so this prejudice causes parents to express extreme concern about who they will have. Thanks to advances in genetic testing, parents can find out who they are going to have, but if they don't get advance notice, they can legally kill the child. As a result, the sex ratio in some countries is skewed, for example in India in 2001 there were 927 girls per 1,000 boys. Female fetuses and newborn girls who are killed are sometimes called "missing women" in the world.

Limited right to property

In some countries, such as Chile and Lesotho, women do not have rights to own land. All documents appear only male names, be it the woman's father or husband. If one of these men dies, then the woman has no legal rights to the land on which she lived and worked all her life. Widows are often left homeless because the family of their deceased husband kicks them out of their homes. Therefore, many women were in “dangerous” marriages because they could lose their home.

Such restrictions on rights are especially acute in rural areas, where the main and dominant type of activity is Agriculture. Women could spend their whole lives cultivating and harvesting crops just for the right to live on this land, which they lost, as well as social protection, if the father or husband died or left.

Feminization of poverty

As mentioned above, women in some countries do not have rights to own the land on which they work or live. In addition to the fact that women "entitled" to such rights are not only subject to violence in marriage, it is also part of what economists call the "feminization of poverty." More than 1.5 billion people in the world live on less than one dollar a day, and the majority of these people are women.

The United Nations often cites statistics that women do two-thirds of the world's work, earn 10 percent of the world's income, and own just 1 percent of the means of production. Women may be left without the means of production, as we discussed above when we talked about depriving them of their rights to land, but failure to assert their right to land perpetuates the vicious circle of poverty. Consider the case where a woman has to manage the farm herself. Land is the main collateral for secure lending from financial associations or cooperatives, which in turn means that a woman cannot qualify for loans that would allow her family to expand their business. Without financial support, women cannot upgrade equipment, expand production, or keep up with competing farmers. Many women entrepreneurs were left broke and living in poverty due to limited access to basic legal rights.

Access to healthcare

In many countries, pregnant women can go to any hospital confident that they will receive care. However, this luxury appears to be limited to women in developed countries. According to the World Health Organization, one woman dies in childbirth every minute. That's more than 500,000 deaths a year, many of which could be prevented if women were allowed to leave their homes when they needed treatment and if they were delivered by trained professionals.

Childbirth is just one example of how women have unequal access to healthcare. Another example is the increasing number of women infected with HIV/AIDS. For many years, men accounted for the bulk of new infections, but in Africa, half of those infected are now women. One reason for this increase may be laws that force women to stay married even if their husbands regularly have affairs, which can bring the virus into the marriage.

Freedom to marry and divorce

In the US, love (and the lack thereof) is the central theme of romantic comedies and cocktail conversations. In other countries, love is not discussed at all when it comes to marriage. In many countries, young girls are forced to marry men who are twice or even three times their age. According to UNICEF, more than one third of married women aged 20-24 were married before they turned 18, which is the minimum age for marriage in most countries. Thus, child brides mean giving birth to children at an early age, which increases the likelihood of complications during childbirth and the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS.

When a woman wants to marry without love, her options are limited in many countries. In some states, courts automatically grant custody of children to fathers, and often exclude women from receiving any financial support. However, in countries like Egypt, women do not even have the right to sue. While men are granted divorce immediately after verbally rejecting their wife, women face many years of obstacles to obtain a divorce. For this reason, many women around the world live in doomed marriages for years.

Participation in political life

Analysts often argue that many of the issues covered in this list, could be resolved if women had a higher level of political participation. Even though women make up half the population globe, they occupy only 15.6 percent of the seats in parliaments around the world. The absence of women can be seen at all levels of government – ​​local, regional and national. But why is it so important for women to take part in politics? Research that examined women in leadership positions in Bolivia, Cameroon and Malaysia found that when women were able to have a say in setting spending priorities, they were more likely than men to invest in family, community resources, health, education and poverty eradication. who are more likely to invest in the military industry. Some countries have experimented with quota systems to increase the number of women in politics, although these systems often criticize women in politics simply because they are women, regardless of their qualifications.

