Zdravomyslova Temkina social construction of gender. Journal: Sociological journal Zdravomyslova E

teaching

2012-1996. European University at St. Petersburg: "Theories of Social Inequality and Social Stratification", "Qualitative Research Methods", "Political Sociology", "Research of the Russian Gender Order" (Faculty of Political Science and Sociology), "GenderCulture in Contemporary Russia" (IMARES, 'DoingfieldworkinRussia' (IMARES)

2001, 2010-2011, 2012 Center for Sociological and Political Science Education, Moscow "Gender Sociology"

2012, 2009, 2008, 2006 - Lecturer in the Womenstudies Master's Program. Rosa-Mayreder-College, University of Vienna, Austria

2011, 2010, 2009, YSU (Vilnius) course "Basic traditions of sociological thought", master's program

2010, 2006, 2003, 2001 University of Joensuu, “Gender Issues and Sexual Life in Contemporary Russia” 20 h. course in English, International Study Program “Karelia, Russia and Baltic Area”.

2004-2005 Lecturer at the Faculty of European Studies. University. Otto von Guericke, Magdeburg, Germany

2004 - teacher summer school according to the methodology of field research. Irkutsk. CNSIO

2003 Summer School Lecturer in Gender Studies, Samara State University

2002. Lecturer at the Summer School on Gender Studies in Central Asia. Alma-Ata. August.

Research projects

2008-2011. Gender Structure of Private Life in Modern Russia, support of the Ford Foundation, (co-head)

2008. EUSP Venture Grant “Transnational Migration of Russian Citizens to the Czech Republic and the UK: Strategies, Contexts, Networks”, (consultant).

2007-2008. Curriculum Resource Center, CEU , the project “Gender curricula in Russia: informal input and formalization“ (head and executive)

2005-2007. "Safety, Sexual and Reproductive Health", support of the Carnegie Endowment, (co-director and executor)

2007-2007 "Discrimination against women in the field of reproductive rights in modern Russia: assisted reproductive technologies", support of the G. Bell Foundation (consultant)

2006-2008 "Gender discrimination and harassment", support of the Ford Foundation (consultant)

2004-2006 "New life": forms of family organization and changes in home space "(supported by the Finnish Academy of Sciences), leader

2004-2005 "Sexual and reproductive practices in Russia: freedom and responsibility (St. Petersburg, early 21st century)", support of the Ford Foundation, (co-director and performer).

2005-2006 “Conditions and Opportunities for Ensuring Professional Safety of Sex Workers in St. Petersburg”, IHRD support, (consultant);

2005-2007 - social history expert at the District Court of pc. California, USA (Yu Mikhel case)

Publications

EDITOR

Health and intimate life: sociological approaches. Collection of articles edited by E. Zdravomyslova, A. Temkina EUSP: EUSP Publishing House, 2012

2010-present Global Dialogue/ GlobalDialogue - ISA Bulletin - Regional Editor. See http://www.isa-sociology.org/global-dialogue/

Practices and Identities: Gender Structure Ed. Zdravomyslova E, V. Pasynkova, O. Tkach, A. Temkina. SPb: EUSP 2010

Health and trust: a gender approach to reproductive medicine: Collection of articles / ed. E Zdravomyslova and A Tyomkina. - St. Petersburg: EUSP Publishing House, 2009. (Proceedings of the Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology; Issue 18).

New way of life in modern Russia: gender studies of everyday life Ed. Proceedings of the Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology. 2009 Issue. 17.

Russian gender order: a sociological approach, Collective monograph. Qty. monograph. ed. E Zdravomyslova and A Tyomkina. St. Petersburg: EUSP. 2007 (Proceedings of the Faculty of Sciences and Sociology Vol. 12)

R. Miller, R. Humphrey, E. Zdravomyslova (Eds.) Biographical Research in Eastern Europe. Altered Lives and broken biographies. Ashgate. L2002

In search of sexuality: Collection of articles. St. Petersburg: D. Bulanin Publishing House. ed. E Zdravomyslova and A Tyomkina. 2002

Reader of feminist texts. Translations. St. Petersburg: D. Bulanin Publishing House. 2002 ed. E Zdravomyslova and A Tyomkina.

Gender dimension of social and political activity in the transition period. St. Petersburg: TsNSI. ed. E Zdravomyslova and A Tyomkina. 1996

Selected publications

How to dispose of "maternity capital" or citizens in family policy. Socis 2012 №07

Making and managing class: employment of paid domestic workers in Russia / Anna Rotkirch, Olga Tkach & Elena Zdravomyslova. In: Rethinking class in Russia / edited by Suvi Salmenniemi. Farnham: Ashagate

Ekaterina Borozdina, Elena Zdravomyslova, Anna Temkina (2011) Maternal capital: social policy and family strategies. "Gender page", Internet project of the Foundation. Heinrich Bell. http://genderpage.ru/?p=481

Confidential cooperation in the interaction of a doctor and a patient: an obstetrician-gynecologist's point of view. (co-authored with Temkina A.) Q: Health and intimate life. sociological approaches. EUSP Sat. articles / Ed. E. Zdravomyslova and A. Temkina. Ss. 23-53

On the Significance of Late Soviet Feminist Criticism (dialogue with Svetlana Yaroshenko) / Women's Project. Metamorphoses of dissident feminism in the views of the young generation of Russia and Austria. Aletheia. Cc.42-53

Working Mothers and Nannies: Commercialization of Childcare and Modifications in the Gender Contrac t //Anthropology of East Europe Review 28(2) Fall 2010.Pp. 200-225

Cultural underground of the 1970s / (Ed. Firsov B.M.) Differences in the USSR and Russia (1945-2008). St. Petersburg: Publishing House EUSPb.Ss.131-158

"What is Russian Sociological Tradition? Debates among Russian Sociologists". In: The ISA Handbook of Diverse Sociological Traditions. Ed. by S. Patel. Sage. Pp.140-151

Leningrad "Saigon" - the space of negative freedom // UFO, N100

Identity policy of the human rights organization "Soldiers' Mothers of St. Petersburg" / Public Movements in Russia. Growth points, stumbling blocks (eds Romanov P., Yarskaya-Smirnova E.). M. Variant LLC. TsSPGI

Gender citizenship and abortion culture. In: Health and confidence. Ed. Zdravomyslova E.A., Temkina A.A. SPb. EUSPb:108-135

Zdravomyslova E, Rotkirch, A. Temkina A. Introduction. Creation of privacy as a sphere of care, love and hired labor. / New way of life in modern Russia: gender studies of everyday life Ed. Proceedings of the Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology. Issue. 17. 7-30

Nani: commercialization of care / New way of life in modern Russia: gender studies of everyday life Ed. Proceedings of the Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology. Issue. 17.cc. 94-136

E.A. Zdravomyslova: “My professional life is characterized by a “happy marriage” of gender studies with qualitative methodology” (Interview of B.Z. Doktorov with E.A. Zdravomyslova)//Telescope No. 6

A. Temkina and E. Zdravomyslova. Patients in Contemporary English

Reproductive Health Care Institutions: Strategies of Establishing Trust // Demokratizatsiya. V.3. N.3. Pp 277-293

Review article on ‘Women and Citizenship in Central and Eastern Europe’. Ed. by J. Lukić, J. Regulska, D. Zavirśek. Ashgate 2006 // International sociology vol.23, N.5. September. Pp.706-710

Babysitters in the context of a changing gender contract: commercialization and professionalization of care / Social policy in modern Russia: reforms and everyday life / Edited by P. Romanov and E. Yarskaya-Smirnova. M .: OOO "Variant", TsSPGI. SS320-348.

Anna Rotkirch, Anna Temkina, and Elena Zdravomyslova

Who Helps the Degraded Housewife? Comments on Vladimir Putin's Demographic Speech European Journal of Women's Studies 14: 349-357.

Soldiers’ Mothers Fighting the Military Patriarchy In: I.Lenz, Ch.Ullrich and B.Fersch (eds.) Gender Orders Unbound? Barbara Budrich Publishers, Oplanden & Farmington Hills. Pp.207-228

Russian gender order: a sociological approach. EUSP: editor and author of articles

Gender and Women’s Studies in Contemporary Russia // Marlen Bidwell-Steiner, Karin S. Wozonig (Hg.): A Canon of Our Own? Kanonkritik und Kanonbildung in den Gender Studies. Wien, Innsbruck: Studienverlag 2006 (=Gendered Subjects III). (coauthored)

hegemonic masculinity. Autobiography of the hero and comments // Boundless sociology. / Ed. O. Pachenkova , M. Sokolova , E. Chikadze . St. Petersburg: TsNSI. C. 15-33.

Gendered Citizenship in Soviet and Post-Soviet societies. // Vera Tolz and Stephanie Booth (eds.), Gender and Nation in Contemporary Europe (Manchester: Manchester. University Press, 2005)..(coauthored)

"Soldier's Mothers": Mobilization of Traditional Femininity // Political Science: Identity as a Factor of Politics and the Subject of Political Science: Sat. scientific tr. / RAN. INION. Ed. and comp. Malinova O.Yu. Moscow: INION RAN. pp.39-65.

Zdravomyslova E., Belozerova Yu. Childhood leukemia as a social diagnosis // Gender device. Social institutions and practices. Ed. ChernovaZh. EUSP, St. Petersburg

Zdravomyslova E.A., Temkina A.A. Structural-constructivist approach in gender studies //Sociology of gender relations. M. ROSSPEN. Ed. O.A. Khasbulatova. Ss. 80-98

Zdravomyslova Elena, Tkach Olga. Genealogical search as a privatization of the past // Ways of Russia: existing restrictions and possible options / Ed. ed. THOSE. Vorozheykina. M., MVShSEN. pp.197-205.

Zdravomyslova Elena, Tkach Olga. Genealogical search in modern Russia: rehabilitation of "history" through family "memory" // Ab Imperio.№3. pp.383-407.

Gender Citizenship in Soviet Russia: Abortion Practices / The Development of the Welfare State in the Nordic Countries and Russia: A Comparative Perspective. Ed. Grigorieva I., Kildal N., Kunle S., Minina V. St. Petersburg: Scythia-Print. pp. 179-196.

"Happy Marriage" of Gender Studies and Biographical Research in Contemporary Russian Social Science./ In: I.Miethe, C.Kajatin, J.Pahl (Hg.) Geschlechterkonstruktionen in Ost und West. Biografische Perspektiven. Lit Verlag Muenster. pp. 75-95 (co-authored)

Self-identity Frames in the Soldiers" Mothers Movemenet in Russia./Ed. by R. Alapuro, I. Liikanen and M. Lonkila. Beyond Post-Soviet Transition. Kikimora. Publications. Helsinki.. Pp. 21-41

State Construction of Gender in Soviet Society// Journal of Social Policy Research Vol. 1. No. 3-4 (co-author)

The Late Soviet Informal Public Realm, Social Networks and Trust // (Ed. by H.Schrader) Trust and Social Transformation. LIT Verlag, Muenster. pp. 103-123. (co-authored with V. Voronkov)

Introduction: Biographical Research and Historical Watersheds (coauthored)// R. Miller, R. Humphrey, E. Zdravomyslova (Eds.) Biographical Research in Eastern Europe. Altered Lives and broken biographies. Ashgate. L.Pp. 1-26

Institutionalization of Gender Studies in Russia: Issues and Strategies //Gender in Teaching and Didactics. Frankfurt: Perelang. P. 161-176 (couth)

The Cafe Saigon Tusovka: One Segment of the Informal-public Sphere of Late Soviet Society // R. Miller, R. Humphrey, E. Zdravomyslova (Eds.) Biographical Research in Eastern Europe. Altered Lives and broken biographies. Ashgate. L.

The genealogical Search Initiative and its Soviet Legacy. In: Ed. by. G.Skapska. The Moral Fabric in Contemporary Society// The Annals of the International Institute of Sociology. new series. Vol.9 Brill. Leiden-Boston/Pp. 103-119

Diskurse der Selbstinterpretation im zeitgenossiscgen Russsland: die fenealogische Suche // M. Ritter und B. Waltendorf (Hrg.) Giessener Abhandlungen zur Agrar-und Withschaftsforschung des Eirupaischen Ostens. Band 223. Duncker & Humbolt. Berlin.

Feministische Ubersetzung in Russland, Anmerkungen von Koautoren // Russische Kultur und Gender Studies / E. Cheaure und C. Heyder (Hrs.). Osteuropaforschung. Band 43. Berlin Verlag. P. 15–34 (co-authored).

The Informal Public in Soviet Society: Double Morality at Work // Social Research. 2002 Vol. 69. No. 1 (Spring). P. 49–69. (coauthored)

The crisis of masculinity in the late Soviet discourse // On masculinity(N)ness: Collection of articles. Comp. S. Ushakin. M.: UFO. 2002. C. 432-451 (co-authored)

Hypocritical Sexuality // Education and Civic Culture in Post-Communist Countries. Ed. by S. Webber abd I. Liikanen. Palgrave. P. 142-150

Die Krise der Mannlichkeit im Alltagsdiskurs. Wandel der Geschlechterordnung in Russland // Berliner Debatte Initial. 12:4. S.78-90 (co-authored)

Institutionalization of gender studies in Russia // Gender Kaleidoscope. Lecture course. Ed. M.Malysheva. Moscow: Academia. pp. 33-51 (co-authored)

Social Construction of Gender: Feminist Theory // Introduction to Gender Studies. Part 1: Tutorial/ Ed. I. Zherebkina - Kharkov: KhTsGI; St. Petersburg: Aletheia. pp. 147-173 (co-authored)

Feminist Criticism of the Epistemological Foundations of Sociology: Perspectives on the Sociology of Gender Relations // Introduction to Gender Studies. Part 1: Textbook / Ed. I. Zherebkina - Kharkov: KhTsGI; St. Petersburg: Aletheia. pp. 174-196 (co-authored)

Scripts of Men's' Heavy Drinking // Idantutkimus, The Finish Review of East-European Studies, #2: 35-52 (co-authored)

Civic Initiatives: Soldiers’ Mothers Movement in Russia / in H. Patomaki (Ed.) Politics of Civil Society: A Global Perspective on Democratization. NIDG Working Paper 2, Helsinki: 29-42

Cultural Paradigm of Sexual Violence // Models of Self. Russian Women's Autobiographical Texts. Lijestrom M., Rosenholm A, Savkina I (eds). Kikimora Publ. Series B: 18. Helsinki.

Die Feministinnen der ersten Stunde im heutingen Russland: Ein Portraet vor dem Hintergrund der Bewegung / in: I.Lenz, M.Mae, K.Klose (Hg.) Frauenbewegungen weltweit. Leske + Budrich, Oplanded. S. 51-75.

