With the collapse of Soviet rule and the emergence of independent Russia, the image of Russian women in the Western imagination has changed dramatically. The robust tractor drivers and athletes have been replaced by glamorous but vulnerable beauty queens or the dishevelled and downcast women trading goods on the streets.
The authors of this work take a closer look at what lies behind the above images and how Russian women are coping with a very different sort of life. The main focus is on the effect of unemployment on Russian women and how they are coping with it.
Based on case studies...

Rebecca Kay assesses how men in post-Soviet Russia are represented through media and popular discourses. Using case studies she explores the challenges which have arisen for men since 1991 and the ways in which their responses are shaped by and viewed through the prism of widely accepted attitudes towards gender. The lives and concerns of men in provincial Russia are examined through ethnographic fieldwork, combining extensive participant observation with in-depth interviews. The book reveals how individual men strive to maintain a sense of equilibrium between the activities in which they are...