Access to education

Most of the children who are not going to school now are girls. Moreover, two thirds of the world's illiterate people are also women. When it comes to women's education, it is not always possible to obtain it, since in developing countries girls are often taken out of school to help with household chores, they can also be taken out of school by fathers if they think it is time to marry them off, or the family is too There is not enough money to educate two children and therefore preference is given to a boy.

This educational gap becomes even more disheartening when research shows that girls' education is key to ending poverty and promoting personal development. Girls who complete school are less likely to marry early, are more likely to have families with fewer children, and are healthier. These women also earn more and invest in their families, thus ensuring that their daughters have access to education. In fact, addressing educational inequality can help solve many of the other problems on this list.

Global Gender Gap Report 2014, which examines inequalities between men and women in health, education, economics and politics. Apparat studied the report and selected the most Interesting Facts.

1. There is not a single country in the world where women earn as much as men

Although many countries have gained many rights for women over the past century, gender inequality remains a problem even in the most developed countries. There is not a single state on the planet where women and men in similar positions receive the same salary. “Women make up approximately half of the world's population and deserve to have the same access to health, education, earnings, influence and political rights as men,” write the authors of the World Economic Forum report.

2. The Nordic countries are closest to gender equality

Iceland ranks first among the countries that are most successful in combating inequality. The top five includes others the developed countries Northern Europe: Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. There, the gap between the different sexes has been bridged by 80% - perhaps this is due to the developed innovative economy and high level life in these countries.

3. Nicaragua and Rwanda are doing better in tackling inequality than many developed countries.

Nicaragua unexpectedly takes sixth place in the ranking. A small and poor country in Central America has overtaken the US, UK and other countries in the developed world because it has many women who earn higher education, engage in professional work and participate in government. Right after Nicaragua comes Rwanda - it received a high rating, since there are more women than men in the local parliament.

4. Russia is far from conquering gender inequality, mainly because of politics.

Russia ranks 75th in the ranking. This is largely due to indicators reflecting women’s involvement in political life countries. According to analysts, only 16% of Russian parliamentarians and 7% of government officials are women. In addition, the low ranking was influenced by the income gap between men and women.

5. The US also lacks female politicians.

Women have more advantages in America than in many other countries: the United States has achieved gender equality in education and almost equal access to health care. However, one of the most influential countries in the world is only in 20th place in the World Economic Forum ranking. The reason that is dragging America down is the lack of female politicians. The situation in the United States is better than in Russia (18% of parliamentarians and 32% of officials are women), but there is no talk of equality yet.

6. Chad, Pakistan and Yemen are the countries with the highest levels of discrimination

One of the last places in the ranking is occupied by Chad, where few women have the opportunity to obtain higher education and almost all managers, lawyers and officials are men. Pakistan came in second to last place due to large economic disparities between men and women, while Yemen ranked last due to the earnings gap, as well as inequalities in education and politics.

7. The world has improved over the past nine years, and change is happening in unexpected places.

The World Economic Forum began publishing statistics in 2006 - since then, the report's authors regularly survey CEOs of companies from around the world about the size of wages their subordinates and measure other indicators reflecting the position of women in society. Change is happening very slowly: in nine years, the situation of women on the planet as a whole has improved by only 4%. However, research shows that most countries around the world are moving in the right direction. Positive dynamics are noticeable in 105 of the 142 countries included in the report. However, the situation is improving not only in developed countries.

8. It will take 81 years to completely eliminate gender inequality

If the fight against inequality continues at the same pace as in the last eight years, then, according to the World Economic Forum, humanity will only be able to overcome discrimination against women by the end of the 21st century.

Interactive map showing the status of women in the world

The map does not work on some mobile devices

Gender equality (egalitarianism)- the feminist interpretation of equality assumes that men and women should have equal shares in social power and equal access to public resources. Gender equality is not the identity of the sexes, the identity of their characteristics, characteristics. At a minimum, the different roles in reproduction do not allow us to talk about identity.