ORGANIZATION OF CONFERENCES AND SEMINARS

Conference "Maternity capital: the implementation of the demographic policy of St. Petersburg" EUSP 2012 (organizer, speaker)

4th RAIZh International Conference Private and public: boundaries, content, policies of interpretation. Head of the section "Women's Health Design Policies" Yaroslavl 2011

Conference on the project of the Gender Program "Gender Device for Private Life in Russian Regions" (headed by Elena Zdravomyslova, Anna Temkina), supported by the Ford Foundation. January 2010

Member of the Organizing Committee of the International Conference “Russian Gender Order? Art, Literature, Mass Culture" SPSU Faculty of Philosophy Department of Cultural Studies 2011

Member of the Organizing Committee of the International Conference "Youth Solidarity of the 21st Century: Old Names - New Styles/Spaces/Practices". August 20-22, 2010 Ulyanovsk

Panel at VDNKh "Gendered organization of private life in Russian regions" December EUSP 2009

Seminar "Gender-based organization of private life in Russia" Strelna 1-2 03 2009, Kazan 19-20 09

Conference "Sexual and Reproductive Health in Modern Russia: Risks and Safety". 2000s, EUSP 2007

4th Conference “Gender and Sexuality”, EUSP, St. Petersburg, 2000

International Conference "Women's Strategies and Policies in Transitional Countries", Nevsky Institute of Language and Culture, EUSP, St. Petersburg, 2000

3rd Conference “Modern Gender Relations in Russia: Studies of the Late 1990s”, EUSP, St. Petersburg, 2000.

2nd Conference “Gender Studies” within RCC, EUSP, 1999

1st Conference on Problems of Gender Research Methodology, EUSP. 1998

RESEARCH PROJECTS/GRANTS

"Maternity capital: implementation of the demographic strategy of the Russian Federation", head, support of the Bell Foundation, 2011

“Professional Mobility and Balance of Gender Roles” by EUSP Gender Program Alumni, Coordinator 2010

Research project "New forms of organization of relationships in heterosexual couples of the young generation" (2009), leader, support of the Bell Foundation

Research project of the EUSP Gender Program “Gendered Privacy in Russia” (2008-2011), leader, support of the Ford Foundation

Curriculum Resource Center, CEU , the project “Gender curricula in Russia: informal input and formalization“ . 2007-2008

"Discrimination against women in the field of reproductive rights in modern Russia: assisted reproductive technologies" consultant 2006-2007 (supported by the Bell Foundation)

"New life": forms of family organization and changes in home space "(supported by the Finnish Academy of Sciences), leader 2005-2007

“Gender Studies in a Transnational Context” (supported by Norfa) 2005-2007

Non-Traditional Threats to Russia "s Security (2005-2006)", grant Carnegie Corporation of New York B7819, received jointly by the faculty of PNiSEUSP and Georgetown University. A collective subproject "Health and (In) Security in Russia: Discourses and Practices of Health Care" is being implemented. ( Reproductivehealthandsexuality) 2005-2006

Management of the collective project “Sexual and reproductive practices in Russia: freedom and responsibility (St. Petersburg, early 21st century)” (EUSP Gender Program, Ford Foundation) 2005 – 2007

Research projectCombining efforts to provide Occupation Safety of sex-workers. (The case of Saint Petersburg). January 2005- January 2006 Under support of The International Harm Reduction Development -IHRD program of the Open Society Institute (OSI)", New York, scientific consultant 2005- 2006

MacArthur Foundation Individual Grant “Gender Socialization in Russian Society” 2002 – 2004

The purpose of this chapter is to present the sociological foundations of one of the feminist approaches, called the theory of the social construction of gender.

First, this approach will be considered as a feminist critique of essentialism in the interpretation of gender and as a cognitive practice of the feminist movement, then its theoretical foundations and main provisions will be analyzed.

The social construction of gender as a feminist critique

In the Encyclopedia of Feminism, published in 1986, social constructivism is defined in the very general view as “the notion that the status of women and the seemingly natural distinction between male and female are not of biological origin, but rather are a way of interpreting the biological that is legitimate in a given society” (Tuttle 1986: 305).

The proposition that relations between the sexes are socially constructed is based on the denial of biological determinism. Supporters of the theory of the social construction of gender question the fact that the relations that develop between the sexes in society are derivatives of belonging to the biological sex, that everything social is biologically founded and therefore is considered natural and normal. Thus, they criticize the non-historicism and essentialism (essential immutability) of the existing relations between the sexes and social groups that differ in biological characteristics.

Feminist proponents of social constructivism develop their approach in opposition to several groups of views. First, they oppose the so-called position of " common sense”, secondly, the mainstream of social theory, and thirdly, those areas of feminist thought that think of gender as cultural correlates of biological sex. Feminist critique is one aspect of the cognitive practice of the 2nd wave women's movement, which aims to explain the injustice of the existing gender order and develop means to change it.

So, feminist theory, firstly, opposes common sense biological determinism or fundamentalism. Human nature, as known to the hitherto dominant common sense, is of a dual nature, in other words, "everything in the world is divided into male and female." The moral dichotomy of the sexes (Goffman 1997a) is recognized as the final basis for the division of all social reality into male and female, not only in the field of biological reproduction, but also in the field of cultural and social (re)production.

In everyday notions “anatomy is destiny”, therefore, the basis of the cultural interpretation of gender, age, ethnicity contains a certain biological essence, an ascriptive (prescribed) status. Sex roles are constructed; both men and women are created, they are not born - critics defend a paradoxical thesis for essentialists. It is argued that there is no female or male entities. Biology is not destiny for either a man or a woman (or for any other- child, old man) - there is no originally and forever predetermined female / male, contrary to the assumptions of "common sense". Everything masculine and feminine, young and old, was created in different contexts, has different faces and is filled with different contents of experience and meanings.

Supporters of the theory of social construction of gender acted, secondly, as criticism of the mainstream of sociological theories, most of which explicitly or implicitly contain essentialist premises for the interpretation of relations between the sexes. Let us explain this by the example of such classical areas of social theory as Marxism, structural functionalism and dramaturgical interactionism.

The logic of Marxist sociology, in all its variants, leads researchers to the assertion that gender relations, i.e. relations between the sexes is one of the aspects of production relations that are thought of as relations of exploitation. At the same time, the division of labor between a man and a woman is considered as primary, necessary for the existence of the human race. “Together with this (the growth of needs - EZ, AT) the division of labor also develops, which at first was only a division of labor in sexual intercourse, and then a division of labor that occurred by itself or “naturally arose” due to natural inclinations (for example, physical strength) , needs, accidents"(Marx, Engels 1955: 30)

E. Durkheim connects the change in the position of the sexes with the social division of labor and the development of civilization. As a result of social development, Durkheim believes, “one of the sexes took over the emotional functions, and the other intellectual” (Durkheim 1991: 61). At the basis of the dissociation of functions are "complementary - (i.e. natural - EZ, AT) differences"(ibid. 58).

Colossal influence the works of T. Parsons, especially the joint monograph of Parsons and Bales (Parsons, Bales 1955, Parsons 1949), had an impact on understanding the relationship between the sexes in sociological thought. This approach has become paradigmatic, called polo-role. According to him, a woman performs an expressive role in the social system, a man - an instrumental one. The expressive role means, in modern terms, the implementation of care, emotional work, maintaining the psychological balance of the family. This role is the monopoly of the housewife, belongs to the sphere of women's responsibility. The instrumental role of a man is to regulate relations between the family and others. social systems, this is the role of the earner and protector. Types of role behavior are determined by social position, role stereotypes are acquired in the process of socialization and internalization of norms, or role expectations. The correct performance of the role is ensured by a system of rewards and punishments (sanctions), positive and negative reinforcements. At the same time, the initial basis of the sex-role approach is the implicit recognition of the biological determinism of roles, referring to the Freudian idea of ​​innate male and female principles.

The sex-role approach turned out to be so in demand in sociology that both within its framework and beyond it, the concepts of male and female roles are used up to the present. This approach has become a commonplace of scientific and everyday discussions of male and female. As the Australian sociologist R. Connell points out, the biological dichotomy underlying the theory of roles convinced many theorists that gender relations do not include dimensions of power, “female” and “male” roles are tacitly recognized as equivalent, although different in content.(Connell 2000: 262).

The dramatic interactionism of I. Hoffmann is considered the source of the social constructivist interpretation of gender relations. However, essentialist theses can also be seen in his works. Sex differences, considered by him at the level of social interaction, are perceived as an expression of the natural sexual essence of individuals. The "gender game", carried out in social interactions, becomes a "natural" manifestation of the essence (biological sex) of the actors, which is socially organized. Sex differences are given social meaning according to the principles of institutional reflexivity (Goffman 1997a, 1997b). Gender institutional reflexivity is seen as the embeddedness of gender stereotypes in all institutions of society.

So, before the spread of feminist criticism in the 70s, the interpretation of gender in sociology at its core somehow contained essentialist principles. This also applies to Marxist sociology, and structural-functional analysis, and micro-level sociology. Sociology almost always included in its field the consideration of gender relations, which depended on a general theoretical approach, while gender was interpreted as an ascriptive (assigned) status.

The feminist gender approach was formed as a critique of the ideas of classical sociology about the nature of relations between the sexes. Within its framework, the status of gender ceases to be ascriptive. Gender relations are seen as socially organized relations of power and inequality. It was within the framework of the social constructivist approach that such an understanding of gender relations was formulated and the subject of gender studies was defined.

As the German researcher R. Hof points out, gender studies are primarily concerned with the importance attributed to the differences between men and women. Researchers deny the existence of a causal relationship between male and female anatomy and certain social roles, which is accepted as the natural order of things. Public organization, in which men and women play specific roles, cannot be understood without an analysis of the respective power systems (Hof 1999: 42).

In addition, social constructivists oppose prior feminist thought, opposing gender to sex as cultural - biological. The thesis that "a woman is born" is already criticized by Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex (1949) (Beauvoir 1997). However, until the early 1970s, feminist literature was dominated by the idea that gender is a cultural correlate of sex, based on natural (anatomical) characteristics. In the context of distinguishing between sex and gender, it was believed that the gender constant is formed in a child by the age of five. Further socialization consists only in enriching the basic role with relevant experiences, through which the gender constant is reproduced and strengthened. Gender identity becomes a personal attribute that is fixed and remains unchanged and inalienable. In this sense, the gender constant can be successfully likened to biological sex. If gender is reached by the age of five and does not change any further, then in essence it functions as an ascriptive status.

Under the influence of social constructivist feminist criticism, the anatomical and other biological foundations of gender are problematized. Doubt that sex and gender differ as assigned and achieved status leads to a new interpretation of these concepts. Gender is defined as the cause and effect of everyday interactions that are controlled by society.

Biological determinism seems unacceptable to feminists for political reasons. Theory as a cognitive practice of movement focuses on social change, i.e. to changes in the gender stratification system. Social theory is meant to provide a rationale for changing the gender order and for the corresponding collective action.

Social constructivism became the theory on the basis of which the differences between different categories of women and men began to be conceptualized. In the second half of the 1980s, within the framework of the women's movement, the then dominant feminist discourse was questioned - the discourse of the commonality of women's experience of suffering or the discourse female universalism. Declaration of female community, expressed by the address "sister" and the category female, was called into question. At this stage, the challenge of the dominant feminist position was due to the activation in the movement and discourse of women of color, including black American women. They defined all previous feminist discourse as a discussion by white middle class women of their problems, not related to the experience of women of other ethnic, social, religious groups. Private experiences, they argued, have a local character, its generalization always acquires an ideological meaning. Attributing to all women the experience of middle-class American women is interpreted as an attempt by white women of the elite to assert their discursive dominance over minorities of various kinds.

In response to the dominant feminist discourse, national, local and ethnic feminisms emerge. An illustration of this position is the statement of the African-American feminist bell Hooks, who argues that in most of the texts written by white women on the women's issue, from the 19th century to the present, the authors write about people (in general), but they mean white people, when they say "women", but they mean a white woman. Accordingly, the term "black" is often used among them as a synonym for "black men". In his 1984 monograph Feminist Theory: From Edge to Center, bell hooks concludes that in the US white men are the oppressors of white women, but white men and women are both the oppressors of blacks (bell hooks 1984, see also bell Hooks 2000), thus, the system of domination is constructed and reproduced at different levels within the same race and between races.

At the heart of the new idea of ​​colored feminists about gender relations is the experience of deprivation (deprivation) of certain groups of women, which did not fit into the established paradigm. The minorities of the feminist movement (of color) have become mute, without a voice in the discourse of feminism. politically conscious experiencing and understanding injustice becomes the strongest stimulus for the formation of a new theoretical approach. The only opportunity to become visible and audible to others women was to rethink the theoretical foundations of the concept that left their experience outside the public discourse, which, according to J. Habermas, is a discourse on justice and human rights.

Thus, the task of the new forces of the feminist movement of the late 80s becomes the analysis of the meanings attributed to differences between male and female in different contexts, and an analysis of the power relations that are created by social interactions.

The researchers realized the need to clarify the foundations of existing gender relations, to answer the question of how gender relations are possible in a given society, how they are created, taking the form of natural and immanently inherent in an individual, group, society. If we recognize that gender is constructed as social relations of power interaction, then we can raise the question of changing these relations. What is built into the social order can not only be analyzed, but also questioned and rearranged.

The theory of the social construction of gender, like any feminist theory, contains a political motive and is focused on a political result. In this sense, we can consider it an ideology - i.e. orientation towards social change. Proponents of this approach, in particular, the American researcher D. Lorber, argue that it is necessary to build a new social order, because the current social order is permeated with gender relations of inequality and is based on them (Lorber, Farrell 1981). The social order of the future must be based on the principle of gender equality. This means that differences, including those between the sexes, will no longer be realized as hierarchical, as implying different statuses, different possibilities.

Main sources and main provisions of the theory of social construction of gender

To clarify the essence of a particular special theory it is necessary to show its place in the field of modern sociology. The social constructivist interpretation of gender relations is not autonomous, it grows out of a broader post-classical sociological discourse. There are at least three sociological theories that have become the breeding ground for the formation of this feminist research direction.

one). Social constructivist approach of P. Berger and T. Lukman

The main thesis of the theory of P. Berger and T. Lukman, set forth in the 1966 work "The Social Construction of Reality" (Berger, Lukman 1995), is as follows. Social reality is both objective and subjective. It meets the requirements of objectivity, since it is independent of the individual. On the other hand, social reality can be viewed as a subjective world, because it is constantly created by the individual.

The American sociologist Berger and the German sociologist Luckmann in the mid-1960s questioned the dominant American sociological paradigm, the Parsonian notion that what there is sociological knowledge. They declared the sociology of knowledge to be the basis of sociology as such, which is reflected in the subtitle of the book: treatise on the sociology of knowledge. The sociology of knowledge emerged in the 1920s and was seen primarily as the study of the social origin of ideas, concepts and theories (Sheler 1960). Berger and Lukman, following K. Manheim (1994), expand this understanding. They ground the very interpretation of knowledge: for them, the sphere of knowledge is not only the high spheres of theoretical concepts, but also ordinary knowledge, i.e. the entire stock of skills, experiences and stereotypes that humanity operates in the world of everyday life. The sociology of knowledge thus interpreted is sociology per se, insofar as its subject matter is the origin and mechanisms of the creation of the experience and the social order that takes place.

In feminist discourse, this theory gained a strong position in the second half of the 80s. Feminist scholars set themselves the same task as the authors of the above treatise. Gender for them is the everyday world of interaction between male and female, embodied in practices, ideas, preferences of existence. Gender is a systemic characteristic of the social order, from which it is impossible to get rid of, from which it is impossible to refuse - it is constantly reproduced both in the structures of consciousness and in the structures of action and interaction. The task of the researcher is to find out how the masculine and feminine are created in interaction, in what areas and how it is supported and reproduced.

