Surveying Public Awareness

More important for global feminists would be a shift in the ways the public un­derstands sexual assault. Unfortunately, since sexual harassment was not seen as a problem by mainstream sociologists, there is limited survey data and no data that is comparable over time. The little available data suggests some growing con­cern for sexual harassment, especially among women. For instance, a 1999 study conducted by the Institute for Urban Economics found—through a combination of surveys, interviews, and focus groups in various Russian cities—that privati­zation of the economy had severely disadvantaged women in terms of hiring, fir­ing, and sexual harassment (Liborakina 1999).20 Focus groups with working and unemployed women revealed that these women were quite critical of the job ads explicitly or implicitly demanding sexual services (Liborakina 1999, 59—62). Simi­larly, a 2002 survey found that most Russians see the problem of quid pro quo sexual harassment as a serious impediment to women’s advancement in educa­tion and the workplace (Zabelina 2002).21 Seventy-two percent of the 1,528 re­spondents thought that a woman who resisted sexual advances from an employer or teacher would likely lose her position; 53 percent thought that this might de­stroy her career (56—57). Only 3.3 percent thought that there would be no nega­tive consequences.

However, this growing concern reflected an apparent increase in the problem, not an increase in global feminist understanding. In the first study, none of the fifty focus group participants were familiar with the feminist concept of sexual harassment (Liborakina 1999, 59—62). Further, only one expressed outrage at hav­ing to appeal to management for assistance with a drunken boss’s unwanted sex­ual attention, and she explained the support she received, to the extent that she did, as because of her “excellent reputation,” drawing upon earlier morality-based critiques of such behavior. In the second study, although most respondents (83%) thought that demands for sexual services in order to be hired or accepted into in­stitutions of higher education constituted a form of violence (56X22 this construc­tion of quid pro quo harassment as violence mostly derives from the Soviet legacy of criminalizing sexual compulsion at work and protectionism toward women, not women’s empowerment as rights-holding individuals (Suchland 2005).

Illustrating the lack of recent attention to rape, there have been no significant studies that focus on popular understandings of rape in Russia. The one scientific study that touches upon the issue is a 2003 survey by researchers at Moscow State University that examines sexual violence within marriages as part of their exami­nation of violence in the family (Gorshkova and Shurygina 2003). Their survey of 2,200 people in more than fifty locations across Russia found that most Russians remained very skeptical of the idea of marital rape, albeit possibly less so than in the late Soviet period. Approximately 60 percent of the men and 50 percent of the women held that rape within marriage was simply impossible in principle (53). Although respondents had fairly egalitarian views of their own sexual practices (most women and men felt that they had sex when both wanted it), many (43%)

thought that wives did not have the right to refuse sex if she did not want it (52). Perhaps illustrating some change over time, the youngest cohort of women were more likely to think that they deserved sexual pleasure and had a right to refuse sex than middle-aged women. Young men, though, were even less likely to take into consideration women’s pleasure than older men (see table 4.4). Together, these changes suggest a sexual revolution, but might mean more sexual violence, as women seek sexual pleasure and men disregard women’s desires.