Term egalitarianism(V in this case synonym of the term gender equality) has undergone at least four stages of transformation. The primary idea was absolute equality between people as a model of a socially just society. Historical development showed that such a concept is utopian. And if there were “societies of equals,” then this equality was achieved with a general decrease in the social status of its members within the framework of a despotic distribution system at the cost of the loss of individuality, the so-called “equality in unfreedom” was established, equality at a low level human development, equality in satisfaction minimum needs while suppressing the desire to expand the range of needs and destroying bright personalities in society. Ideas like this" equalization"women and men also have sad examples of their implementation. The involvement of women in difficult types of labor, the “double burden” of the burden on women, the emergence of “straw” orphans - abandoned children (when young and middle-aged Soviet Republic children were sent to nurseries from the first months of their life). And the most remarkable thing is the massive attempt of women to break their feminine identity, accepting masculine behavior and masculine rules of the game for equality with men. And this despite the fact that equality in pay between men and women has not come. Equality, therefore, was interpreted as an adjustment to the male type of character, type of profession, type of lifestyle, which led to absurd results due to the existing difference between men and women.

The second step in understanding the term equality there was an awareness of the need for equal rights of all citizens democratic society. The implementation of this unconditionally progressive principle of social development has shown its inconsistency and weakness from the point of view of the implementation of the rights of individual marginal(cm. Marginality) groups (women, national minorities, etc.).

Hence the emergence of the third stage in the interpretation of egalitarianism in social development. Equality of citizens' rights was now commensurate with equality of opportunity to exercise these rights. Appear concepts positive discrimination and equal start. When (gender) discrimination exists in a society, equal rights do not provide equal opportunities to the discriminated group (women). The system of privileges for such a group makes it possible to “even the chances” and provide an equal start to discriminated against and non-discriminated groups. The creation and implementation of such a system is called positive discrimination.

In development of the concept equality Feminists have made significant contributions at every stage in the development of this term. However, the feeling of “understatement” in the concept of equality from the point of view of building a society free from gender discrimination is also present in the latest interpretation of egalitarianism. We continue to operate within the framework of a “male” society, in which women are adjusted to the standard (standard) of male character traits, areas of activity, and professions. “Male” norms are present both in patterns of leadership and management, and in the patterns of most things and objects around us, designed for the average male person.

The fourth stage in the development of the concept egalitarianism there must be recognition equality of self-worth, self-perception, self-identification of men and women, along with respect for equal rights of men and women. The self-worth of women (an abnormal group from the point of view of a patriarchal society) must be recognized by society. This will remove the problem of the hierarchy of differences between men and women. Both “male” and “female” character traits and areas of activity are valuable. Everyone is valuable: mothers, wives, fathers, husbands, male and female workers, nurses and doctors, etc. The value of an individual belonging to a certain social group should be recognized not only in declared slogans, but also be assessed by a real social measure - payment for this or that work of individuals of one quality or another. For example, the problem occupational segregation by gender should be resolved not through (or not only through) the introduction of women into previously “unexplored” professions, but also through adequate, equal recognition of “women’s” professions and “women’s” spheres of activity. With this approach, there is no need for a system of preferential treatment for certain social groups, in concern for equality of opportunity.

This is a difficult path for the development of society, but the primitivization of social relations has so far brought nothing but disappointments to humanity. Of course, “the laws created by men must... be preceded by the possibility of fair relations” (Montesquieu). Today, the questions remain open: “What are the criteria for the possibility of implementing egalitarianism in the sense of equal self-worth of women and men? What stage of development of society corresponds to the establishment of gender self-worth - its economic prosperity or social maturity? What type of social development - democratic or hierarchical structures? Will the presence of critical, force majeure factors - environmental, political, national crises, wars? Which factor will have an overwhelming influence - sociocultural or national (historical tendency towards egalitarianism of this kind)?"

One thing is clear: understanding egalitarianism as the intrinsic value of an individual with his “male” or “female” character traits and his inherent spheres of activity is a step forward in building an egalitarian society at a new stage of development.

In conclusion, here is a diagram of the stages in the development of understanding the essence of egalitarianism:
equality > equality of rights > equality of rights and equality of opportunity > equality of rights and equality of self-worth, self-identification.

Sex equality (English)

Literature:

Kalabikhina I. E. Social gender: economic and demographic behavior. Moscow, 1981.
Starikov E. Society-barracks: from the pharaohs to the present day. Novosibirsk, 1996.
Gender-based analysis. Canada, 1996:
Tuttle L. Encyclopedia of feminism. New York, Oxford, 1986.

I. E. Kalabikhina