Consider the arguments in favor of the new approach. What is the reason for the doubt that sex is innate and unchanging, that a person who was born can be unambiguously attributed to one or another sex? One of the challenges of such a position is homosexuality and not so much the practice of homosexual relationships as a change in the discourse about same-sex love. The second challenge is to discuss the problem of transsexuals. The third challenge is related to understanding the latest biological research, according to which the unambiguous assignment of sex according to chromosomal and genetic characteristics is difficult. All phenomena that were previously considered as anomalies, diseases, perversions, in post-modern discourse have found a place as variants of the norm, as manifestations of the diversity of life. New discursive facts lead feminist authors to the conclusion that not only roles, but also gender identity is assigned to individuals in the process of interaction.

The new thesis is that gender is a social construct. The idea of ​​the social construction of gender differs significantly from the theory of gender socialization developed within the framework of the sex-role approach of T. Parsons, R. Bales and M. Komarovsky (Parsons 1949, Parsons, Bales 1955, Komarovsky 1950). At the center of the sex-role theory of socialization is the process of learning and interiorization of cultural and normative standards that stabilize society. Learning involves the assimilation and reproduction of existing norms. The background of this concept is the idea of ​​a person as a relatively passive entity that perceives, assimilates cultural reality, but does not create it itself.

The first difference between the theory of gender construction and the traditional theory of gender socialization lies in the emphasis on the activity of the learning individual. The idea of ​​design emphasizes the active nature of the assimilation of experience. The subject creates gender rules and gender relations, and not only assimilates and reproduces them. He can reproduce them, but, on the other hand, he is able to destroy them. The very idea creation implies the possibility of change social structure. That is, on the one hand, gender relations are objective, because the individual perceives them as an external given, but, on the other hand, they are subjective as socially constructed everyday, every minute, here and now.

The second difference of the approach discussed here is that the gender relation is understood not just as a difference-complement, but as a constructed relationship of inequality, within which men occupy a dominant position. The point is not only that in the family and in society, men play an instrumental role, and women an expressive role (Parsons, Bales 1955), but that the performance of prescribed and learned roles implies inequality of opportunity, the advantages of men in the public sphere, the displacement of women. to private. At the same time, the private sphere itself turns out to be less significant, less prestigious, and even repressed in Western society of the modern period.

Gender hierarchies are (re)produced at the level of social interactions. The fact of “doing gender” becomes obvious only in the event of a communication failure, a breakdown of established patterns of behavior.

2). Ethnomethodology of G. Garfinkel: the case of Agnes as a categorization and implementation of gender in everyday life

Garfinkel's conceptualization of the problems of gender relations is presented by an analysis of the case of Agnes' transsexualism (Garfinkel 1967). Let's consider it in more detail. Agnes was brought up as a boy from birth until the age of eighteen, having male genitalia from birth. At the age of 18, when sexual preferences and bodily idiom led to an identity crisis, he (a) changed his identity and decided to become a woman. She interpreted the presence of male genitalia as mistake of nature. This "mistake", according to Agnes, is confirmed by the fact that everywhere she was mistaken for a woman, and the sexual preferences she experienced were those of a heterosexual woman. The change of identity leads to the fact that Agnes completely changes her lifestyle: she leaves her parental home and city, changes her appearance - haircut, clothes, name. After some time, Agnes convinces the surgeons that she needs to undergo an operation to change the genitals. There is a surgical reconstruction of the genitals. She has a male sexual partner. In connection with the change in the biological sex, she faces a vital task - to become a real woman. It is very important for her that she is never exposed - this is a guarantee of her recognition in society, her inclusion in the routine of everyday life. This is the task that the new young woman must face without having the "inborn certificates" of womanhood, without originally having female genital organs, without having gone through the school of female experience, which is only partially known, because it is largely invisible in the fabric of human relationships. In fulfilling this task, Agnes carries out constant actions to create and confirm a new gender identity. It is this strategy of becoming a real woman that becomes the subject of Garfinkel's analysis.

The case of Agnes, analyzed from a feminist perspective, allows a new understanding of what sex is. In order to find out how gender is created, constructed and controlled within the social order, researchers analytically distinguish three main concepts: biological sex (sex), sex attribution (sex categorization), and gender(West, Zimmerman 1997).

Biological sex is a set of biological characteristics that are only a prerequisite for assigning an individual to one or another biological sex. The categorization by sex, or the assignment of sex to an individual, has a social origin. The presence or absence of the corresponding primary sexual characteristics does not guarantee that an individual will be assigned to a certain category by sex. Agnes consciously builds her own gender, taking into account the mechanisms of gender categorization that operate in everyday life. She is busy every day trying to convince society of her feminine identity. Garfinkel calls Agnes a methodologist-practitioner and a true sociologist, because, getting into a problematic situation of gender failure (gender trouble), she begins to realize the mechanisms of "doing" the social order. Her experience, recorded and analyzed by Garfinkel and his research group, leads to the understanding that the social order rests on the difference between male and female, i.e. it is gendered.

difference gender, categorization based on sex and gender allow researchers to go beyond the interpretation of sex as a biological given, as a constant, as ascriptive status, opposed to gender achieved status. Gender is conceived as the result of everyday interactions that require constant fulfillment and confirmation; it is not achieved once and for all as a permanent status, but is constantly produced and reproduced in communicative situations. At the same time, this "cultural production" is hidden and presented by society as a manifestation of some biological essence. However, in situations of communication failures, the very fact of "production" and its mechanisms become obvious.

Gender assignment is a constant accompaniment of everyday human interaction. In support of this thesis, American feminist researchers K. West and D. Zimmerman (1997) give another example of a “gender failure”. A client - a sociologist comes to a computer store and asks the seller for advice. However, he has difficulty communicating face-to-face, as he cannot determine the gender of the person to whom he addresses his question. The customer storyteller is extremely uncomfortable with not being able to identify the gender of the interaction partner - he is faced with what can be called gender trouble. The buyer-sociologist is aware that effective communication according to the laws and norms of the society in which he lives requires determining the gender of the interacting. He feels the need for categorization, the need to classify this salesperson as female or male. In a situation of uncertainty in the process of interaction, the question arises about the criteria for classifying a particular person as a gender category.

The situation in the store left the researcher client bewildered. He was unable to determine the sex of the seller, but he formulated a methodological problem. The situation of a communicative failure made it possible to fix the need to identify the agents of interaction on the basis of gender, which arises in the process of communication. When the gender of the person you are interacting with is known, communication works. If there is an identification problem, communication fails. Thus, the researchers come to a conclusion that is extremely important for the microsociology of gender relations, namely: gender attribution (categorization of belonging by gender) is the basic practice of everyday interaction; it becomes the usually unreflexive background for communication in all social spheres and getting rid of it is not possible. Gender categorization is attributable to social interaction. When it is difficult, there is a communicative breakdown.

A story about a seller and a buyer is a narrative about a problematic communication situation that allows for gender discrimination and gender categorization (or gender attribution). The sex of an individual does not always coincide with the category of belonging by sex that is assigned to him. If the biological sex is determined through the presence of biological signs - anatomical and physiological, then in a situation of face-to-face interaction, gender is assigned according to other signs.

How the category of belonging to the sex is constituted in this or that context, we can understand only by analyzing the mechanisms of work of this or that culture. From this it becomes clear that gender relations are constructs of the culture within which they operate. Or - in other words - the work of culture to assign gender is called gender.

The above reasoning allows constructivists to formulate the following understanding of gender. Gender is a system of interpersonal interaction through which the idea of ​​male and female as the basic categories of the social order is created, approved, confirmed and reproduced.(West, Zimmerman 1997: 7-99).

3) Dramatic interactionism of I. Hoffmann: gender display

In the theory of social construction, the answer to the question of how to conceptualize the contexts in which the basic categories of male and female are created is based on another theoretical frame - the sociological (dramatic) interactionism of I. Goffman (Goffman 1997a, b).

Claiming that gender is created every moment, here and now, researchers come to the conclusion that in order to understand its foundations, it is necessary to turn to the analysis of the micro-context of social interaction. Gender, within the framework of this approach, is considered as the result of social interaction and at the same time its source.

Gender manifests itself as the basic relation of the social order. To comprehend the process of building this social order in a specific situation of interpersonal interaction, Hoffmann introduces the concept gender display. In face-to-face communication, the exchange of various types of information is accompanied by a background process of creating gender - doing gender. According to Hoffman, gender display is the main mechanism for creating gender at the level of face-to-face interpersonal interaction.

Using the concept of gender display, constructivists, following Hoffmann, argue that gender relations cannot be reduced to the performance of gender roles, that the mechanisms of gender are more subtle, and gender cannot be changed, like a dress or a role in a play, it has grown together with the bodies of agents of interaction. The display is a variety of representation and manifestation of male and female in interaction. Gender display as a representation of gender in interaction (like a performance) is so subtle and complex that its performance cannot be reduced to certain lines, costumes, make-up and entourage, etc. The whole atmosphere - style, habitus in the lexicon of other sociologists - constitutes a display of gender . This virtuoso game has been learned by actors for a long time, it has grown together with their lives, so it looks like a natural manifestation of their essence - an expression not of gender, but of nature (biological sex). This is the mystery of the construction of gender - every minute participating in this masquerade of representing gender, we do it in such a way that the game seems to us immanently inherent and reflecting our essence.

Feminist researchers oppose, as already mentioned, biological determinism and do not consider the gender display to be an expression of the biological essence of sex. The display, manifested in a variety of gestures, mimicry, as well as in the material equipment of the performance, is not a continuation of the anatomical and physiological sex, since it is not universal, culturally determined. Different latitudes, different histories, different races and social groups reveal different displays. Differences in gender displays make it difficult to reduce them to biological determinants, but they make us pay attention to the powerful dimension of relations between the sexes, revealed in the display.

Gender display as a mechanism for creating gender at the level of interactions must be “executed” in such a way that communication partners are correctly identified, i.e. as women/men with the appropriate style and behavior in a particular situation.

Effective communication in the world of everyday life requires basic trust in relation to the one with whom the interaction takes place. Communicative trust is based on the possibility of identification based on the social experience of interaction agents. To be a man and a woman and to show it in the display means to be a socially competent person who inspires confidence and fits into the communicative practices acceptable in this culture.

The condition for trust (and hence for face-to-face communication) is the unarticulated assumption that each actor has an integrity that ensures consistency, coherence, and continuity in his actions. This wholeness or identity is conceived as based on an entity that appears in a variety of behavioral displays of femininity and masculinity, expressing gender and creating an opportunity for categorization.

The means that are used in society to express belonging by gender, Hoffmann calls formal conventions. Formal conventional acts are models of y-local behavior in a particular situation. They are built on the principle of "approval - reaction" and contribute to the preservation and reproduction of the norms of everyday interaction. At the same time, it is assumed that the executors of conventional acts are socially competent actors included in a given social order, which guarantees them protection from the encroachments of insane (socially incompetent) individuals. Examples of conventional acts - contexts of gender display are innumerable. Any situational behavior, any gathering (gathering), according to Hoffmann, is conceived as gendered. Official meeting, conference, banquet - one set of situations; business conversation, performance of work, participation in the game - another. Educational practices, segregation in the use of institutional spaces are another group of examples. The gender display is a set of formal, conventional acts of interaction.

Awareness of the connection of gender manifestations with the contexts of effective communication led to the use of the concept by constructivists accountability and accountability(accountability). The process of communication involves a number of implicit assumptions or conditions that create the very possibilities of interaction. When an interacting person enters a communicative context, he demonstrates himself, reporting some information about himself that helps to build a communicative bridge, to form a relationship of basic trust. Starting communication, the communicator presents himself as a person who must inspire confidence. His display is a story about himself, a report to others, which, by its y-locality, makes a person acceptable for communication. The display is a certificate that guarantees its recognition as normal, which does not need social isolation and treatment.

The social reproduction of the male/female dichotomy in the gender display guarantees the preservation of the social and interactive order. As soon as the display goes beyond accountability, as soon as it ceases to fit into the generally accepted norms of existence, its performer finds himself in a situation of a gender problem. If a woman tries to become a toastmaster at a Georgian feast, if a man-father takes a bulletin for caring for an infant with a living and healthy mother in today's Russia, if a boy in kindergarten will openly express his preference for playing with dolls - all these characters will face the doubt of society in their social competence both men and women. This doubt is due to the fact that their behavior does not fit into the norms of gender display created by society. Violation of the gender display threatens with ostracism, but contributes to the formation of emergent norms.

Hoffman believes that in an interaction situation, the gender display acts as a "seed". Demonstration of belonging by gender precedes the execution of the main practice and completes it, working as a switching mechanism (scheduling). Goffman believes that gender display is an inclusion in a more important practice, acting as a kind of prelude to any specific activity. Feminist constructivists West and Zimmerman criticize Hoffmann for underestimating penetrating power gender. Analyzing interactions, they show that the phenomenon of gender does not occur on its periphery, it works not only at the moments of switching activities, but permeates interactions at all levels. Such omnipresence and pervasiveness of gender is connected, among other things, with the discursive structure of speech.

The grammatical forms of gender, present in all written languages, anchor femininity and masculinity as structural forms and provide the basic basis for the performance of the parts of a man and a woman in diverse contexts. The designation of professional affiliation, equipped with a gender marker - a doctor and a doctor, a doctor and a doctor - evoke the work of the imagination, based on the experience of everyday life. Using gender language forms, we actualize the idea of ​​how a female doctor should behave and what we expect from a male doctor. The same can be said about any social situation. Any real or virtual situation of interaction is gender-specific, and it is not possible to get rid of this. To change such a social order, it is necessary to change not only the practices of everyday life, but also the discursive structures of the language, which radical feminists are trying to do.

So, the need for the production of masculinity and femininity is rooted in the ideas about the social competence of the participants in the interaction. This production is continuous, it is not limited to role-playing performances, but characterizes the personality totally and is expressed in gender display. The gender display is conventional and contributes to the reproduction of a social order based on the concept of male and female in a given culture. This thesis of constructivism is based on the microsociology of social interaction and is confirmed by the studies of Hoffmann, Garfinkel, Berger, Luckmann and other phenomenological sociologists.

Some provisions of the theory of social construction of gender

Gender and Power. One of the most essential theses of constructivism is the thesis about the incorporation of power relations into gender relations. At the heart of the gender organization of social reality, feminist researchers argue, are relations of power. In modern society, the relationship between male and female is a relationship of difference, constructed as an inequality of opportunity. Relationship asymmetries are underlined by a gender display that disguises discrimination as difference. Most interaction situations show different odds for men and women, with men obviously having better chances in the public sphere. Numerous proofs of this thesis are given in Western literature. Thus, the analysis of conversations involving men and women shows that a woman is less active, listens more, speaks less. An analysis of the distribution of jobs shows that women predominantly occupy executive positions of a non-key nature in relation to decision-making. The same applies to the realm of politics. So, starting to analyze gender relations at the level of interpersonal interaction in the context of formal conventional acts, feminist researchers come to the conclusion about how gender is constructed at the macro level of social institutions.

