Gender neutrality as the norm of new gender order. The Russians’ attitude

Abstract

The subject of the article is the Russian people’s attitude to gender neutrality as the norm of new gender order. Majority of the Russians associate the new gender order with the achievement of real equality of men and women in various spheres of social life, elimination of all kinds of gender discrimination. At the same time they keep binary approach to gender awareness. The paper notes that currently Russian people demonstrate one of the most conservative worldwide attitudes toward the gender norms and relations. No one from the Western new gender norms: same-sex marriage acceptance, right to choose sex both by a child and his/her parents, etc. are not accepted by majority of Russians. Moreover women, responders in marriage, having children, responders with higher education demonstrate the most conservative approach. When compared with other countries Russian people are close to Chinese in their attitude to non-traditional gender norms. The author concludes that the new gender order formation in Russia is going on in the frame of binary gender model not assuming any gender neutrality.