A JOURNAL WITHIN A JOURNAL: THE KOLA PENINSULA

(guest editor -- Nadezhda Klebnikova)

THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN IS FIVE YEARS OLD. WHAT NEXT?

by Liubov Shtyleva, co-chair of the Congress of Women of the Kola Peninsula On March 2l, l998, an extraordinary fifth anniversary session of the Congress of Women of the Kola Peninsula took place in Murmansk.

---

Our women were true to themselves: instead of noisy celebrating, they preferred brainstorming on the question of where to go from here and what should be the strategy and tactics of the Congress in today's conditions.

Taking part in this gathering of independent women's organizations were the leaders of groups, clubs and associations, women deputies in the local legislatures, officials from the Murmansk regional government, the chair of the regional trade unions committee, women leaders of political parties, and staff people from local city administration. When and Why Was This Congress Created? As a new women's organization it was born in the spring of l992 when the very idea of creating a regional women's organization was first articulated, or one can say it was in March 20-22, l993, when a conference was held that adopted a charter. In November of l993 the organization was officially registered.

Between March and November a small group of activists from the women's club of Murmansk put together a regional forum entitled, rather grandly, The First Congress of Women of the Kola Peninsula. It was women's reaction to the social-political cataclysm going on in our country under the name of "perestroika."

There was a felt need to speak out, to cry out, about what was happening and how much we disliked it, that families were under stress and that we feared for the future of our children and the country. This is what we talked about from November 22-28 in l992.

These were the reasons for the appearance of this new independent women's organization, uncontrolled by the party or the government and the first such in our Murmansk regional history.

l. Spontaneous women's protest against the worsening social-economic situation of families of all sorts.

2. The awareness that women's views were being excluded from the high level decision-making processes that affected every individual and every family.

3. A realization that there was no organization genuinely representing women, familiar with our views and presenting them to government and society.

A Small Retreat

Of course we knew about the existence of the "women's councils" [the "zhensoviety " which were created in the early Soviet period and then faded in most places, and were revived by Gorbachev's order in the late Soviet years -- editor], including one in our area. We just didn't know where it was and what it did. And in starting a new women's organization, we were not thinking of it as an alternative, a counterweight, to the women's council. We didn't pretend to have the status of that "zhensoviet," to have its structure and its possibilities of access to officialdom -- we just wanted to become active.

Confidence Comes With Doing

By the end of that first forum in l992 did we know what we were going to do? The answer was closer to no than yes. Did we have any experience of democratic interaction? Definitely not. All our previous experience was in vertical structures, in hierarchies of subordination, with just a touch of democracy in the slogans and words and statements addressed to the authorities. .And the first congress demonstrated our inexperience with anything different. We felt discomfort but didn't know how to change. For example, the relationship between the people there was "audience-presidium," the latter being those who for some reason were supposed to know more than the people sitting in the hall and to tell them what to do. The people in the audience were waiting for answers, for resources, and they delegated their problems to the organizers sitting up in the presidium. Our first gathering addressed a statement to the Supreme Soviet, which was then meeting in Moscow. There was no response whatsoever. Yet even in its infancy our Congress was in several ways different from the "Communist Party women's section" of former years, first of all in the complete independence with which we took decisions, prepared and conducted the conference. We did it all ourselves. A second difference was that our message to the deputies in Moscow had none of the "bowing and scraping" and approving tone -- we plainly said we didn't like what was going on in the country, that changing the whole foundation of our economy was exacting too high a price, that the government should act more cautiously, and we women want our views taken into account.

A Delicate Mission

To learn about the history of our organization, you can look at its brochures and newsletters. They all talk about "the mission and tasks of the organization." ... To correctly determine its place and role, that is to say, its mission, and its strategy and tactics is not just a delicate matter but a vital one; paying attention to this is a sign that the organization's members have an intelligent attitude toward their work. Analyzing the Congress brochures and newsletters over the past five years yielded some interesting insights. In our first charter the mission as such is not defined. We declared our goals to be defending the civil, political, economic and social rights and freedoms of the population of the Kola Peninsula. In spite of our inner feelings about the situation in the country, we didn't even clearly identify our women's niche in the overall scene. We wrote in our original statement that this is a free association of women's groups, but we referred to the happiness of all people on the peninsula regardless of gender, religious affiliation, etc.

The six tasks cited in that charter really come down to three:

1. Making women's views heard -- we called this "social visibility."

2. Facilitating women's initiatives. 3. Proposing and supporting women candidates in elections, i.e. bringing women into positions of power.

A year later, in l994, we wrote in our newsletter that the Congress goal is the equal partnership of women and men in all spheres of life. That was the start of our voicing "equal rights and opportunities" in the formulation we were able to come up with. The word "coordination" entered our vocabulary, different in principle from the words "to help" and "to protect."

