Russia's women say they have never had it so bad By Elizabeth Piper
MOSCOW, May 22 (Reuters) - Russian women have never had it so bad, politicians and women's groups said on Monday, decrying post-Soviet reforms for eating away at wages and turning politics into a "men-only club."
Russia's top female politicians unveiled measures designed to restore the position of women, which they said had plummeted since Communist times, hit by punishing reforms and a pervasive belief among men that women were better off at home.
"We have thankfully watched the fall of the Berlin Wall, but unfortunately the wall fell on women's heads," one speaker said.
First Deputy Speaker Lyubov Sliska told the meeting in parliament, attended by dozens of women and four men, that women's pay fell way short of men's and discrimination between the sexes ensured that women rarely made it to the top.
"Women were the victims of the reform years," Sliska told the meeting, which included representatives of over 100 groups.
"They have fallen into the most economically vulnerable groups of the population. Women form the majority among the unemployed, pensioners and among those who work in the state sector of the economy."
Sliska, one of a handful of women in the State Duma lower house, said market reforms and high inflation had forced more women than men out of the workplace despite an often superior standard of education.
"We teach the children, cure the sick but we receive nothing in return," said Yekaterina Lakhova, head of the Women of Russia political party, proposing that some form of minimum wage and positive discrimination should become law.
"Women work even in heavy industry but we are not allowed in the halls of power," she said, adding that women fought in the front-lines during World War Two but were still treated by many men as if they were "a special sex which cannot make decisions."
Out of 450 seats in the Duma, women occupy only 29 compared with the Communist quota system when up to a third of deputies in the Supreme Soviet were women.
Two women have penetrated what Lakhova called "a closed shop" at the top of Russian politics -- Valentina Matviyenko has a seat in the cabinet as a deputy prime minister and Tatyana Paramonova is first deputy head of the central bank.
But women at the top are few and many at the meeting blamed male politicians for failing to warm to a new culture.
"We are not against men, we just want to use our experience," Lakhova said, adding that hundreds of male deputies had been invited but had failed to take part in the discussion.
One male deputy after being told what the dozens of women were debating may have summed up some of the men's thoughts.
"It's dangerous in there," he said. "There's no way I'm going in."