Translated material
EXPERIENCE COUNTS
An Interview with Galina Klimantova, by Vera Ivanova
Galina Ivanovna Klimantova was a deputy in the State Duma from 1993 to 1995 (at which time she chaired the parliamentary Committee on Women, the Family, and Youth) and was actively involved in drawing up the Family Code of the Russian Federation, which regulates the way we live now. She has also sponsored laws to prevent domestic violence and to protect the reproductive rights of Russian citizens. In recent years, she served as the deputy head of the Council of Federation’s [upper chamber of the parliament] Information and Analysis Administration, and it was on her initiative that two years ago a Commission on Women was created under the aegis of Chairman of the Council of Federation.
Q. Galina Ivanovna, as a parliamentarian you have been predominantly associated with the Women of Russia faction. [in the Duma from 1993-1995] Looking back now, how would you rate the faction’s accomplishments? What would you say were its major achievements and its greatest mistake?
A. The main problem of that whole period was that women were insufficiently involved in decision making. Since there were no women in the pre-election party lists, the woman’s voice would not have been heard in the Duma at all, had it not been for the faction.
Yet it is very important for women—with our kindness and our desire for consensus—to exert an effective impact on decision making in the interests of humanity and peace, to be active wherever laws are being made, defending the interests of children, women, and the family. And our mandate extends, of course, beyond purely social issues. The faction’s influence was felt in all of the State Duma’s twenty-three committees.
And although it has not been directly represented in parliament in recent years, it is difficult to overestimate the faction’s contribution in helping to resolve the key issue, which is the involvement of women in the decision-making process.
In the 1999 elections, women were represented in the three-person leadership of many pre-election blocs and associations. The Russian Federation government now contains approximately 20 women; there are even some female deputy ministers, including the deputy minister of defense. In 1993, this would have been pretty much unthinkable.
In its two active years, the faction had a heavy legislative involvement, being engaged in the drafting of 209 of the 325 bills that came before the parliament.
Practical input from the faction also carried a certain amount of weight in policy making. The list of federal legislation that it sponsored is impressive:
* the Russian Federation Family Code (which has 178 articles that touch on every aspect of family life);
* the law on state aid to citizens with children;
* amendments to the law on housing privatization in the Russian Federation, which protects the rights of children and adolescents when housing is privatized and sold;
* the insertion of a protected article into the state budget for 1994-95 which provided financing for the Russia’s Children program; and
* the law that placed a moratorium on the privatization of state and municipal educational institutions.
Women of Russia was also deeply involved in the drafting of special social legislation dealing with wages, pensions and healthcare.
The faction’s positive social impact caught the attention of voters, who elected three Women in Russia deputies to the next State Duma, though our electoral association as a whole missed the 5% barrier, but only by 0.3%. It came fifth out of 43 blocs and associations.
But of equal importance is the fact that the faction’s platform in the run-up to the 1995 elections—the individual, the family, peace in Russia, and a view of the family as one of the basic values of Russian society—made its mark on the platforms of other parties and associations.
Q. Women in Russia did not make it into the Duma in 1995 or in 1999. Is this an indication that there really is no future for a woman’s party in this country?
A. The political parties that took part in the 1999 elections brought significantly more attention to bear on social problems. The campaign promises of virtually every association included an extension of social guarantees, an increase in wages, salaries, and pensions, the elimination of unemployment, free education and high-quality health care, and more attention to the problems of the family, mothers, and children.
The fact that three women’s electoral blocs were formed in the run-up to the 1999 Duma elections (two of which took part in the elections) was one of the reasons why neither Women in Russia (2.04% of the total number of votes) nor the Russian Party for the Protection of Women election association (0.8%) ended up with any deputies through the federal constituency. And not one of the candidates put forward by those electoral associations was elected in single-member districts.
Interestingly the program of the Russian Party for the Protection of Women paid no particular attention to the problems of the family, which, along with other miscalculations, made voters disinclined to support it.
But the main reason for the defeat was the lack of solidarity among women, which fragmented our efforts. The strategy and tactics were wrong. We need to take on board the experience of party-building in European countries. In Sweden, for instance, women are actively represented in the lists of the ruling Social Democratic Party and are highly visible in the Riksdag. That is clearly the way to go.
Exclusively women’s parties are, in my view, a thing of the past. The future lies in paving the way for equal rights and opportunities for both men and women in politics. This is one of the problems that the developing democracy in Russia has yet to face.
Q. What happened to those politicians who were not able to return to the Duma? How has society exploited their potential? Is it making full use of them?
A. Many faction members have continued to prove their worth in their post-parliament careers. First of all, our leader, Yekaterina Lakhova, is a deputy in the third convocation of the State Duma. Svetlana Orlova is a member of the Council of Federation. Galina Parshentseva and Yelena Chepurnykh are deputy ministers. Marina Dobrovolskaya, Raisa Skripitsina, and Natalya Malakhatkina are in the Duma. And Alevtina Fedulova remains as head of the Union of Russian Women.
But unfortunately many former female deputies are underutilized, for all the unique parliamentary experience and the vast huge intellectual potential that most of them have to offer. I am convinced that they too should have an active place in the system of governmental politics.
Q. Tell us something about the Council of Federation’s Women’s Commission.
A. The Commission was created in May 1999 by order of the Chairman of the Council of Federation. Its goal is to boost the Council’s role in governmental policy-making with regard to women and also to develop legal mechanisms to support and protect them.
The Commission’s tasks include examining Council decisions from the gender perspective, incorporating gender-based approaches into the work done by the parliament’s upper chamber, educating its members on basic women’s issues, working with citizens of the Russian Federation, publishing, cooperating with the Petersburg Economic Forum to organize annual round tables on the situation of women in the economy, and helping the Russian Federation fulfil its international obligations with respect to improving the status of women.
Its core responsibilities are gender-focused studies of current legislation (a permanent round table and a council of experts on gender issues) and a permanent round table entitled “Families in the Twenty-First Century: Basic Problems of Regional Family Policy.”
Last year, the Commission teamed with the Russian Union of Journalists and the Association of Women Journalists to hold a national press contest on the problems of the family. It organized several socially meaningful events centering on the war against terrorism and on Mother’s Day, and also hosted a discussion on the outcomes of the Female Director of the Year Competition.
Commission activities are regularly featured on the radio program Resonance and the Council of Federation web site, in the Rossiiskaya Federatsiya magazine, and by the central and regional press. And a number of anthologies on gender-based criteria and on the situation of women and children in Russia are now in the bookstores.
Q. What would you wish for women just starting out in politics?
A. More patience and goodwill, greater persistence, and the ability to seek and find a style of their own that owes nothing to the example set by men.