#15
The Russia Journal
March 22-28, 2002
Trying to break through the glass ceiling
By IRINA SANDUL

Inna Starkova, an assistant brand manager at Gillette’s Moscow office, walks quickly into the building’s lobby. Dressed in a green, rose-patterned suit that matches her hay-colored hair, the businesslike young woman suddenly notices a camera directed at her and smiles bashfully. She is not used to being photographed, she says.

At 25, Starkova has already spent five years in business. She does not have her own office, but she already earns more than her father, who has a senior position at a candy factory in Moscow. Asked if she might become the head of Gillette someday, she at first hesitates.

"Maybe," she says, adding: "Who knows, though?"

Starkova’s story is becoming typical for many highly educated young women in Russia. Raised in a Moscow suburb, she graduated from the city’s Ordghonikidze Management University with a degree in economics and English. As a student, she started working as a receptionist. The job did not last long – she was promoted, setting a pattern for her career so far. Apart from her full-time job at Gillette she studies part time at the Chartered Institute of Marketing in London.

According to a report published last year by the UN’s International Labor Organization (ILO), Russian women make up 47 percent of the country’s working-age population. Ninety percent of women aged 35 to 49 either work or are looking for a job. Of those women who do work, 94 percent are salaried employees; the figure for men is 91 percent. Psychologists say women "develop their business more cautiously than men," the ILO report stated. Dealing with business partners, women are more willing than men to compromise and to take morals and ethics into consideration when making a decision, the report said.

Recruitment agencies also think highly of women’s potential. "A woman is more active and flexible than a man," said Galina Kosheleva of the Kadrovy Center Stolitsa, a Moscow recruitment agency. "She makes contact with people easier."

Women, Kosheleva said, are hired for 80 percent of the 30 to 40 vacancies her agency fills per year.

Hiring managers often concur. Margarita Krakovskaya of Bank Russky Standardt said 450 of the bank’s 700 employees are women. She cited diligence and attentiveness as the key traits that differentiate the female workers from their male colleagues.

But when it comes to landing the job of deciding who gets hired, women tend to be overlooked. According to the ILO, there are 2.3 times more men than women working as hiring managers or at equivalent positions in companies throughout Russia.

"In Russia they still consider a man to be a hunter," said Vyacheslav Losev, a senior consultant for one of Russia’s largest employment agencies, BLM-Consort. "A woman is supposed to look after the nest."

He also said that employers usually give women administrative positions, such as office manager, secretary or human-resources official, in which they can perform "housekeeping functions" but "not make important decisions."

However, at companies where HR departments have a degree of authority to make strategic decisions, male managers are usually the ones who handle those responsibilities. According to Losev, men fill 80 percent of the top management vacancies his recruitment agency gets.

Pyotr Yeltsov, a consultant with Commonwealth Resources in Moscow, said the lack of desire to hire women for managerial positions recalls an old-line approach.

"The [Communist] Party bodies influenced the recruitment system of the Soviet Union," he said. "It was a more patriarchal system. The equal attitude toward men and women is part of the business culture of foreign employers."

It is something local companies still often miss, Yeltsov added.

An average female worker in Russia makes only two-thirds what her male counterpart makes, according to the ILO. Many experts say that the percentage is even lower – perhaps 50 percent – and that the gender gap in salaries has widened during the 11 years of post-Soviet history.

BRS’ Krakovskaya agreed with those findings. "Lower salaries satisfy women [even when] they have the same qualifications as men," she said.

But Losev, of BLM-Consort, disagreed, saying the 200 vacancies his agency fills each year are split equally between men and women. He said, however, that HR jobs usually were filled by females while positions in IT mainly went to males. Hirees in logistics and legal affairs are roughly half men and half women, Losev said. In marketing, women get 65 percent of jobs, he added.

Yelena Fadeyeva, an HR manager at the multinational 3M, said the company’s Moscow office usually hires women for jobs in sales, finance and administration and as department heads. She said the 3M HR department is mostly female "because men just do not want to do this job."

The ILO detected a trend of men being favored over women for high-paying managerial jobs, even to the point of pushing them out. For example, the labor body said, Russia’s state-run banking sector prior to the reforms of the 1990s was predominantly run by women, but as soon as the sector opened up and banking jobs became more prestigious and lucrative, it was men who were hired to fill the better positions.

That trend was mirrored in other state-dominated sectors throughout the ‘90s and, to some extent, in the private sector as well. Yelena, a middle-level manager in a multinational company who did not want her last name used, said discrimination against women exists both in management and in lower-level office jobs.

"Women get routine jobs that offer little room for creativity," she said, speaking of the working environment in her company. There are no women in the company’s Moscow sales department, she explained. In contrast, when the company was launched in the early ‘90s, sales jobs were split evenly between females and males. Yelena said women at the company now work mainly in customer service, which is one of the lowest-paying departments. Those working in the accounting department end up doing routine work that also draws comparatively low pay.

"Women are workhorses who create products that are presented by men," Yelena said.

BLT’s Losev said that men get 80 percent of sales vacancies because employers think they are better suited for "business trips and intensive labor." Employers, he said, rarely officially announce they are against women in sales. However, some openly admit they prefer a male candidate. Western companies usually say gender does not make any difference to them, but eventually tend to prefer men in sales as well, Losev said adding: "We, however, think women often sell better."

KDS’ Kosheleva said that employers often prefer males for sales positions because field sales representatives travel from one office to another in a company car. Men usually get 60 percent of sales job offers her agency receives, she said, adding that women are preferred for telephone sales jobs that involve working from the office. Employers "value a pleasant female voice," said Kosheleva. "Women are more emotional. They can sell products [over the phone] better."

BRS’ Krakovskaya agreed with that. She said females in the bank work for the information and customer service departments because "it is more pleasant to hear a female voice over the phone" for men who make a majority of their customers.

Some recruiters think men are the ones who get discriminated against. Employers often do not give males jobs that "historically belong to women," BLT’s Losev said. "A woman can make her way into the area of financial analyses," he said. "But for a man to start his carrier as a secretary would be indecent. Nobody would even offer him this job."

Sergei, an IT specialist from Moscow who declined to give his last name, said he did was refused a secretarial job at a company selling computer equipment. The potential employer told him customers would just hang up if they hear a male voice over the phone thinking they had called the wrong number.

Some employers still think that only a "cute girl" should be a secretary or a receptionist, said KDS’ Kosheleva. Clients do not state that openly but "take it for granted" when making a request, she added. However, BLT’s Losev said that, though employers do consider looks when hiring secretaries and receptionists, they do it for business purposes. "The looks issue is important both for men and women," he said.

According to the ILO, the percentage of employed women in Russia with at least partial university-level educations grew up from 19 percent in 1992 to 27.8 percent in 2000. The portion of employed men grew only 5 percent during that period. As of August 2000, 63 of 100 women had attended a university or an institute of higher education, or received technical education. Only 50 of 100 men had received the same level of education. But, the ILO reported, women are given fewer opportunities for professional development by their employers than men are.

According to Yelena, the middle manager, currently there are no women working as top managers in the Russian branch of her company, while in the early and mid-’90s nearly half of the management team was female. "This makes moving up [for women] just impossible," she said.

Starkova, Gillette’s manager, said her experience has been different. She said her chances are equal with those of men. "The main thing is to believe in yourself," she said.