Russian Woman in a Small Town Today: Portrait Details

DOI: 10.33876/2311-0546/2021-4/149-173

Abstract

The article is based on the scientific project titled: "Population of a Russian Town in the 21st Century" that was carried out in 2017-2019 in the two towns of Central Russia – Belyov (Tula Region) and Staritsa (Tver Region). Ethno-sociological survey of the Russian population in these towns and expert-polls provided an opportunity to analyze the processes of adaptation of women in modern Russian province to the changing life in the post-Soviet era and depict some aspects of their life today: socio-economic statuses, life values, attitude to marriage, having children, opinions regarding migration, satisfaction with different aspects of living in a town, social well-being, life strategies, attitude to their hometown.

Modern women in provincial towns are predominantly socially active and integrated into all-Russian life, the country's economy, and culture. At the same time, women largely remain loyal to traditional life values, to which family, health, and well-being of family members are the core. Many views and beliefs of provincial women are ambguous, reflecting a contradictory and difficult situation in small towns and the world nowadays. On the one hand, women are not satisfied with the life in their towns; on the other hand, most of them act as patriots of their homeland and deeply care about its future. The worse the financial situation of women's lives and the greater their dissatisfaction with it are, the weaker their active life strategies and protest moods are manifested. There is a considerable age differentiation of women's ideas and beliefs: young women differ from their mothers and grandmothers in their higher activity and rationalism, greater mobility, and openness to innovations, for example, in the matrimonial sphere.

For Citation: Ostapenko, L.V., Subbotina, I.A.  2021. Russian Woman in a Small Town Today: Portrait Details. Herald of Anthropology (Vestnik Antropologii) 4: 149-173.