Dear readers -- women and men, dear regular contributors, and harsh critics, and those of you who have stood by us all these years, and those just now getting to know us! It is our pleasure to present for your judgement this much-awaited issue. We did not expect it would be so long in coming, and we thank all of you who wrote and telephoned and sent new information to the editors, in spite of the unavoidable delay.

by Galina Shchekina, member of the Union of Russian Writers and of the regional Women’s League, founder of the Arba feminist club for women, and correspondent with the magazine Meson Official data on gender statistics are very sparse. There is, for instance, a publication called Men and Women, which was first published in Vologda in 2000 with assistance from the Statistics Sweden, the Swedish Central Bureau of Statistics.

by Nina Kurasova, President of Rostov regional NGO "Athena Information Resource Center", Rostov-on-the Don The "Athena Information Resource Center " began in 1996 as a group of Rostov women (journalists, lawyers, psychologists), and in 1998, it became a legal entity.

by Natalya Startseva and Nina Kurasova It was in the heat of battle over local elections in Rostov region that we spoke with a representative of one of the parties actively promoting its candidates. We spoke about a particular woman candidate, a successful entrepreneur, running for the post of head of government in the famous northern agricultural district that was home to the writer Mikhail Sholokhov [a Nobel Laureate]. "Nah, she won't make it," he drawled with a condescending laugh.

This issue of the magazine is about something that each of us confronts over and over again – censorship. By now we well understand that censorship differs. Ten years ago, when ideological state censorship was abolished, it seemed to be a new era of freedom for expressing opinions and views. But rather quickly we understood that the power of money shapes another kind of dependence, including the self-censorship of authors and editors.

by Tatyana Fedyaeva, deputy to the representative assembly of the Tarussky district in Kaluga region, and deputy chair of the Association of Women- Journalists. I live in a small, provincial town. The number of people living in such towns in Russia supersedes that of the collective population of Russia's mega-cities. My town is located in a region of central Russia that is very typical on all indicators. Here, there are no ore deposits, no oil rigs. No diamonds.

The speaker of the Georgian parliament, Nino Anzorevna Burdzhanadze, was born on July 16, 1964. In 1986 she graduated from Tbilisi University in jurisprudence. In 1990 she completed graduate work in the department of international law at Moscow University and became a “Kandidat of Juridical Science.” She has been a member of the Georgian parliament since 1995.

by Jemma Asratyan, President of the Association of University Women, director of the the Yerevan Center for Gender Studies Back in the days of the first Armenian Republic of 1918-1920, and under the Soviets, women were accorded political rights equal to those enjoyed by Men. The quota system of the time, which took the form of party vouchers, ensured a place for women in elected bodies and somewhat reduced the gender asymmetry in society, but it was really just window-dressing.

Why are the Heroines of Our Past Forgotten? [This is about women pilots going back to the first one in Russia, Lidia Zvereva, who earned her pilot’s license in 1911. The article focuses particularly on the heroic women pilots of World War II and their fate. Here is an excerpt.] “A famous fascist ace was brought down in the battle of Stalingrad. He parachuted and was taken captive. During his interrogation, he asked to see the pilot who had downed him.

By Galina Skorokhodova When you lose an election, no matter what the circumstances, you cannot stop yourself from continually going back over it and analyzing to death everything you and those around you did. But time passes, and less important factors fade into the background, and over time it becomes clear what exactly made the difference in the elections.

by Olga Lipovskaya, director of the St. Petersburg Center for Gender Issues I'll start with a proviso: the word "censorship" here is meant in the broadest sense, inasmuch as the subject and person implementing the censorship function is undefined -- it's not simply the state ideology, the state's repressive institutions, the department that brings texts into line with the ideology, or the prison censor crossing out "all that doesn't belong" in other people's letters.

On January 11, 2002 the Gorbachev Foundation hosted a conference entitled "Women and Elections," dedicated to the seventieth birthday of R. M. Gorbachev [Mikhail Gorbachev's deceased wife] and organized by the Raisa Maksimovna Club and the Women's Information Network. More than 120 participants gathered at the conference, including representatives of both non-governmental and political organizations from 15 regions, expert and research institutions and the press.

Hello there, It's not often that I pick up a feminist magazine and I liked your last issue on politics. Reading about new approaches by women, I thought about my contemporaries for whom it is so hard to break through into the upper reaches of power. I look intently into the face of a neighbor from my entryway. He's thin, his face is gray, his jacket is worn. But see how many friends he has and they're all cackling with joy. And this other one?

Of the two traditionally hopeless questions of Russian daily life - "Who's to blame?" and "What to do?" - the second tends to be seen as just rhetoric. But something must indeed be done! Otherwise all our wonderful discourse and brilliant analytical texts will remain nothing more than inspired convulsions of hot air, and the first breeze to come by will carry our voices into oblivion.

by Venera Musina, editor and publisher of the family newspaper "Borovinok ," Chair of the Regional Association of Women Journalists, Naberezhnye Chelny, Republic of Tatarstan No one was left untouched by the crisis of the nineties. Each Russian city struggled through the crisis in its own way but it was an especially difficult time for large industrial cities centered around one specific industrial enterprise, such as our native Naberezhny Chelny.