1995

“Trans-lating Gender into the Russian (Con)Text.” Warwick Labour Studies Working Papers.University of Warwick, No. 6. 1995. P. 12-25.

Introduction: Wake-up calls
The Gender Centre (also know as The Centre for Gender Studies) was set up within the Institute of Socio-Economic Problems of the Population at the Russian Academy of Science in May, 1990

Since the time it was set up the cetre has been receiving a series of telling phone calls; wrong number, usually. For example,

Staff at the Centre: 'Hello! The Centre for Gender Studies.'

Caller: 'What studies, nuclear?'

Curious and funny as these mistakes may seem, it is not as surprising to a Russian speaker as the words for 'gender' and 'nuclear' sound very similar when expressed quickly (and the bad telelphone reception does not help much either). Such mistakes reflect a more urgent and serious problem in the way the term 'gender' has been imported into and used within Russian academia. In my essay, I seek to present a history of 'gender' as a notion and concept in Russian official (both academic and governmental) discourses in a way that highlights the different ways in which it has been used and not used to 'talk about' and 'work with' women. It would be shown that the term 'gender' still remains 'to-be-translated' into the Russian text insofar as it remains marginal to and has not achieved a cultural currency within the Russian context.
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