In a l995 brochure the aim of the Congress was defined as creating conditions for the development of women's initiatives, equal rights and opportunities, and for equitable representation in the organs of government and administration. Here there was also a change in the description of our task: to give organizational and information support to independent women's organizations, including legal education.

In our l997 brochure we wrote that our mission is to facilitate women's initiatives and the equitable participation of women in organs of government and administration of the Murmansk region by means of education and organizational and information support of the independent women's organizations. In other words, there had been a major change in our understanding of our mission, away from "protecting" as in the sense of "We are active, the population is passive, and we are protecting the passive population by taking all the problems onto ourselves." Now it was. We do not take responsibility for resolving everybody's problems, we realize it is beyond our power, and we seek to activate every citizen and to create the legal, intellectual, psychological conditions in which each person tries to resolve his or her own problems. Five years of experience brought us to this change in the Congress mission, goals and specific tasks. We had not lost our desire to work.

Let's See What We Did -- Stages of a Long Road

Each year of Congress work had its own profile. The year l992 is remembered for all the work in preparing the first gathering of women and the euphoria of pulling it off, and the huge burden of responsibility we felt. The following year was the one of getting ourselves organized, supporting women entrepreneurs, and starting our own page in the regional newspaper. Publicly we supported entrepreneurship because there began a landslide of women's unemployment. The underlying reason was a romantic notion about entrepreneurship and the great temptation to try it. The Congress established a club of women entrepreneurs and held two month-long market fairs featuring women's initiatives, and we actively publicized the businesses headed by women. All this added up to the year of the entrepreneur, though in fact genuine women entrepreneurs were few, and then they were cleaned out. In principle, we were working for the future, trying to bring public opinion around to see that this too is women's work, if women want to do it, if they have the talent for this. The year l994 was one of self-searching for our direction, and the year of a global broadening of cooperation with various organizations. We tried to attract possibilities for our region by working with the Women's Forum, an NGO which strongly influenced our educational growth, and we located the Women's Innovation Fund in Moscow and through cooperation with its women in Germany we were introduced to computer technology. We understood little of it but said to ourselves, "If they're giving it, let's take it and learn to use it." It was a gift from the Gods, because we quickly realized what computer technology means for raising women's job qualifications, for work efficiency, for new opportunities, and so forth.

That was also the year of joint projects with the Women's Innovation Fund on computer literacy, of searching for reciprocal projects, and of preparing for the Beijing Conference. Of this too we understood little and didn't believe in its effectiveness, but the preparation process to a large extent helped us enter into the history of the international women's movement and gradually to realize that we are only a tiny part in it, that it existed before us and will exist after us. This posed the question more pointedly, "where do we fit it, what should we be doing?" The global purpose of improving life remained the dominant one for us. Whatever else we might say, in the final analysis we want a better life for ourselves personally, for our families, for Russia. In our lifetime and after.

In l995 there was a breakthrough in understanding that we know very little. It became clear that without a global rise in education for oneself, for women and society, we would not be able to do anything, because we don't understand the laws of the market, of the new structure of government, of what is democracy in action. So beginning in l995, after Svetlana Parshkova's return from Beijing, we have been actively studying, organizing seminars -- in short, our educational program is in full swing.

The years l996-l997 were ones of building a network of independent women's organizations. We returned to the Congress' first idea of bringing together the uncoordinated women's groups and clubs. Life demonstrates that small groups acting separately and even very actively do not influence the situation in the direction of change. Networks are needed, interacting ones, to become a factor in regional politics.

We were fortunate that the Ford Foundation supported our work. Even without money we would have worked on our own, but it would have been harder, and with fewer opportunities to be helpful locally. By October l997 we had woven a network of nine small local nets with a coordinating center Now we are creating a network of resource centers and a regional electronic network, to give stability and efficiency to the work of our regional organizations and the mutual exchange of information. By April l988, four resource centers had opened in various parts of the Murmansk region.

Time To Count The Chickens

We consider that by supporting women's social, economic, cultural and political initiatives, we have achieved the following changes in our region:

l. We've gotten public opinion to accept women leaders, not only in bakeries and dry cleaning establishments, but in many other spheres.

2. Many unemployed women began to look into becoming entrepreneurs and got information and advice from the Congress.

3. Women's NGOs are forming and working actively. Now there are about a hundred women's groups -- women are "grouping." It's another matter that this process is very contradictory, sometimes coming from motives that are not open to cooperation. That's life! Indisputably, the voice of women has grown louder. Sometimes this was more evident, as when the newspapers started to write on "women's themes" and about women, insofar as the newspapers or rather the editors understood them. There was a mass media wave and it was intensified by the special program on Murmansk television hosted by Svetlana Sazonova and by the special broadcasts on radio of Natalia Chesnokova. It is important to hold onto these possibilities and to use them more effectively. Public consciousness is aware that there are women, that they are active and doing things, and that organizations exist. Whether they are liked or disliked is already secondary -- the fact is, they exist.