An analysis of the social production of sex shows that gender relations are relations of stratification. Thus, the constructivist view of the gender dimension of interaction leads to a methodologically justified rejection of the two previous concepts of social and gender differences - the concept social roles(gender roles) and the concept of psychological sex differences.

From the point of view of constructivists, gender cannot be thought of as a social role. Roles are situational and, in principle, can be reduced to a set of operations. In one situation, this role can be that of a doctor, in another - a spouse (s), in a third - an athlete (s). At the same time, gender variation is present in the performance of each of the roles. Gender turns out to be a quasi-role that permeates all other role specifications, is the basic (identity, in other words), on which all others are strung. In this respect gender is a category like ethnicity- it in the same way determines the context that specific roles acquire for an individual or a social group.

Gender cannot be reduced to a set of psychological personality traits (respectively, male or women's). Proponents of constructivism argue that the psychologization of gender hinders the analysis of how social institutions become gender-specific. Gender relations, as social relations of inequality based on sex, are embedded in the social order in such a way that the attribution of psychological traits is only an aspect of these relations.

So gender is not a role or a set of psychological traits, but a basic identity. Gender relations are relations of stratification, which are based on relations of power. Differences between male and female are constructed as an inequality of opportunities.

Spheres of constructing gender relations and tasks of constructivist analysis. Certain research tasks follow from this methodology. First of all, it is necessary to find out resources for creating gender. If we consider gender as a constantly created interaction, then it is necessary to consider the means that can be used by society in order to create masculine and feminine as unequal. It is necessary to explore the entire set of practices of relationships between people in terms of resources that are consciously and unconsciously used to gain advantages and determine one's place in society. The subject of analysis of feminist constructivists is the creation of gender in various areas social life- public and private. Let's give some examples.

The public sphere is conditionally differentiated into the political, economic and symbolic worlds. Each of them produces relations between the sexes. In the sphere of paid work, the areas for analysis of the gender masquerade are manifold: institutions - the world of jobs and professions; male and female areas of employment. A qualification hierarchy exists between professions and within one profession. Gender stratification means a difference in the number and content of life chances of social men and women and differences in their strategies. Even within the same set of professional activities, we are faced with a hard-to-articulate difference in the style of male and female performance - gender display. Accordingly, the task of the study is to find out how style features affect the chances of changing a social position.

In the realm of politics, we can also consider the gender dimension. What is important here is not only the figures illustrating the ratio of men and women in electoral behavior and the calculation of the results of voting by men and women for different parties. For constructivists, dispositions in the political elite, the course of political careers, and mechanisms for compensating for power deficits at the expense of the resources of the gender masquerade are important. Building the image of a male political leader as a superman (for example, V. Zhirinovsky) and using charm as a trump card in a woman's political career (I. Khakamada) are in the arsenal of resources for creating gender in political relations (Temkina 1996).

The media reproduces and reinforces images of the gendered world. They create a symbolism that is uniquely attributable to either sex and charged with sexuality. The media use symbolic capital in the production of gender. The images of supermen and superwomen, Barbie and Schwarzenegger, feminists and traditional women create a range of possible choices and show what chances men and women have in managing order.

Gender is affirmed verbally. Feminist culturologists trying to reform "gender-affected" language trace how it creates and reproduces discriminatory discourse.

The private sphere provides another sphere for the creation of gender order. Family, interpersonal relationships of friendship, sexuality, caring relationships are areas where feminism sees the quintessence of female experience and at the same time a source of female suppression. Suppression is associated with the displacement of women into the domestic world in the context of the modernization project. House as a category, it is the world of a woman both in traditional society and in the society of the modern period. How does it work, what place does it occupy in society as a whole, what place World Houses occupied by a man - all this becomes the subject of an analysis of the gender practices of a given society.

And, finally, the ratio of the private and public spheres in a given society is the key to the construction of power in relations between the sexes. For example, the undeveloped public sphere in the USSR leads to a crisis of traditional masculinity, which is unable to realize itself in a private sphere alien to it - impoverished and poor, but traditionally occupied by women and, above all, women of the older generation (Zdravomyslova, Temkina 2000).

Another area of ​​research is recruitment of gender identities. The concept of gender identity recruitment is replacing the concept of sex-role socialization. The latter is also criticized because it assumes a social consensus about sex-role differentiation. Social differences between the sexes are seen as fair and complementary. At the same time, social inequality is outside the reflection. No wonder Hoffmann, paraphrasing Marx, wrote that not religion, but gender is the opium for the people: the man of modern capitalism, suffering from suppression in various social structures, will always find a woman who performs the function of care and provides care - a woman who is a service staff by vocation (Goffman 1997a: 203).

However, the stability of the gender consensus is questioned by new models of social development, including the practice of the feminist movement. People create their gender by changing relationships. Why and how they create new gender, can be understood through an analysis of the recruitment of social identities (including gender ones).

D. Cahill describes the experience of preschoolers using this model (reproduced by West and Zimmerman). He comes to the conclusion that the meaning of self-attribution of gender for a child is to identify himself as a socially competent subject. The child calls himself a boy and a girl, respectively, primarily in order to be an adult in the eyes of other people. The opposition of the child-adult, genderless-gender-specific can be analyzed on the example of the play of preschool children. At first, the children of the younger preschool age are identified by the environment as small, like children - in the singular they are denoted by the word child. At some point in the process of growing up, they give up their identification with the child - with an irrational, socially incompetent being. The child has the opportunity to identify with the group by assigning himself to a category by gender: you can be called (become) either a boy or a girl. A typical example: a seven-year-old girl every time in public transport, when they say about her: “Be careful, there is a child,” she replies without hesitation: “I am not a child - I am a girl.”

The same example is given by Cahill, analyzing the following situation. A child in a group of preschoolers plays with a necklace and puts the necklace around his neck, tries to try it on, but wants no one to see it. This child is a boy. The teacher comes up and says: “Do you want to wear this?” The boy says: "No, girls wear it." “But the king also wears it,” the teacher replies. The child retorts: "I'm not a king, I'm a boy." The essence of Cahill's argument is that the role of the boy is chosen consciously in this case, this young man is recruited into the gender category because he wants to use the resource of competence, he wants to be an adult. In order to become an adult, in order to become a being belonging to this social order, he can only be male or female (see West and Zimmerman 1997).

The possibilities of a constructivist interpretation of the gender order lead to a reformulation of the theory of socialization in terms of recruiting (constructing) gender identity.

So, the theory of the social construction of gender is based on the analytical distinction between biological sex and the social process of assigning sex (categorization based on sex). Gender is seen as the work of society to assign gender. Thus, gender can be defined as a relation of interaction in which the masculine and feminine appear, perceived as natural entities. The gender relation is constructed as a relation of social inequality. If we proceed from the theoretical premise of the construction of gender, then it becomes possible to put forward a position on its reconstruction and change. The relationship between male and female, ideas about this relationship can change. Gender display can be a means of both confirming and destroying the established gender order. In order to provide opportunities for social change, it is necessary to contextualize the relationship of inequality between the manifested representations of the essentially masculine and feminine.

The notion of gender as a social construct suggests that sex, gender, and sexuality are derived from the social context. The social reality of gender relations is structured by other social relations that are significant for the reproduction of the existing social order. These relationships are formed according to the criteria for attributing race (ethnicity) and class. According to English sociologists H. Entias and N. Yuval-Davis, it is not heuristic to speak separately about class, gender, ethnicity and race, because each context is conditioned by the synergetic relationship of these categories. Gender, class and race (ethnicity) create a syndrome of social identity. Thus, for example, black men and black women are simultaneously repressed by white women and men; however, in lower-class families, black women may dominate black men. In Asian cultures we will see a different relationship between the sexes than in European ones (Anthias, Uuval-Davis 1983) .

The contextualization of gender relations is not only a theoretical but also a political position. Constructivism avoids the hegemony of white middle-class women in feminist discourse and the practice of the feminist movement. It seems that the methodology of the social construction of gender is highly productive for the study of gender issues in the Russian context.

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1 Versions of this chapter were published by: Zdravomyslova E, Temkina A (1999). Social construction of gender as a feminist theory //Woman. gender. Culture. Moscow.
Ed. Hotkina 3., Pushkareva N., Trofimova E. SS. 46-65; (1998). Social construction of gender // Sociological journal. N 3-4 SS.171-182.
2 In "Role Structure and Analysis of the Family" (Nye 1976) "a group of American sociologists lists a surprising list of roles they have found in the American family, including the 'childcare role', the 'relative role', the 'sexual role', the 'recreational role”, not to mention the roles of “provider” and “guardian of the hearth” (Connell, 2000: 259).
3 In Berger and Luckmann, the term "socialization" is viewed unorthodoxly - not only as a process of mastering roles, but also as a process of developing new rules.
4 From this moment on, our story in Russian is difficult due to the gender assignment of noun genders, the language involves the use of masculine and feminine genders - and we cannot go beyond these discursive structures.
5 The term “gender trouble” is borrowed from the book by D. Butler (Buller, which is also translated into Russian as “gender trouble” (Butler 2000).
6 Feminist texts contain many metaphors to clarify the meaning of statements. Let's use this technique and give a metaphor. The myth of the death of Hercules comes down to the fact that the hero puts on the cloak of the centaur Nes, soaked in poison. The poison instantly penetrates the body of Hercules, who is trying in terrible agony to tear off his cloak. In vain! The cloak grows together with the body, it can only be torn off with the skin. Gender in the interpretation of Hoffmann resembles the cloak of Nes. Feminists also emphasize not only the inseparability of gender and communication, but also the morbidity of assigned sex. Tearing off Nes's cloak—the breaking of gender identity—is always painful.
7 Let's remember Madame Kukshina - an unattractive image of the emancipe from the novel by I.S. Turgenev "Fathers and Sons", opposed to the truly feminine Odintsova. No matter how much the writer condemns Kukshina's style, it has long been established in our society, expanding the permissible norms for the manifestation of femininity.

Introduction

The study of gender relations is gradually becoming an integral part of most social and human sciences, while different sciences and scientific communities have different degrees of sensitivity to the inclusion of gender topics in their intellectual field. The most gender sensitive are anthropology, psychology, sociology, and partly philology and philosophy; gender insensitive - political science, history, economics. We can agree with the following statements: “in Russia, among the established social science disciplines, sociology has been most intensively mastering gender issues in recent years” (1, p. 188), “it is quite obvious that the most intensive of them (gender studies - EZ, AT) distribution occurs through sociology” (2, p. 352).
World sociology, which in Russia is still often referred to as Western, has incorporated a gender approach into its disciplinary framework (see numerous textbooks on sociology, including textbooks by Neil Smelser (3) and Anthony Giddens (4, 5) translated into Russian in the 1990s). A separate branch of feminist sociology has also emerged (see, for example, 6). Russian sociology is currently in the process of incorporating the gender approach into theory, methodology, and the field of empirical research. The novelty of the gender approach in Russian sociology has an institutional and cognitive effect that we will try to comprehend in this article.The formation of a new research direction involves mastering the experience of developing this field of knowledge in a different institutional and political context (chronotope).The development of a gender approach in Russian sociology involves a sociologically informed analysis of the formation of gender studies in the West.

Our task is to present the reader with some scheme of development theoretical concepts about the sociology of gender relations and outline some of the possibilities of their application to the study of gender relations in Russia. The structure of the article can be represented as follows. First, we will show how gender relations were conceptualized in classical and postclassical sociological theories that entered the so-called mainstream of sociological knowledge. Then we will present our understanding of the essence of the gender approach in sociology.

Sociology of Gender Relations: Gender Change in Sociological Theory.
Every sociological theory presupposes some interpretation of the socially organized relations between the sexes. We can find a discussion of masculinity and femininity and their relationship in Marx and Durkheim, Simmel and Parsons, Habermas and Bourdieu, Giddens and Luhmann, Hoffmann and Garfinkel, etc. The concept of society and social structure determines the interpretation of gender relations within this concept (“What is the pop , such is the arrival). Within the framework of classical and postclassical sociology until the mid-1970s, the terms "gender" and "gender relations" were not used, the area of ​​social reality that interests us was analyzed in terms of relations between the sexes. However, when discussing the relationship between the sexes, sociologists often went beyond the professional canon, and reasoning about gender ultimately boiled down to the postulate of a basic biological dichotomy between a man and a woman. This position is called biological determinism or essentialism. Let us illustrate this thesis on the example of Marxism, structural functionalism and dramaturgical interactionism.
The logic of Marxist sociology, in all variants, leads researchers to the assertion that gender relations, i.e. relations between the sexes, this is one of the aspects of production relations that are thought of as relations of exploitation. At the same time, the division of labor between a man and a woman is considered as primary, necessary for the existence of the human race. “Together with this (the growth of needs - EZ, AT) the division of labor also develops, which at first was only a division of labor in sexual intercourse, and then a division of labor that occurred by itself or “naturally arose” due to natural inclinations (for example, physical strength) , needs, accidents” (7, p. 30)
Emil Durkheim connects the change in the position of the sexes with the social division of labor and the development of civilization. As a result of social development, Durkheim believes, "one of the sexes took possession of emotional functions, and the other - intellectual" (8, p. 61). At the basis of the dissociation of functions are "complementing each other - (i.e. natural - EZ, AT) differences" (8, p. 58).
The works of Talcott Parsons (9, 10), especially the joint monograph by Parsons and Bales (10) had a tremendous influence on understanding the relationship between the sexes in sociological thought. This approach has become paradigmatic, called polo-role. According to him, a woman performs an expressive role in the social system, a man - an instrumental one. The expressive role means, in modern terms, the implementation of care, emotional work, maintaining the psychological balance of the family. This role is the monopoly of the housewife, the sphere of woman's responsibility. The instrumental role is to regulate relations between the family and other social systems, this is the role of the earner, the protector. Types of role behavior are determined by social position, role stereotypes are acquired in the process of interiorization of norms, or role expectations. The correct performance of the role is ensured by a system of rewards and punishments (sanctions), positive and negative reinforcements. At the same time, the initial basis of the sex-role approach is the implicit recognition of the biological determinism of roles, referring to the Freudian idea of ​​innate male and female principles.
The gender-role approach turned out to be so in demand that both within its framework and beyond it, the concepts of male and female roles are used up to the present. This approach has become a commonplace of scientific and everyday discussions of male and female. As the Australian sociologist Robert Connell points out, the biological dichotomy underlying role theory has convinced many theorists that gender relations do not include dimensions of power, “female” and “male” roles are tacitly recognized as equivalent, although different in content (12 ).
Let us turn to the provisions of the dramatic interactionism of Irving Hoffmann. Sex differences are considered by him in terms of social interaction, which provides individuals with the means to express their gender identity. The mechanism for creating gender is the gender display - a set of ritualized actions performed by an individual in situations of face-to-face interaction. These actions are perceived as an expression of the natural sexual essence of individuals. The "gender game", carried out in social interactions, becomes a "natural" manifestation of the essence (biological sex) of the actors, which is socially organized. Sex differences are endowed with social meaning in accordance with the principles of institutional reflexivity (13, 14).
So, before the spread of feminist criticism in the 70s, the interpretation of gender in sociology at its core somehow contained essentialist principles. This also applies to Marxist sociology, and structural-functional analysis, and micro-level sociology. Sociology has almost always included in its field the consideration of gender relations, which depended on a general theoretical approach, while gender was interpreted as an "ascriptive" or ascribed status.
The gender approach was formed as a criticism of the ideas of classical sociology about the nature of relations between the sexes. Within its framework, the status of gender ceases to be ascriptive. Gender relations are considered as socially organized relations of power and inequality.

