This issue of the magazine has been rather long in the making. From the start we decided it would focus on global problems, especially since women’s organizations in many countries were just then gearing up to participate in AWID’s (The association of Women in Development) ninth world forum in Guadalahara, on the problems of globalization. We in Russia did not realize how close to us these world problems would turn out to be.

by Irina Sharova The well known fact that the Siberian river called the Angara is born in mighty Lake Baikal, has given rise to any number of splendid legends. One tells how a beautiful daughter ran away from her harsh father to be with the brave warrior Yenisey... But we are not going to concern ourselves here with ancient tales. The point is that geographers still cannot agree on whether the Angara flows into the Yenisey or the Yenisey into the Angara.

Respected Editors, It was with great interest that I got acquainted with the third special issue of your magazine. Personally, I identified most with the first one, devoted to women’s participation in the political process. I myself was elected deputy to the district assembly, so I know this work not from hearsay. I really liked T. Fedyaeva’s article [on being a district deputy] and I am largely in agreement with her.

by Irina Sharova The world is changing, rapidly and irreversibly. In a single decade, the Internet has destroyed frontiers and distances. People are closer to each other now, having suddenly discovered that the planet isn ’t so big after all. And that you don’t have to reside in Paris, Washington, or Moscow in order to feel that you are living in a center of civilization.

ISSUE 19 (35) 2002 TABLE OF CONTENTS The titles of articles translated and reprinted here are highlighted in the Table of Contents.

by Olga Lipovskaya Although Dubna is a historically rich venue, our history with it has covered a mere 11 years. Yet it is history all the same. Eleven years ago have passed since we first came here—full of hope, in fighting trim, and scandalized by official efforts to prevent the meeting from taking place—to attend the first Independent Women’s Forum.

by Ludmila Rzhanitsyna. Ph.D. in economics, professor at the Institute of Economics, Russian Academy of Sciences Economic globalization and the integration of society’s development into this whole process is not something for the future – it has been going on and it is happening now. Russia is no exception and it should elaborate its position and strategy in all this.

by Mariya Alyoshina We all know the type-the independent "business lady." Women are educators (of their children, their husbands, their bosses, etc.), women are managers (including of men), women pursue a career. Time was when a single woman could expect to be branded an "old maid" and to run a daily gauntlet of sympathetic nods. And to be a single mother was even worse. A woman just had to have a man behind her, as breadwinner, protector, head of household.

INTERNET DATING HAS BECOME DANGEROUS by Oksana Trukhan (Notes from a matchmaker) "People meet, people fall in love and get married…." Now there are lots of ways to meet people: in the subway, in a café, at the theater and in marriage agencies. Internet dating sites have become the most developed.

by Tatyana Melnikova, Ph.D. in political science; director of the Department of Women's Socio-Economic Status in Russia's Ministry of Labor and Social Development Developing gender-sensitive strategies in Russia is conditioned by several contemporary political tendencies, and by constant movement toward women's equality.

by Galina Petriashvili, independent journalist, member of the Georgian Women's Council for Peacemaking The small southern-Caucasian country of Georgia is a country torn by ethnopolitical conflict that politicians use to their own ends; a country burdened as much by the process of “democratization” as by its Soviet past; a country that maintains its tradition that a women’s place is in the family.