4. The ice has started breaking on getting women into decision-making. Finally, three women were appointed to the government of the Murmansk region and in some cities there are legislatures where 60-80% of the deputies are women.

Getting women into power takes painstaking work For five years there have been electoral campaigns one after another in which we participated -- we haven't missed a one. Since we "crowed out" in our charter back in l992 that we should promote and support women candidates in elections, we had to do this. Each time we were up against the deficit of prepared candidates. As a rule, the leaders of NGOs didn't want to run for office for various reasons: too great a responsibility, not wanting to quit their professions, fear of crowd hostility, weak organizational support, fatigue.

We learned to compromise, to support women who were not members of our organization, but were in sympathy with the values and priorities of the congress. We took on faith Svetlana Aivazova's remark that our mission is to open a road for others. " ... You will work, and women will come forward who are already disposed to politics."

She is right. Today we rejoice at the start of positive changes in the region and we are continuing our work according to the image of water drop by drop eating away at stone. We realize that having one or two women in the government, that's very few and it is hard for them. When they are one third or one half, it will be much easier for them to make decisions from a woman's mentality -- more cautiously and mercifully, more literate decisions that are more socially oriented. That is what women are aiming for.

In the last three years our accent has shifted to education and organizational activity and to supplying information to our organizations. Our charter calls for this and it reflects our understanding that without having come a certain distance, without more knowledge of gender and the influence of gender stereotypes and the asymmetries of access to decision- making and the politics of government, we are eternally doomed to "bang our heads against the wall." In truth, "gender is our agenda."

Gender is Strength, Gender is Power

Our organization's problems can be seen as external and internal. The external ones are problems of interacting with society, with the authorities, with the network and also with separate women's groups. The first problem is, as already mentioned above, that we have a voice and society hears that women exist, but our speech is indistinct. Often the voice breaks down into many voices which contradict one another. Women's interests are not sufficiently represented and studied.

We started with the illusion that we women had more in common, and now we understand there is more diversity. What do we take as fundamental, the diversity or the in-common which can unite us? The Murmansk group has a lot of strength, and from it flowed the organization of the network, the activation of women in many different places on the peninsula. A network is like a living breathing organism, and in some places our work is not so stable. Almost all organizations in the first phase of development are torn by conflict, and this doesn't strengthen the position of women or of the women's movement as a factor in politics.

It drives us to despair when we are forever striving to reach a level where it finally seems that "we have people, we have points of support on the peninsula, and we are capable of acting in solidarity."

Sometimes it seems there is no end to it and we're always starting over again. And there is another sad aspect. We've worked hard on the mass media, but the population is silent, people are passive. There hasn't yet been an awakening of awareness and activity in the million or so population of the Kola Peninsula, even though the political and economic situation is not exactly conducive to lying on the sofa. It also saddens us that the understanding between women's organizations even now is often unreliable, especially at election time. Before each election we agree on priorities, work out strategy and tactics, look each other in the eye, no one is forcing anybody.

Consensus is really our only means of reaching decisions, for as a matter of principle we do not take votes. And then it turns out that the tactics are different and the support goes to other candidates according to different criteria. This is the most unpleasant aspect of what we are up against.

It saddens us that in the regional government, there is in regard to women a double standard policy of using and manipulating and never seriously airing and discussing the "woman question." which is about the status of women.

One can get the better of this only by sowing the seeds of gender education and by continuing the daily creative work of the independent women's organizations.

Our governor, Yuri A. Evdokimov, perhaps without realizing it, gave us hope for success. The Congress relations with him are peculiar and we have no direct influence. He sees gender knowledge as "women's caprice." and the arguments of the United Nations as "good wishes but not obligations." Yet the Congress leaders are always trying to educate the governor. In January l997, in response to our proposal to make the new administration no less than 30% women, he replied, "times are tough, we need to protect women, so let the men work"

Barely a year went by and in January l998 he himself appointed L. Chistova to be deputy head of the regional government, and named two women to be heads of committees. Moreover in his message to the people on March 8 (International Women's Day), speaking of the policies for women in the region, Yuri Alekseevich literally said the following, "We made a breakthrough this year -- we brought not only one but several women into the government. Before this the women's organizations often severely criticized me for having few women in the organs of government."

If we managed to shake the official fortress, there is hope we can accomplish all other things.

---