Gender approach in sociology

The term "gender approach" appears in sociology in the 1970s. It is formed as an opposition to studies of relations between the sexes. Under the gender approach in sociology, we understand the analysis of power relations organized on the basis of the cultural and symbolic definition of sex. The culturally symbolic definition of sex (what is called gender) is a complex characteristic of status that arises at the intersection of many attributes of an individual and/or group. Thus, the gender approach is a variant of the stratification approach, it always contains the thesis about the unequal distribution of resources on the basis of assigned sex, about relations of domination-subordination, exclusion-recognition of people whom society refers to different categories of sex. Gender becomes a "useful" multi-level category of social analysis (15), which "works" at the level of analysis of identity, interpersonal relations, systemic and structural levels.
The gender approach in the West was developed in the 1970s as a cognitive practice of the women's movement of the second wave and as a critique of social theory, and therefore is largely determined by the patterns of development of the latter. Research is based on the adaptation of social theory to the problems of social relations between the sexes. At the same time, the mainstream of sociology is criticized as one that is built from the reflection of the experience of the public sphere, where male experience dominated during the entire period of modernization.
Feminist critical thought masters and develops Marxism, structural-functional analysis and dramatic interactionism.
Feminist followers of Marxism offer (at least) two options for conceptualizing gender relations. First, they argue that the sphere of reproduction is just as important to the social order as the sphere of production. Reproduction - the world of household, family and procreation - is the sphere of restoration and replenishment of the labor force, where the main actor is a woman, while her labor force and domestic + emotional labor is not noticed and not paid for by the capitalist industrial society. Thus, Marxist feminists think of the sphere of reproduction as the sphere of women's oppression. Capitalist exploitation in the system of production relations is seen as a product of the primary oppression of women in the family.
The second step of feminism is to put forward the concept of a "dual system" of women's oppression in modern society. Capitalism and patriarchy are parallel systems that create structural factors of gender inequality. The main idea of ​​this theory is that capitalism and patriarchy are distinct and equally comprehensive systems of social relations that collide and interact with each other. As a result of the superimposition of the two systems of exploitation, the modern social order emerges, which can be called the "capitalist patriarchy". An analysis of gender relations requires an independent theory, logically independent of class theory (see 16).
In the Marxist feminist tradition, the inequality of material resources and life opportunities for men and women is seen as structurally determined (by capitalism and/or patriarchy), and “women” and “men” themselves are seen as relatively undifferentiated categories (sometimes as “social class”). The relationship between the categories is one of inequality and exploitation (patriarchy) in which women as a class are discriminated against in the public sphere. Structuralist concepts, adapted by feminist theorists such as Juliette Mitchell and Gail Rubin (17), assume that the individual's position is determined by his position in the structural male-female opposition. Incorporating the ideas of Marx-Engels and K. Levi-Strauss, political economy and structuralism into the analysis of sex-tribal relations and sexuality, G. Rubin introduces the concept of a sex-gender system. This concept has become one of the main ones in the gender approach. According to Rubin, “in every society there is… a sex/gender system—a specific organization whereby the biological ‘raw material’ of human sexuality and reproduction is subjected to human, social intervention and takes on certain conventional forms.” In other words, the sex-gender system is “a set of mechanisms by which society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity and within which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied” (17).
Feminists are also rethinking the functionalist gender-role approach. Thus, liberal feminism (one of the directions of feminist thought), criticizing, adapts the provisions of parsonism (including the tension of sexual roles and the crisis of the American family), using them to analyze the oppression of women and men by prescribed traditional roles. The feminist approach in this version remains structural-functionalist, but the pathos of the analysis of gender relations is changing: the emphasis is on measuring inequality, on substantiating the possibilities of changes in the content of these roles. Examples of this variant of the gender approach are the androgyny study by Sandra Behm, who developed a methodology for measuring the degree of masculinity and femininity (18), B. Friedan's book "The Mystery of Femininity" (19) and numerous subsequent feminist studies that use the concepts of socialization, role and status to interpretation of differences in the position of women and men in society. According to this position, the behavior of men and women is different because it corresponds to different social expectations. Researchers show how these expectations are reproduced by such social institutions as school, family, professional community, mass media (for example: 20, as well as a review by Irina Kletsina (21). Changing expectations become the main topic of discussion of social roles in this version of the gender approach The roles assigned to representatives of different sexes are no longer seen as complementary, and emphasis is placed on their hierarchy and power relations.
The turn of research interest from the level of structures to the level of action, to the sociology of everyday life, allowed feminist theorists to incorporate the ideas of the social construction of reality (22) into the analysis of gender relations (23, 24). Dramatic interactionism and ethnomethodology fit into the mainstream of the "social constructivist turn" in social sciences and radicalized in gender studies. In this perspective, gender is understood as a socially constructed relationship associated with the categorization of individuals on the basis of gender. Microsociology focuses on the level of everyday interactions through which different gender relations are produced in different cultures.
The theory of the social construction of gender is based on the distinction between biological sex and the social category of gender. Gender is defined as society's work of assigning gender, which produces and reproduces attitudes of inequality and discrimination. "Women" (as well as "men") are no longer seen as undifferentiated categories, on the contrary, the category of difference becomes the main one in the definition of femininity and masculinity. Differences are set through the contexts of age, race, and sexual orientation.
Constructivist sociologists look at how gender inequality is reproduced in daily interactions in the here and now. American feminist sociologists Candace West and Don Zimmerman (23) argue that the creation of gender occurs constantly in all institutional situations at the micro level. Following Irving Goffman, they believe that the assignment of individuals to one or another category on the basis of sex is essential for socially competent (“accountable”) behavior. Successful communication relies, as a rule, on the ability to unambiguously identify the gender of the interlocutor. However, gender categorization is far from always unambiguous and does not necessarily correspond to the biological sex of the individual. Gender assignment occurs according to the rules for creating gender, accepted in a given society and expressed in a gender display. The concept of gender display is used by the authors to assert the social construction of not only gender differences, but also biological sex.
So, the gender approach is developing as a feminist critique of the main areas of sociology. However, under the influence of feminist criticism, Western sociology has now undergone such changes that no longer allow us to separate the topic of gender relations from the actual gender approach. At present, gender studies in the field of sociology are faced with the same problems as sociological knowledge in general, namely, with the problem of the relationship between the levels of structures and action, with the polemic of symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology, on the one hand, and structuralism and functionalism, on the other. We can find options for solving this problem in the unifying paradigm, following the supporters of which (such as P. Bourdieu and A. Giddens), within the framework of gender studies, an attempt is made to combine the levels of structures and actions. An attempt to conceptualize gender relations within the unifying paradigm is made by the Australian sociologist Robert Connell (see eg 25). The analysis of practices allows us to explore how social relations are constructed through social interactions at the micro level. The analysis of structures makes it possible to explore the limitations of the macro level, which are the conditions for the implementation of practices. As part of this approach gender relations are seen as a process; structures are formed historically, and the ways of structuring gender are diverse and reflect the dominance of different social interests.
Let us consider in more detail the possibilities of applying this approach to the analysis of gender relations in Russia, based on the general discursive situation.

"Unifying" paradigm as a "useful methodology" for analyzing gender relations in Russia

In the last decade, we have been witnesses and participants in a change in the discursive situation: modern social theory is entering the liberated Russian discourse. Russian (theoretical) discourse is currently open; he is in a state of assimilation, development, perception, absorption, "digestion" of a multitude social theories the most diverse origins. Among them are both classical approaches and those that have grown as their criticism. This discursive omnivorousness compensates for the discursive deficit of the Soviet period, when many of the traditions that provided the ground for feminist critical theory were marginalized. The Russian discursive situation has a pronounced cognitive effect. It consists in the coexistence and superposition of theoretical models, concepts and categories that have grown in other contexts (chronotopes, in the terminology of M. Bakhtin).
Gender studies in world sociology are emerging as a critical theory of mainstream classical and postclassical discourse. However, the "Western" discourse itself has only "entered" the Russian intellectual space in the last decade. If in world sociology we can talk about some (pseudo) progressive development of sociological knowledge, in which one theory replaced another, and the subsequent previous one “removed” contradictions and criticism, then in modern Russian discourse, concepts and models related to different chronotopes arise simultaneously and in parallel. . In the field of gender studies, different paradigms are also developing simultaneously - the gender-role approach coexists with its radical criticism, social constructivist studies problematize the category of women's experience, which has not yet become an established subject of research (for more details, see 27). Discursive openness means mastering and revising texts written on the basis of different experiences in the context of intersecting discursive streams. Only the beginning formation of the sociology of gender relations is already problematizing its foundations and claims to be interdisciplinarity. This is the cognitive effect of the novelty of the gender approach in Russian sociology, which we mentioned in the introduction.
The gender approach in the West was formed as a cognitive practice of the women's movement. In Russia, the women's movement is not massive and politically strong, and, nevertheless, it develops new ways of understanding the position of the sexes in society, and also forms a demand for the theoretical development of this topic. No less important, from our point of view, for the formation of gender studies in Russia is the discursive problematization of gender relations in the period of post-Soviet transformation. Large-scale socio-cultural and political changes in Russian society in the last decade include a change in the status positions of various social groups and categories of citizens. In the field of gender relations, these changes lead to such phenomena as a change in the structure of the family, a change in the system social guarantees, changing the position of women and men in the sphere of economy and politics and in the private sphere. The problematization of gender relations in public discourse leads to an increase in research and public interest in the subject.

In a situation of discursive openness and problematization of gender relations, it is sociology that turns out to be sensitive (sensitive) to gender studies, within which “gender” and “sex differences” become “useful categories of analysis” (15). The formation of a gender approach occurs through the choice of a research strategy, which involves the choice of some theory, methodology and research methods.
Due to the openness, pluralism, novelty and variability of the Russian discourse on gender relations in modern Russian sociology, several gender research strategies (or several variants of the gender approach) coexist. We can name such of them as the structural approach in functional or Marxist variants and social constructivism (for details, see 28, 29). We believe that the gender approach can become a "useful methodology of social analysis" (to paraphrase J. Scott), if it is based on the unifying paradigm of sociology, which can be called a structural-constructivist approach. The structural-constructivist approach in gender studies involves a combination of two concepts - the social construction of gender and gender composition. The first concept considers the dynamic dimension of gender relations at the micro level - the process of creating and reproducing sex/gender in the process of interaction. The second focuses on the structural factors that determine the scope of gender relations. The combination of these approaches creates a methodological tool suitable for analyzing the micro and macro levels of the social world and their interpenetration. Structural factors of the system of gender relations define the institutional possibilities within which the reproduction of sex-role behavior takes place. Social differentiation in various spheres of public life is perceived as a set of objective prescriptions and is implemented in the mechanisms of interaction and socialization through such institutions as the family, school, immediate environment, the media and employment, politics, etc.
The structural-constructivist approach to the analysis of gender relations is developed by R. Connell (12, 25). The problem of organizing gender relations is considered by him as a process of interaction between the agent and social structures, where the structure is formed historically, and then femininity and masculinity appear as constantly created identities. This approach proceeds from the recognition of power as a dimension of gender relations and is considered as the basis of practical politics, based on a new understanding of the subject as an agent and actor, limited by structures and changing them (by analogy with Bourdieu and Giddens).
Within the framework of the unifying paradigm, R. Connell develops the theory of "gender composition". Gender composition is a social reality presented as a system of structural possibilities for old and new gender practices, which covers three main areas - labor and economics, politics and the sphere of emotional relations (cathexis). Connell rejects the term "system" as connoting functionalism, and points out that the metaphor "composition" is more adequate to describe the totality of structures and practices of gender relations.
The three spheres of structural possibilities (named above) create the conditions for a gender regime, understood as the rules of the game (state of play) of gender interactions in specific institutions, such as the family, the state, the street. These relatively stable gender regimes, determined by the rules of the game in different contexts, find expression in the multiple practices of appropriate and encouraged masculinity and femininity, as well as in the gender innovation of temporary outsiders.
Within the framework of this variant of the gender approach, the main task of the sociology of gender relations is the study of gender regimes and their changes.
Thus, social institutions are seen as organized by certain rules and organizing them, practices reproduce or transform the structure. The institutional structural framework is not immutable. Their change becomes possible when at the micro level there is a “breakage” of a stable pattern of interaction prescribed for the individual. The gender composition, seemingly stable and constantly reproducing, armed with a complex system of sanctions regulating normative behavior, is in fact subject to change. The change in gender regimes, or in more familiar terminology, gender contracts (29), is the result of multiple changes at the level of everyday interactions, carried out through the breakdown of old patterns.
Let us illustrate our idea with the example of the Soviet gender contract – “working mother”, which provided institutional support for the labor and maternal mobilization of Soviet women (30). In the personal biography of Soviet women, this contract found expression in the balance of family and work loads. How can such a contract and its corresponding construct be destroyed? It is assumed that its destruction can occur both as a result of structural changes in general (reforms, policy changes), and as a result of a cumulative change in practices. Preferring a career over motherhood, rejecting motherhood in favor of a career – these alternative life choices (strategies) first create a precedent, and then gradually legitimize in the contracts of “mother-housewife” and “career woman” (31, in Russian see 32).
Precepts are not an immutable social law. An active agent is able to break through structural barriers, relying on the unique trajectory of his (individual and group) reflective experience. An active agent (in our usual words: a free person) in a new society can create a new world of relations between the sexes, starting with himself, with his identity, which he will formulate in such a way that he would be comfortable existing with all his oddities and possibilities, including those that are determined by his biologically and socially constructed sexuality and culturally defined sex. The new composition of gender identity is able to expand the boundaries of the old system and modify the prescriptions and roles that seemed unshakable. The cultural transformation of Russian society creates opportunities for a new production of gender relations.
The proposed version of the application of the unifying paradigm in the gender approach allows us to see both the structural and interpersonal foundations for the production of new and reproduction of old gender relations. For a collective practice to change, it must be challenged, either individually or as a group. This challenge will be personified by the "marginal", who - due to the circumstances of his own experience - will create a precedent for "inappropriate" behavior. A mother who leaves her child in the care of her father is perceived either as a "monster" or as a victim of circumstances that force her to do so. But it is precisely such a case that problematizes parenting practices and family structure. The "competent" single father is marginal at first, and then can become a normal case of parenting, along with many others. Gender relations as relations of hierarchy today have a chance to become less rigid, in which the power of social prescriptions and inequality between the sexes have a chance to be reflected and changed.
So, the unifying paradigm allows us to analyze gender relations as a process of interaction between agents and social structures. A gender approach, attempting to resolve the practices-structures dilemma, can be a "useful analysis methodology" for analyzing power relations organized on the basis of a culturally symbolic definition of sex and gender as an attainable status.
Note, however, that the gender approach in modern Russia is developing in the intellectual climate of essentialism and biological determinism, which are replaced in public discourse by official declarations about the omnipotence of the state construction of the Soviet person (men and women). Thus, the new gender approach that we are trying to develop so far contradicts the mainstream of Russian liberal discourse. This cultural climate leads to what might be called the institutional gender novelty effect. It lies in the fact that gender and feminist studies (and related structural units) are seen as oriented towards undesirable changes in the sphere of relations between the sexes and, above all, towards the destruction of the family. The gender approach remains marginal in the system of public knowledge. The legitimacy of this topic is still low, the academic community is skeptical about the issue of gender studies.
However, another trend is also obvious: at present, the study of gender relations is becoming one of the elements of understanding social transformations in a situation where the foundations of sociological knowledge are problematized. And this is not only a Russian discursive problem. The sociology of gender relations in the face of the postmodern challenge (both in the West and in Russia) exists in a discursive space that undermines its foundations and at the same time enriches the methodology, themes and research methods. Postmodernism questions sociology as an autonomous field of scientific knowledge. The instinct of self-preservation of a sociologist as a representative of his discipline protects him/her from immersion in postmodernist discourse, although postmodernist methodology modifies the attitude towards science in general
In such an intellectual context, the gender approach forces the sociologist to embark on a dangerous enterprise: to think about the foundations of his own discipline. At the same time, the sociologist and sociology have to either rethink themselves, or generally abandon rigid disciplinary boundaries, since the analysis of gender composition requires the use of data from all areas of humanitarian and social knowledge.

