Section: LIFE & LEISURE
Page: D1

Thursday, November 2, 1995

FROM RUSSIA AND UKRAINE, WITH SEXISM

LWV chapter helping foreign interns learn how to strengthen women's rights.

PAUL GRONDAHL Staff writer

Imagine this classified ad: ``Career opportunity for woman under 25 years old. Must be able to operate a fax machine, have blonde hair, nice legs and no inhibitions.''

Ads like that example pop up regularly in newspapers across the former Soviet Union, which is bad enough for women, says Liudmila Puchenkina, a university education professor in Tula, an industrial city in central Russia.

What's worse is that such blatant sexism hardly even raises eyebrows, she adds.

``Unfortunately, it still goes on as a matter of course,'' says Puchenkina, 27, who is married to a former Russian Olympic sprinter and the mother of a 6-year-old daughter. ``I've had friends who weren't hired because they weren't young and attractive. Men still dominate business and tend to get away with whatever they want.''

Puchenkina and Natalia Petrova, an attorney from Ukraine, were speaking during a break from observing a session of Rensselaer County Family Court in Troy on Oct. 24.

The two women are participating in a month-long internship sponsored by the League of Women Voters and its Albany County chapter. The national program involves 10 women from Russia and 10 from Ukraine placed with local League chapters around the United States. The effort is called ``Strengthening Women's Rights in the Newly Independent States.''

``Our purpose is to teach grass-roots skills they can then take back to their countries to protect women's rights and make a representative democracy work,'' says Joanne Esposito, a board member of the Albany County chapter of the League and an organizer of the internship program.

The two women would attend sessions pertaining to domestic violence, dispute mediation, women's health, political organizing, small business and the legal system.

In the past, the local chapter has been host to women from Poland and Hungary in similar programs. ``This gives them a basic understanding of democratic principles and political action that they can draw upon as they set about to affect change,'' Esposito says.

The league also hopes to build a united, critical mass of women pushing for social change. Currently, the few women's rights groups that exist in Russia and Ukraine are fragmented and don't pool resources or coordinate efforts, Esposito says.

Petrova, 40, a mother of two, is a lawyer for the city of Kyiv (Kiev), Ukraine's capital, which has a population of more than 3 million. She was particularly interested in observing the family court session.

``Family court has been called the emergency room of American society,'' Helga Schroeter, area coordinator for The Fund For Modern Courts, which has been providing volunteer court monitors since 1975, tells the visitors. ``This court is perhaps the most important forum where women's issues are played out.''

In her private practice, Petrova often represents women in divorce proceedings in Kyiv. In a current case, her client, a woman with an executive position in a large business, was beaten so badly by her enraged husband over the divorce action that she had to be hospitalized. The man was convicted of the assault, served a few days in jail and was released during a national holiday that granted criminal pardons.

``It's clear that legal rights are dominated by the husband in divorce in Ukraine,'' says Petrova, who notes the wife often has to settle for far less than half of the property and judges look the other way when men hide assets.

``Domestic violence is a huge, silent problem that most women are still too ashamed to talk about,'' Petrova says.

A current of intimidation runs through the court system as well because the Ukraine does not have the equivalent of a private, confidential family court, Petrova says. Instead, matters such as domestic violence, divorce and child custody are heard in district court open to the public.

Women also face looming economic problems in Ukraine, Petrova says. As businesses struggle in a fledgling free-market economy, massive layoffs are taking place. The first to be let go are women, and women make up the vast majority of those unemployed, Petrova says.

Puchenkina is a member of the Tula Women's Organization, formed in 1992 and aimed at education and raising funds for the needy.

``We have so many economic problems to overcome in Tula,'' Puchenkina says, noting Tula's fortunes as a manufacturing center declined precipitously with the disintegration of Communism. ``Women are especially depressed economically and psychologically today, because they're highly trained engineers and professionals who can't find work. Part of our job is just to build up womens' self-esteem again.''

Not everything is grim for women in Russia and Ukraine, though. In both places, pregnant women in the work force receive paid maternity leave for 70 days prior to birth and 70 days after.

Also, slowly and incrementally, the feminist revolution is coming home to Russian families.

Petrova says her husband, a computer programmer, takes care of their two children when she's away on business trips or doing volunteer work for child protective services across Ukraine. Her husband also doesn't mind pitching in with the cooking and cleaning.

``I'm so grateful to him, because he makes it possible for me to do what I do,'' Petrova says.

Puchenkina gets help in child-rearing and housekeeping duties from her parents who live with Puchenkina and her husband. Her spouse, a former track star who now teaches, lends a hand around the house. He just doesn't tell his athlete buddies about it.

``If I can do everything, I do,'' Puchenkina concedes. ``He's willing to help when I ask him. But there are a lot of negative stereotypes about men doing women's work.''

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