Most Russians believe that a woman's place is in the home, a far cry from the Soviet-era view that her place was on the factory floor or behind the wheel of a tractor, according to a new poll released Friday on the eve of International Women's Day.
Forty percent of those polled by Romir Monitoring said they thought women's main role was as a mother and 23 percent said they thought it was as "life companion" to their men.
The poll's results show to what extent the widely celebrated holiday has evolved from a recognition of women's contribution to the Communist struggle
to a post-Soviet celebration of the femininity they were so long denied.
Fifteen percent of those polled said they believed women should strive to become businesswomen, while the same number said they thought her main role was as a homemaker.
And just two percent said they thought women's main role was in politics.
On Thursday, President Vladimir Putin said that just 7.3 percent of deputies
in Russia's lower house of parliament were women and seven percent in the upper house.
Yet the Russian leader urged women to increase their involvement in government because of the contribution they could make to social problems.
"Social questions can be efficiently resolved by the government only when its legislative bodies are made up of at least 20 percent women, since they pay closer attention to social questions," he said.
Fifty-six percent of Russians believe equality between the sexes exists, the
poll found.
Only 14 percent of those polled said they would choose to have a female boss, while 38 percent said they preferred male employers and 45 percent said it made no difference.
And an overwhelming 67 percent said they thought men should go out of their way to be polite to women, opening doors and giving them their arm, while just three percent disagreed.
The Romir Monitoring poll found that most Russians thought a role model that
represented the Russian woman did not exist, while nine percent named Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, and eight percent named veteran pop idol Alla Pugachyova.
Just six percent named the wife of Putin, Lyudmila.