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Sociological Research, No. 11, 2000

dominated in Russia until recently.

So, in fact, the macrotask of the collective research project is an ambitious attempt to reconstruct some elements of gender culture based on empirical research, which has not been done so far. Although modern Russian feminist literature has formulated the task of recreating the gender culture that dominated in Soviet Russia(Aivazova 1991, Voronina 1988, 1990, Klimenkova 1993, Posadskaya 1993, Posadskaya, A. and E. Waters 1995, Lissyutkina L. 1993, etc.), however, as far as we know, there have been no empirical studies on this topic so far carried out. We will try to start research in this area based on the study of different plots and aspects of gender socialization and the gender system.

Two concepts became the methodological basis of these studies: the theory of the social construction of gender and the theory of the gender system. If the first approach considers the dynamic dimension of gender culture - the process of its creation and reproduction in the process of socialization; the second focuses on the gender dimension of the social structure of society. Thus, the theory of the social construction of gender makes it possible to study the diachronic aspect of culture, while the concept of the gender system - the synchronic one.

To begin with, let's define the concepts that we use and which have not yet become conventional in Russian sociology.

Zdravomyslova E., Temkina A., red.

Digest of articles. Publishing House of the European University in St. Petersburg, 2009. - 430 p. - ISBN 978-5-94380-088-7 The lack of institutional trust is a stable characteristic of Russian society. Distrust of institutions and professionals takes on a special meaning when we talk about reproductive health. Why do people not trust doctors? Why do expectant mothers avoid visiting antenatal clinics? What strategies do women use to get reliable health care? Turning to the analysis of the interaction between a gynecologist and a patient, the authors of the collection analyze the difficulties of building trust, the role of social networks, material resources and individual knowledge, as well as the problems of obtaining sexual education and the rejection of the "abortion culture" of protection. Contents
Elena Zdravomyslova, Anna Tyomkina
Introduction. Gender Approach in Research on Reproductive PracticesDilemmas of Sexuality Education and Abortion Practices
Michel Rivkin-Fish, Victor Samokhvalov. Sex Education and Personal Development:
rethinking professional power
Olga Snarskaya. Sexuality education as a sphere for the production of gender differences and the construction of ideas about the "nation"
Anna Tyomkina. Sex Education as Moral Education (Late Soviet Discourses on Sexuality)
Elena Zdravomyslova. Gender citizenship and abortion culture
Victoria Sakevich. The problem of abortion in modern RussiaInteractions with medicine: Money, Knowledge, Social networks
Polina Aronson. Appeal Strategies medical care and social inequality in modern Russia
Elena Zdravomyslova, Anna Tyomkina. “I don’t trust doctors”, but… Overcoming mistrust in reproductive medicine
Olga Brednikova. Buying Competence and Attention: Payment Practices During Pregnancy and Childbirth
Daria Odintsova. "Cultural patient" through the eyes of a gynecologist
Ekaterina Borozdina. The “correct” pregnancy: medical recommendations and advice from the townsfolkSelf-ethnography: diaries and essays of female sociologists
lily Driga. Pregnancy and medicine: marginal notes
Olga Senina. "Preservation of pregnancy": experience of inpatient treatment
Elena Petrova. Two weeks in the hospital: waiting and childbirth
Anna Adrianova. Where the patient feels good: a visit to the gynecologist
Olga Tkach. The experience of being in the surgical department: treatment as a test
Olga Senina. In search of the "right doctor", or the history of one disease
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UDC 613.88 LBC 57.0 З-46 Reviewers: Ilya Utekhin, EUSP professor, Ph.D.; Elena Rozhdestvenskaya, Professor of the Department of Analysis of Social Institutions, State University Higher School of Economics (Moscow), Presenter Researcher IS RAS (Moscow), Ph.D. Health and confidence: a gender approach to reproductive medicine: 3-46 collection of articles / ed. Elena Zdravomyslova and Anna Tyomkina. - St. Petersburg. : Publishing House of the European University in St. Petersburg, 2009. - 430 p. - (Proceedings of the Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology; Issue 18). ISBN 978-5-94380-088-7 The lack of institutional trust is a stable characteristic of Russian society. Distrust of institutions and professionals takes on a special meaning when we talk about reproductive health. Why do people not trust doctors? Why do expectant mothers avoid visiting antenatal clinics? What strategies do women use to get reliable health care? Turning to the analysis of the interaction between a gynecologist and a patient, the authors of the collection analyze the difficulties of building trust, the role of social networks, material resources and individual knowledge, as well as the problems of obtaining sexual education and the rejection of the “abortion culture” of protection. These topics are comprehended in a sociological way, a gender approach to the interpretation of health is used. The book also contains essays written by sociological patients that show that today's educated women seek to control their sexual health, the process of pregnancy and childbirth, but constantly face numerous obstacles. These texts may be of interest to both real and potential clients of medical institutions, and medical professionals. UDC 613.88 LBC 57.0 ISBN 978-5-94380-088-7 © Team of authors, 2009 © European University at St. Petersburg, 2009 Contents Elena Zdravomyslova, Anna Tyomkina Introduction. Gender approach in the study of reproductive practices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Part 1 DILEMMAS OF SEX EDUCATION AND ABORTION PRACTICE Michel Rivkin-Fish, Victor Samokhvalov Sex education and personal development: rethinking professional power. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Olga Snarskaya Sexual education as a sphere of production of gender differences and construction of ideas about the "nation" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Anna Tyomkina Sex education as moral education (late Soviet discourses on sexuality) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 Elena Zdravomyslova Gender citizenship and abortion culture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Victoria Sakevich The problem of abortion in modern Russia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 Part 2 INTERACTIONS WITH MEDICINE: MONEY, KNOWLEDGE, SOCIAL NETWORKS Polina Aronson Strategies for seeking medical care and social inequality in modern Russia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Elena Zdravomyslova, Anna Tyomkina “I don't trust doctors”, but… Overcoming distrust in reproductive medicine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 5 Olga Brednikova Buying competence and attention: payment practices during pregnancy and childbirth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 Daria Odintsova "Cultural patient" through the eyes of a gynecologist. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234 Ekaterina Borozdina "Correct" pregnancy: recommendations of doctors and advice from the townsfolk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 Part 3 SELF-ETNOGRAPHY: DIARY AND ESSAYS OF PATIENT SOCIOLOGISTS Lilya Driga Pregnancy and medicine: marginal notes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Olga Senina "Preservation of pregnancy": the experience of inpatient treatment. . . . . . . . . Elena Petrova Two weeks in the hospital: waiting and childbirth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anna Adrianova Where the patient feels good: a visit to the gynecologist. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Olga Tkach Experience of staying in the surgical department: treatment as a test. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Olga Senina In search of the "right doctor", or the history of one disease. . . . . . Annexes WORKING MATERIALS OF PROJECTS Annex 1. Description of the project "Safety and ensuring reproductive health in Russia" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Appendix 2. Instructions and guide for interviews with gynecologists-obstetricians. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Annex 3. Instructions and guide for female clients / patients of medical institutions in the field of reproductive health. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Annex 4. Instructions for an observation session in a medical institution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 324 344 369 393 408 417 419 423 427 List of abbreviations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428 Information about the authors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430 Gender-Based Research on Reproductive Practices Introduction GENDER-BASED RESEARCH ON REPRODUCTIVE PRACTICES This compendium presents the results of a study of reproductive and sexual health-related policies and practices. We define our overall approach as gender and we need to show what it is. First, most of the articles and essays in this collection address the experiences of women. This is due to the fact that it is women who are in the center of attention of the reproductive sector of medicine (officially included in the rhetoric of “protection of motherhood and childhood”), it is they who are primarily targeted by demographic policy, it is they, as mothers, who are considered responsible for its implementation. The analysis of women's experience in this case was carried out based on the methodology of the positional approach developed in feminist epistemology (standpoint approach). Within the framework of this approach, the lived experience of oppressed and deprived individuals and groups is considered as a source of valuable and authentic knowledge oriented towards social change. Our focus is on the phenomenological interpretation of women's experience. Of course, this does not mean that reproductive/sexual health problems do not concern men. On the contrary, men may be sensitive to medical interference in their intimate life, but this is only slightly recognized in modern Russia and only gradually becomes the subject of special studies. In an effort to present women's experience, we did not limit ourselves here to research articles, but included in the collection diaries and essays of sociologists who found themselves in the role of patients who lived through and described this experience. 7 Introduction Second, the theoretical framework of these studies is the structural-constructivist approach, in which gender differences and inequalities are described as socially produced. We argue that the reproduction of rigid gender boundaries in the field of reproductive health leads to the fact that the experience of parenthood continues to be recognized in society and institutionally supported as predominantly female. This not only breeds female deprivation, but also supports the exclusion of men from family care. Stereotypes of masculinity prevent men from taking care of their health, following the practices of responsible sexual and reproductive behavior. Thus, the ideal of gender partnership becomes elusive. Thirdly, we acknowledge that the discussion of many issues in this collective monograph is value-oriented. In modern Russian society, there is no consensus about abortion, the latest contraceptives, new reproductive technologies, the participation of the father in childbirth, about the balance of personal and state responsibility for reproductive health, sexual education, and about the problems of medicine in general. There is also no agreement on the purpose of men and women, their role and responsibility in the implementation of reproductive practices. These topics inevitably give rise to moral assessments and become politicized. The feminist position that we hold is that both women and men should have equal opportunity to control their lives, and social institutions should provide them with this opportunity. Fourth, we focus on structural limitations that create barriers to ensuring reproductive health and obtaining the necessary knowledge. Among these structures are the bureaucratic organization of medicine, restrictions in the system of sexual education, insufficient effectiveness of contraceptive policies, etc. The gender (feminist) approach involves a critical attitude towards structural barriers that impede freedom of choice and the exercise of personal control over one's life, health, reproductive and sexual behavior . Fifth, the authors are critical of the monopoly of the power of medical knowledge, the authoritarian medicalization of the female body and the repressive actions of medicine in relation to a sick, pregnant or childbirth woman. The power of authoritarian medicine is a subject of criticism by feminist researchers in many countries. However, in Russia this problem has its own specifics, which manifests itself not only in power professional knowledge and the asymmetry of relations between the doctor and the patient, but also in the inefficiency of the bureaucratic organization of medicine, the lack of clear rules, the combination of free services with formal and informal payments. Patients feel that they are being manipulated, about which it is difficult for them to get accessible explanations, they do not trust doctors. The new generation of women is extremely dissatisfied with the conditions of medical institutions, their new identity and strategies are at the center of our research. This collection includes articles, each of which relied on its own field. (Each article includes a description of these data.) In addition, the authors use three datasets. The first array was received within the framework of the project “Sexual and reproductive practices in Russia: freedom and responsibility” (St. Petersburg, beginning of XXI century)”, its financial support was provided by the EUSP FP&S Gender Program - Ford Foundation, 2005. Sexual biographies of twenty women and ten men belonging to two age cohorts (from 17 to 25 and from 30 to 45) were collected by in-depth interviews. Of the thirty respondents, 20 informants belong to the middle class (12 women and 8 men), 10 belong to the lower middle class. The second set includes biographical in-depth focused interviews collected as part of the Fertility patterns and family forms project (Fertility patterns and family forms, no. 208186; financial support from the Finnish Academy of Sciences). Within the framework of the New Life subproject (2004–2005), 67 in-depth focused interviews were taken. Among them - 44 with representatives of the middle and upper middle class, women aged 27-40, born in 1964-1977, whose formative years fall on the pre-perestroika and perestroika period. The third array was collected as part of the Non-Traditional Threats to Russia’s Security project, grant Carnegie Corporation of New York B7819. It includes 18 interviews with healthcare professionals. Among them are 11 interviews with gynecologists and obstetricians, one with a pediatrician, one with a neurologist, five with health experts. Most of the interviews (11) were taken in St. Petersburg. During the project, seven participant observation diaries were collected (practice diary 9 Introduction to the gynecological clinic of a student medical school, three diaries of pregnancy and childbirth, a diary of a visit to a gynecologist, a diary of the child's medical history, a diary of treatment in the surgical department of the hospital). Two in-depth interviews were also conducted with female patients who had recently experienced childbirth. The first part of the book is devoted to the problems of sexual education in modern Russia and the consequences of sexual ignorance. The authors see a political conflict between supporters of sex education and conservatives who see it as a threat to the moral health of the nation. The authors believe that the prevalence of abortions and STDs is explained by sexual ignorance and gender blindness in educational programs. Sex education/education is a hot topic of debate in Russia recent years. Michel Rivkin-Fish and Viktor Samokhvalov look at changing pedagogical approaches in sexuality and reproductive education. The authors show how the power of expert knowledge is translated and changed in the context of increased public attention to sexual and reproductive health issues. Researchers demonstrate differences in the exercise of professional power between gynecologists and psychologists. The discourse of gynecologists focuses on the concepts of physical and moral purity, they insist on the need for discipline and subjection of patients to the authority of the doctor. Psychologists are more trying to develop a dialogue form of interaction, encouraging the referents of communication to self-knowledge and development, to take care of themselves, thereby exercising an unobtrusive influence, rather than resorting to coercion mechanisms. Gender stereotypes are reproduced by both gynecologists and psychologists. The article by Olga Snarskaya analyzes the contemporary Russian discussion about sex education. The researcher connects the positions of the participants in the discussion with their attitude to the issue of nationalism. Opponents of sexual education are concerned about the desire to revive the spirituality of the Russian nation, opposing the latter to "Western moral standards." Proponents of sex education associate it with safe sexual behavior and risk avoidance. They emphasize the value of the family, the health of children, etc., that is, they use arguments similar to those of their opponents. Pedagogical practices and recommendations reproduce the idea of ​​polarization of gender roles. In a number of cases, gender equality is declared in the approach to sexual education, but it is not supported in practical actions. In the discussion, there is a search for a “local” compromise between the recognition of global liberalization tendencies and orientations towards the moral health of the nation. The article by Anna Tyomkina analyzes late Soviet discourses on sexuality. The researcher, using the example of an analysis of recommendations and guidelines on sexual education, shows that in the 1960s. a cautious discussion of liberal sexual practices began in the psychological, sociological, medical, and pedagogical literature. This discussion was aimed at overcoming negative consequences sexual relations that threaten Soviet morality, and also partly to overcome sexual ignorance. These texts asserted gender-polarized norms, despite the declaration of gender equality under socialism. This study helps to compare modern and late Soviet ideas about sexuality and morality, to see continuity and differences. In articles by Victoria Sakevich and Elena Zdravomyslova, abortion practices are analyzed as the consequences of sexual ignorance. Elena Zdravomyslova shows how in Soviet times the abortion contraceptive culture became the core of a woman's civil status. Symbolically, abortion was the price to pay for reproductive freedom in an institutionalized lack of alternative birth control options. Currently, abortion is being moralized; from the routine practice of a woman, it is becoming the subject of moral choice and condemnation. Victoria Sakevich, examining the dynamics of abortion statistics in Russia, shows that birth control in Russia has become ubiquitous since the 1960s. At the same time, the prevailing method of birth control in the late Soviet period was set by the “abortion culture”. Since the 1990s the number of abortions is steadily declining. In 2006, there were 1.4 abortions per woman, while in 1991 the figure was 3.4. At the same time, Russian women express a high degree willingness to terminate unwanted pregnancies, they are oriented towards low rates of desirable number of children, and the effectiveness of contraception is considered insufficient. Based on mass surveys, the author shows what social characteristics are characteristic of women who are less likely to resort to abortions. These are educated women living in large cities who are married and use the most modern methods of contraception. Among those who are more supportive of the idea of ​​a ban on the right to abortion are men, religious people, people with a low level of education, residents countryside, women with many children, women who rarely resorted to abortions. The author connects this phenomenon with the active anti-abortion propaganda of recent years. In line with this propaganda, the thesis about the inevitable harm of abortion for a woman's health dominates, however, studies show that with the use of modern methods of abortion, the harm can be significantly reduced. The spread of modern methods of contraception and sex education is much more effective in reducing the number of abortions than prohibitions and obscurantism. The second part analyzes the crisis of institutional trust. The focus is on the interaction between a gynecologist and a woman who seeks medical help from him. The authors reconstruct personality-oriented strategies for coping with institutional mistrust. Research shows the importance of social networks (P. Aronson), interaction personification practices (E. Zdravomyslova and A. Tyomkina), commercialization (O. Brednikova) in medical care. We are far from being negative about such mechanisms. On the contrary, they often lead to effects that satisfy patients. They are quite satisfied with “their” doctors, recommend them to friends and acquaintances, pay them money and bring gifts. The problem of humanization of medicine that everyone faces modern societies, in Russia is resolved thanks to the mechanisms of personification of relations, which partly compensates for the asymmetry of power and alienation, but is associated with many problems. First, the environment unfriendly in relation to the patient remains. The professional services of a familiar physician are selective. Their availability is in no way consistent with the change general rules service. Secondly, the rules of such relationships are extremely vague, in each case their specific version is developed anew, causing mutual tension (about how much to pay, what gifts and when to carry, how to hand out envelopes with rewards for services, etc.). Third, uncertainty remains about the interface between personalized and formal medical contacts. Patients face the problem of correlation between interactions with a familiar doctor and interactions within “official” institutions, where sick leave certificates are issued, where you can receive official checks confirming payment for medical services, etc. Fourth, the lack of financial resources and limited social networks do not allow many categories of the population to provide themselves with reliable medical services. The topic of lack of trust in healthcare institutions is opened by an article by Polina Aronson. The researcher shows how social inequality manifests itself in the field of medical services. Although reproductive health care is not her special interest, it seems to us that the conclusions made by the author can be extended to all branches of medicine. As in many other countries, low-income social groups in Russia find themselves deprived in terms of maintaining health. Representatives of these groups try to avoid going to doctors both because of their values ​​and because of a lack of economic resources. Population groups with higher incomes and education are in a relatively privileged position, but they also systematically lack confidence in health care institutions. Education creates a resource for critically evaluating expertise and organizing services, which becomes a source of mistrust. However, representatives of the middle and upper strata, in contrast to low-income and poorly educated groups, can more effectively mobilize material and social resources. Carrying out treatment “by pull” or “for money”, they compensate for many shortcomings of the system. As the author shows, people whose social networks do not provide access to doctors or cannot pay for their treatment try to minimize interactions with the professional medical system. The willingness to invest in treatment is accompanied by a focus on comfort in the provision of services and the desire for personalization in relationships with medical personnel. In the field of reproductive medicine, there is a specific relationship between doctor and patient. This area is a special area 13 Introduction of trust services, which should ensure not only health, but also the explicit maintenance of gender morality. Medical expertise sets the rules and controls the manifestations of the "correct" femininity. Women's identity is associated with reproductive and sexual practices. The article by Elena Zdravomyslova and Anna Tyomkina is devoted to these aspects. They analyze the growing aspirations of young, educated urban women in the field of reproductive medicine. Patients are dissatisfied, firstly, with the inefficient bureaucratic organization of medical care and, secondly, with the inattentive attitude of doctors. Demanding patients try to overcome the lack of trust by building strategies based on social networks, economic and information resources. They strive to find the “right” doctor and the “right” facility where care during pregnancy and childbirth is not only efficient and safe, but also friendly and comfortable. Olga Brednikova analyzes the process of commercialization of medical support for pregnancy. Despite the universality of money as a medium of exchange, she sees differences in the practices of paying for medical services, highlighting formalized, hidden and direct payments. Based on the experience of self-ethnography, as well as on the analysis of site materials, the author analyzes the conditions that make direct payments the most functional and comfortable from the point of view of interaction agents. Direct payments "from hand to pocket" or "from hand to hand" increase the responsibility and interest of the doctor, contribute to the personification of relationships and avoid bureaucratic depersonalization, which is not considered a guarantee of quality of care. Patients pay for professionalism, comfort, positive emotions. The price of "happiness" (healthy pregnancy and successful delivery) in modern Russian reproductive medicine is different: according to the author's calculations, it amounted to 74 thousand rubles. (approximately 3 thousand dollars), which consist of an approximately equal share of formalized and non-formalized payments. The authors are not limited to the analysis of the life world of clients of medical institutions. Daria Odintsova shows that gynecologists also form certain attitudes towards their visitors, which are united by the concept of "culture of patient behavior". A cultured patient has the “correct” information, 14 Gender Approach in Research on Reproductive Practices, trusts the doctor and has no doubts about prescriptions and effectiveness of treatment. She is not inclined to "change" doctors and turn to alternative methods of managing pregnancy and childbirth. A “cultural patient” is expected to have a responsible attitude towards her own health, which implies an appropriate lifestyle, and in case of illness, a focus on treatment, and not on finding the guilty or evading medical intervention. The "good" patient cooperates with the doctor, competently fulfilling her role in the medical interaction. Today, the image of the “ideal patient” of a gynecologist coincides with the portrait of the “new reflective woman” who seeks control over her sexual and reproductive practices: learns about contraception before sexual activity begins and prepares for pregnancy before it occurs. However, doctors who are institutionally forced to strictly control the health of their patients are wary and often negative about independent decisions patients, i.e., to actions that take the latter out of the total supervision of a doctor / medical institute. Physicians position themselves as monopolists in reproductive health knowledge. The model of the right patient, which they are guided by, involves informed consent with a medical expert. Problematic patients in the eyes of doctors are uncultured, insufficiently informed and over-demanding clients of medical institutions. The article by Ekaterina Borozdina analyzes the socially constructed knowledge about pregnancy, to which future mothers appeal. The study confirms the importance of different types of knowledge in the formation of identity. Ideas about pregnancy are created personal experience women. However, personalized knowledge necessarily correlates with standardized and quantified objective indicators of pregnancy produced by medicine. An essential role in the conceptualization of the experience of pregnancy is played by the everyday knowledge of practical experts belonging to social network women. Sharing experiences helps a pregnant woman contextualize and individualize her experience by comparing it with the narratives of other women. In addition, this information helps to develop strategies for interaction with medical institutions. Through the exchange of everyday knowledge, an intersubjective world of women is constructed, united by the common experience of pregnancy and childbirth. The third part presents diaries and autobiographical essays of sociologists who have become clients of medical institutions. These materials describe the experience associated with the observation of pregnancy, childbirth, treatment by gynecologists. This part also includes diary entries representing the experience of treating other diseases. These notes and essays, like those cited in the interview texts, are anonymous. With one exception, they are published under pseudonyms. The decision to include these materials in the collection was dictated by some fundamental considerations related to the specifics of the gender approach. First, we sought to desacralize the sphere of reproductive health as understandable only to professionals and women with relevant experience. Until now, reproductive experience has been difficult to discuss because it is associated with representations of the bodily bottom as indecent and unsuitable for social research. Until now, in Russian society, both women and men, faced with health problems in the intimate sphere, often experience great difficulty in recognizing and discussing these problems, which, in turn, leads to negative health consequences. Secondly, the described bodily experience, permeated with emotions and prejudices, rarely becomes the subject of reflection and conceptualization. On the state level the importance of demographic programs is recognized, but politicians still seem to be unaware that specific women get pregnant and give birth, who face their problems and fears, cope with their bodies and their own suffering. If these women are afraid of maternity hospitals and doctors, if they are not confident in the effectiveness and reliability of medicine for their health and the health of their unborn child, they are unlikely to act in accordance with the expectations of politicians who propose monetary measures to increase the birth rate. Thirdly, including the texts of the diaries in this collection, we proceeded from the fact that the sphere of reproductive health in Russian society has been and remains a sphere of gender inequality and moralizing. Motherhood is still seen as an unproblematic female destiny. Moralization hinders systematic sexuality education. Gender polarization is reflected in the limitations of partnership and participation of the father in pregnancy and childbirth. Our task is to deconstruct, at least in part, this process. Politicians and media often convince a woman that she should (or, on the contrary, should not) give birth, use contraception, have (or not have) an abortion. And the arguments put forward by the authorities are not always medical. Politicians and experts directly or indirectly determine what is "correct" femininity and how a normal woman should behave. Such a woman is prescribed “responsible motherhood” or participation in “responsible parenthood on an equal footing with a man” (however, the latter statement is quite rare in Russian discourse). In all cases, the normalization of femininity is accompanied by references to “nature”, behind which completely different meanings can be hidden, which casts doubt on the discursive strategy of naturalizing the female role. Fourthly, while preparing this collection, we regretfully realized how high the degree of distrust of Russian women in the doctor and medicine is and how difficult it is to overcome it. At the same time, in our treatment practices, we all met wonderful doctors who cured us or even saved our lives, who were not indifferent to our fate and were professional in their actions. We have to explain why, nevertheless, the problems of doctor-patient communication are constantly reproduced, why a person, having assumed the role of a patient out of necessity, begins to doubt the qualifications of experts, trust no one, complain about poor conditions and malicious goals of professionals. Maybe just because it hurts and is scary? Of course, and therefore also. But also because structural conditions (the rules of the bureaucratic organization of a medical institution) form institutional traps for a doctor who is required to provide assistance, but is far from always provided with the conditions for this. The observation diaries presented in this section are not the "classic" diaries of anthropological research. Instructions were developed for their management (see the Appendix section), however, most patients who have the skills of sociological reflection and sociological skepticism went beyond the diary organization of records. Firstly, not everywhere and not always the principle of a clear fixation of time, place, situation, characters is always observed, since the authors structured their observations on certain topics, for example, “money” or “turning into a patient”, etc. Secondly, reflection and comments in a number of cases represent almost the central part of the records. Therefore, we cannot recommend these texts as examples of participant observation for beginners, however, the value of diary entries lies not only in their rich texture, but also in the sociological perception of the world of a hospital or clinic, the role of a patient, attitudes towards motherhood, etc. Elena Zdravomyslova and Anna Tyomkina 18 Gender Approach in the Study of Reproductive Practices Part 1 DILEMMAS OF SEXUAL EDUCATION AND ABORTION PRACTICE 19 Introduction 20 M. Rivkin-Fish, V. Samokhvalov M. Rivkin-Fish, V. Samokhvalov. Sexuality Education Michel Rivkin-Fish, Victor Samokhvalov SEXUALITY EDUCATION AND PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT: RETHINKING PROFESSIONAL POWER 1 Introduction For the sociological analysis of health, it is important to show that systematic health education and sexuality education play a much more important role than simply providing objective information about bodily processes and behavior. With the help of pedagogical measures, experts try to influence people's ideas of right and wrong and influence their behavior in accordance with certain cultural ideas of morality, responsibility and dignity. The practical approaches that experts use to teach healthy lifestyles reflect their own views on a number of significant issues - about effective ways to achieve changes in people's behavior, about relationships with medical experts, and about acceptable ways to express their professional power. This essay examines the change in pedagogical approaches to promoting sexual and reproductive health in St. Petersburg that has taken place since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Reproductive health has come into the focus of attention of the medical and wider public due to such negative factors as numerous complications during pregnancy and birth injuries in newborns, an abortion rate that is twice the rate of births, an avalanche of diseases/infections transmitted 1 Translation I . Tartakovskaya. 21 Part 1. Dilemmas in Sexuality Education and the Practice of Sexual Abortion (STD/STI)2. Russian gynecologists and psychologists are at the forefront of the battle to improve the health of women and children in a situation of deepening poverty and lack of resources. In conditions when the state could not provide social support to the population, health care workers had to act on the principle of "saving the drowning is the work of the drowning themselves." This saying reflected the painful feeling of abandonment experienced by medical professionals. Against the background of frustrations and difficulties of economic reforms, in the middle and second half of the 1990s. several enthusiastic doctors from St. Petersburg made an attempt to improve women's health by creating educational courses at their clinics. The lectures in these courses were intended for both adolescents and physicians and were aimed at promoting new knowledge about sexuality and healthy lifestyles and at supporting new forms of behavior that develop the personality. These courses used different approaches depending on the professional affiliation and personal worldview of the doctor/teacher. Although all teachers shared the opinion about the need for a moral rebirth of a person and paid much attention to the development of personality and culture, gynecologists and psychologists interpreted these concepts in different ways. In particular, when gynecologists urged young women to "raise their cultural level" in the areas of sexual behavior and personal hygiene, they often shamed those who had premarital sex or had abortions. In their lectures, the concepts of physical and moral purity were key. Gynecologists stressed the need for strict obedience to expert prescriptions in order to have healthy body and morally acceptable relationships with other people. 2 Maternal mortality in 1997 was 50.2 per 1,000 people, almost 7 times higher than in the USA (Notzon et. al. 1999: iv). In the same 1997, there were 2016 abortions per 1000 births (Popov and David 1999: 233). The prevalence of morbidity, for example, syphilis in 1997 was 277.6 per 100,000 people, which is 64.5 times higher than in 1989 - 4.2 (Tichonova 1997; Vishnevsky 2000: 85–86). Gonorrhea and chlamydia have also become very common. And although only a few Russians in the mid-1990s. believed that AIDS could pose a serious threat to the country, they constantly received warnings from world experts that an outbreak of the virus in Russia was very likely. 22 M. Rivkin-Fish, V. Samokhvalov. Sex Education Psychologists have promoted other forms of social control. In lectures for women, they insisted on the importance of self-knowledge of the patient, set the goal of helping people in personal development so that they themselves could make intelligent decisions about sexuality and reproduction. From the point of view of psychologists, abortions and STDs were symptoms of psychological defects that arose as a result of the suppression of sexuality and individualism in the Soviet system. Personal development was thus seen as a remedy for social and psychological trauma inflicted on individuals by the Soviet system. Empirical data and research objectives The essay draws on two types of data. The first part presents material collected by M. Rivkin-Fish, a cultural anthropologist who conducted field work in clinics and schools in St. Petersburg from 1994 to 2000 (for a total of 16 months), where doctors lectured adolescents on reproductive health . This part of the text examines the differences in the pedagogical approaches of gynecologists and psychologists who tried to influence the personal moral changes of young people. The second part presents the work done by Dr. V. Samokhvalov. Inspired by the work of Mikhail Balint, a Hungarian psychotherapist who developed methods of group therapy designed to help doctors overcome emotional difficulties when working with patients (Balint 1961, 1964), Victor Samokhvalov in the mid-1980s. began to lead groups according to the Balint method with Russian therapists, and since the early 1990s with gynecologists. His lectures were built on the experience of working with these groups and on his ideas about doctor-patient relationships, which he developed over more than thirty years of his professional activity. In particular, his work with gynecologists has focused on the importance of the concept of "personality" as a conceptual tool for the interaction of experts with patients in the field of reproductive and sexual health. In educational work with young people and with professionals, the psychological concept of “personality” is used to rethink the doctor-patient relationship and to promote new forms of professional authority that are less expert-based. the degree of encouraging patients to self-realization. The gynecologists and psychologists whose approaches are described in this article worked in several city clinics and schools in St. Petersburg in the mid-1990s. The ethnographic examples in this article are selected by Rivkin-Fish from a large sample of thirteen lectures given to adolescents, adults, and health care professionals in clinics and schools as part of special education programs. The length of the lectures varied from 30 minutes to two hours; they were recorded by the author of the article on a dictaphone and then transcribed. Rivkin-Fish interviewed these educators and other health professionals, and conducted participant observation in St. Petersburg maternity hospitals and antenatal clinics. During fieldwork, she met Dr. Samokhvalov by visiting his clinic in 1994, and from that moment on, they had a constant exchange of views on the problems of the doctor-patient relationship, sexuality education, and the need to recognize the role of the concept of “personality” in formal and informal spheres. medical activities. From a sociological point of view, Samokhvalov's approach can represent the growing popularity of the application of psychological principles in medical education, as evidenced, for example, by the interest shown by psychologists in the factor of the emotional state of clients, and the recently published text “Psychology of Health” (Nikiforova 2006). The attempted comparison of the views of gynecologists and psychologists in sex education courses serves as material for considering the theoretical question of the interpretation of professional medical authority. A Case Study of Physician-Patient Interaction The study of physician-patient relationships in the social sciences is increasingly focused on understanding the ways in which medical expertise exercises and legitimizes its power. Having studied the historical and modern dynamics of these processes in France and Western Europe , Michel Foucault (Foucault 24 M. Rivkin-Fish, V. Samokhvalov. Sex Education 1973, 1980) and Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu 1977, 1990, 1994) have proposed a theoretical framework for developing a critical view of how professional expertise becomes a key channel for called modern (modern) power3. Foucault argued that the arrival of liberal democracies in 18th-century Western Europe fundamentally changed the way power was exercised. Through discourses promising citizens freedom and rights, these regimes minimized the usual, overt exercise of repressive power over people that characterized previous modes of government. While the new, liberal mode of government proclaimed the complete absence of a hierarchy of power in the relationship between state and society, or, more accurately, the transfer of power to the "people", Foucault showed how liberal government creates new conditions for the establishment of power relations. The exercise of power has become less obvious and less felt in everyday life, but by no means has it disappeared. The creation and use of expert knowledge is the main form of discipline and control over people. Both individual bodies and the body of society became important arenas in which the application of knowledge/power unfolded - not only on the part of states, but also on the part of experts and institutions that established standardization, normalization and order. Foucault called the power/knowledge gained through discipline and control over individual and social bodies in aspects such as their life cycles and reproductive processes biopower. Biopower has become the target of political regimes and experts. With its help, they received the right and responsibility to measure, observe and intervene in various areas of life in order to improve the quality of both the population and individuals in the name of the general social good, including health and well-being. For example, expert discourses often considered the person (“self”) as an object of prescriptions for “normal” ways of behaving, taking care of oneself in a certain way was imputed to modern citizens as a responsibility. The use of biopower was thus to be seen not as coercion but rather as beneficial and necessary. ). 25 Part 1. Dilemmas in sex education and abortion practice (Foucault 1980; Lupton 1995; Petersen and Bunton 1997; Lock and Kaufert 1998). Pierre Bourdieu compared different ways the use of power, as well as various effects of the impact of "brute" or, conversely, "charismatic" power, affecting people's willingness to maintain the status quo. Drawing on an ethnographic study in Algeria, he described the ways in which "brute" power functions, with officials yelling, scolding, and scolding people in order to dominate them (Bourdieu 1977: 189–190). In France, by contrast, Bourdieu found "softer" modes of power in which dominance through experts is accepted voluntarily. An important result of this power is the voluntary submission of lay people to the power claims of experts, a phenomenon that Bourdieu explained by the fact that the former do not recognize the power of the state behind the latter (Bourdieu 1994). When patients perceive a professional's license as a sign of his/her individual talent and skill, they are thereby implicitly accepting the legitimacy of the state as the supreme agent of expertise and responsibility. State licenses serve as a kind of “charzima certificate” for professionals, turning a person into a conscientious healer (Bourdieu 1990: 138, 1994: 11–12). Bourdieu shows that the license claims conformity this person the requirements of the state bureaucracy with its rather controversial or at least incomplete criteria for expert standards. With the help of such processes as the routine non-recognition of the mechanisms of power, the objective conditions of inequality take root and reproduce. In the Russian context, the situation was the opposite (Rivkin-Fish 2005). Patients initially expect physicians to be indifferent to their needs and do their best to elude responsibility for their work. These features were associated precisely with the fact that doctors belonged to the official healthcare system, which, in turn, was perceived as a reproduction in miniature of the entire "our system" - the delegitimized, destroyed, but still influential Soviet state. Inverting Bourdieu's concept, Rivkin-Fish argues that in the eyes of many Russian patients, the licenses of doctors as medical experts - as evidence of their connection with the state - not only did not inspire confidence, but, on the contrary, led to the obsessive suspicion that they would reproduce 26 M. Rivkin-Fish, V. Samokhvalov. Sex education is a negative practice associated with the state system. Their state licenses were certificates devoid of charisma. Cultural anthropology develops this line of research through an ethnographic study of the mechanisms by which medical authorities make themselves appear legitimate in the eyes of women and men in different social contexts. Feminist scholars, in particular, question why women are subject to expert prescriptions and medical interventions, why they value medical technology, despite the fact that scientific discourses are often degrading and dehumanizing in relation to women's bodies and personalities4. In the works of Foucault appear mainly in the Western European and American context. Rivkin-Fish study conducted in the 1990s (Rivkin-Fish 2005), looks at how the institutional framework of a socialist maternity health system influenced the exercise of medical power and the negotiations over its use. Under the influence of Soviet paternalistic ideology, the forms of medical dominance in Russia varied: sometimes it was accepted voluntarily, but often it was imposed by open repressive methods, which led to widespread suspicion and distrust of the official healthcare system. For example, physicians often blamed female patients and instilled feelings of guilt and fear in them as a means of gaining control over them (Humphrey 1983; Field 2007). Even when Russian physicians tried to instill a sense of comfort in patients by demonstrating their attention and concern for their well-being, this tactic was aimed at maintaining the authority and influence of the therapist, and not at achieving an ideal of equality or changing power relations between doctors and patients (as Western democratic theories suggest). Many Russian women seek access to a "bona fide" form of medical authority by avoiding official channels of care and relying on non-bureaucratic relationships of kinship, friendship or monetary exchange. Achieving Desirable Forms of Medicine 4 See eg Martin 1987; Ginsburg 1989; Davis Floyd 1992; Inhorn 1994; Ragone 1994; Fraser 1995; Ginsburg and Rapp 1995; Lock and Kaufert 1998; Rapp 1999; Kahn 2000. 27 Part 1. The dilemma of sexuality education and the practice of abortion power and ethically correct forms of care has been linked to the need to avoid the bureaucratic power of the state. A sociological analysis of medical power following Foucault's line demonstrates that if medical experts intervene in matters of a social nature, the political and economic causes of disease are relegated to the background (Lock and Kaufert 1998). The "medicalization" of social problems prevents a critical understanding of exploitation and subjugation by the groups of people they concern. However, the total portrait of "medicine as power" does not exhaust different options, therefore, here is a distinction of different types of power practiced in health care, and different effects on female patients. The changes taking place in the system of women's health care in Russia during the 1990s–2000s make it necessary to carefully study such nuances. For example, the positioning of sex as either a source of danger and moral problems, or as a source of pleasure by those responsible for education influences the definition of acceptable practices in terms of professional authority. If gynecologists often accuse sexually active young people of immoral behavior, then within the framework of psychological humanistic approach attention is focused on the clash of individual desires and social prohibitions. This allows psychologists to drop the blame for sexually active women, recognizing that they have problems even if they have “safe sex”. The Institutional and Ideological Context of Sexuality Education As in most countries of the world, in Russia the need for sexuality education for schoolchildren and adolescents is far from unconditionally understood and accepted. As the well-known sociologist I. Kon points out, many representatives of the older generation, as well as those who oppose the liberalization of society, express open rejection of initiatives in the field of sexuality education5. To the extent that 5 I. Kon and J. Riordan (Kon and Riordan 1993: 40) cite the following data from public opinion polls conducted in the early 1990s, 28 M. Rivkin-Fish, V. Samokhvalov. Sexuality Education As evidence of declining birth rates began to pile up, conservative and nationalist organizations increasingly portrayed sex education as foreign-sponsored campaigns that hastened the nation's extinction by teaching Russian children to "refuse procreation" (Medvedeva and Shishova 2000). The irony in running these campaigns was that Russian programs Family planning did not promote the Western notion of "freedom", but rather emphasized the need to revive moral purity, strengthen the family, and express sexuality only within the marriage bond. Being in the context of the rejection of sex education, the gynecologists and psychotherapists who dealt with it turned out to be a uniquely motivated group. In conversations with us, they spoke with enthusiasm and perseverance about their mission, considering it their calling6. Specialists used state hospitals and outpatient clinics in which they worked themselves as a base. Until the end of the 1990s. sex education educators carried out educational activities in nearby schools, the administration of which expected that doctors would be able to give students the "correct", authoritative knowledge about 6 about the desirability of sex education classes in schools. When asked whether these lessons should be included in the timetable for schoolchildren aged 11–12, 61% of women and 58% of men answered positively. At the same time, in the group of respondents under 25, the share of positive answers was 80%, and in the group of those over 60, only 38%. Although we do not have more recent research on this topic, the very aggressive negative campaigns on sex education by the Orthodox Church suggest that it is unlikely that the rate of positive responses could increase. The attitude towards the initiatives can be compared with the attitude towards public services involved in health education under the Soviet regime. At that time, therapists were required to do so-called educational work, which they were afraid of, since they had to speak on topics far from medicine in the context of an ideologically loaded “community work”. After the party directives regarding the content of all types of education were canceled, education in the field of sexual morality was no longer associated among doctors with "educational work" in the Soviet sense of the word and began to be perceived by some of them as an interesting and necessary activity. 29 Part 1. Dilemmas of sexuality education and the practice of sexuality abortion. Without a developed curriculum or official instructions (as well as a budget to support their activities), teachers collected material using their home libraries and the help of philanthropists - Western humanitarian organizations, missionaries, commercial firms. In some cases, they have received help from international anti-abortion organizations such as Focus on the Family and Human Life International. The ideology of supporting family values ​​and spiritual renewal contributed to legitimizing the work of teachers. International organizations have helped some antenatal clinics by funding repairs, purchasing consumables, comfortable furniture, video equipment, as well as abundantly providing literature and films about the dangers of abortion. Therefore, those who promoted family values ​​and anti-abortion policies were economically better off than those who emphasized "women's rights" or their sexual autonomy. Since public criticism throughout the 1990s. (and even more so in the 2000s) argued that sex education, by promoting contraception and thereby reducing the birth rate, threatens the life of the nation, gynecologists and psychologists in their studies focused on the problems of strengthening the family and individual morality (they themselves sincerely shared these values), and this was an important way of justifying their activities. Gynecologists and the Promotion of the Idea of ​​Maternal Responsibility Many of the lectures given in the system of sexuality education reproduced (at least in part) Soviet discourses on sex education, or the education of sexual morality. For example, some teachers have stressed the need to discipline the "hygienic" behavior of young women, urging them to take care of their bodies as a means of future reproduction. The very process of sexual intercourse and conception was usually not described, and the female body was positioned as a vessel destined for motherhood. In this context, abortion has been interpreted by gynecologists as dangerous because it threatens potential motherhood and ethically allows for the abandonment of potential child care. Gynecologists continued the tradition of the Soviet accusation of women, using M. Rivkin-Fish, V. Samokhvalov. Sexuality education uses bullying strategies to promote health care. This approach is illustrated by one of the observations made by Rivkin-Fish during field work in 1993: in the room where the patients of the antenatal clinic were waiting for a doctor's appointment, color photographs of aborted fetuses were hung on the walls. When the researcher asked the deputy The director of the consultation, why these photographs were hung exactly where women were sitting awaiting an abortion, she answered literally the following: “We hope that they will change their minds” (Rivkin-Fish 1994). Anastasia Pavlovna7, a woman of about 45 years old, was one of those gynecologists who actively participated in the sex education program at her clinic in the mid-1990s. In lectures, she used the tactics of accusation and introduced concepts for this into circulation, which she drew from the ideological baggage of the global anti-abortion movement. In contrast to the tradition of the Soviet era, she described the fetus as an already existing person and called abortions murders. Talking to a group of young women in her clinic, she, on the one hand, gave them information that abortions were performed in their clinic, and on the other hand, she intimidated them by telling them about how this procedure “really” ends. Medical abortion is done before 12 weeks of pregnancy. The baby is already big enough ... At 12 weeks, everything is already visible on the micrograph: head, body, arms, legs. And I say to this girl: “I won’t show it to you.” Because he, like a prisoner in solitary confinement, is waiting for the execution of the death sentence. This is a child whose whole short life is continuous suffering, pain, tears, which the mother does not hear. This approach is a kind of echo of the discourse of guilt that was generally accepted in the propaganda of a healthy lifestyle and anti-abortion literature in the Soviet era, but at the same time Anastasia Pavlovna used rhetorical devices that were not characteristic of Soviet materialism and atheism. She assigned personality traits to the fetus and convinced the listener