The Challenges for Russia's Politicized Economic System (original) (raw)
Related papers
Entrepreneurial Women and the Business of Self-Development in Global Russia
If you want to understand how gender is changing in Russia, you need to talk to women in business and sales," my friend Yulia said to me as we walked through the streets of St. Petersburg one summer afternoon in 2006. I gave her a curious look. She explained, "They are on the front lines when it comes to how Russians understand womanhood." In her early thirties with a graduate degree in psychology, Yulia had just accepted a position as marketing director at a transnational advertising firm. She had left her job as an English teacher because she found her new opportunity more interesting and lucrative. Yulia's choice nevertheless presented challenges in terms of finding friends and romantic partners who respected her as a professional and as a woman. By virtue of her career in business (bisnes), she had entered a domain that Russian journalists, politicians, and people in everyday life constructed as male. Indeed, when I mentioned to Russian friends and academic colleagues that I wanted to learn about the lives of businesswomen, some volunteered that such women were "abnormal" and therefore had little to reveal about contemporary Russian issues. However, I agreed with Yulia that these women's experiences reflected how the nation's market economy has led to new social spaces for women.
Women entrepreneurs in Russia and other countries: a comparative perspective
Woman in Russian society, 2021
This article addresses gender differences in entrepreneurship in Russia, with a focus on how the Russian case compares with a set of selected benchmark countries. Utilizing primarily GEM data, we examine aspects of entrepreneurial culture, individual attitudes and resources, rates of entrepreneurship, and barriers to starting a new business.
Between Business and Byt: Experiences of Women Entrepreneurs in Contemporary Russia
Europe-asia Studies, 2011
This article contributes to the study of women's entrepreneurship in transition economies by examining Russian self-employed women's experiences and interpretations of gender in the context of entrepreneurship. It traces how gender articulates the opportunities for and the constraints on entrepreneurial activities in Russian society. As such, this article engages in the theoretical discussion of gendered patterns of entrepreneurship. The article employs a qualitative methodology and analyses semi-structured interviews with women entrepreneurs conducted in St Petersburg and in two towns in the Republic of Karelia during the period 2005–2006. The respondents represent small and medium-sized enterprises mainly in production, retail trade and services.
Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 2013
Purpose -This paper studies female entrepreneurship in two post-Soviet countries -Russia and Ukraine. Employing institutional theory, the research aims to investigate the entrepreneurial environment, particularly government support programmes and the availability of financial resources, with a focus on women entrepreneurs. Design/methodology/approach -This research is a qualitative investigation that comprises 60 interviews with Russian and Ukrainian entrepreneurs, bank officers and representatives of government organisations supporting the development of entrepreneurship. Findings -The investigation provides evidence that these countries have overcome the transition from a command to a market economy and local people are gradually adjusting to the new environment. Concentrating on macro/meso and money elements from the 5M model suggested by Brush et al., the authors suggest an additional construct -"motherland" -to embed a context in a new model. Research limitations/implications -Only two factors of Brush et al.'s 5M model were considered -i.e. macro/meso environment and money (availability of financial resources). Discussion of management, marketing and motherhood is beyond the scope of the present paper. Practical implications -The study reveals a broad range of managerial information and empirical data on the development of female entrepreneurship in contemporary Russia and Ukraine. The findings are helpful for policymakers engaged with these two countries.
Who are Russia's Entrepreneurs?
Journal of the European Economic Association, 2005
Social scientists studying entrepreneurship have emphasized three distinct sets of variables: the institutional environment, sociological variables, and personal and psychological characteristics. We are conducting surveys in five large developing and transition economies to better understand entrepreneurship. In this short paper, using over 2,000 interviews from a pilot study in Russia, we find evidence that the three sets of variables matter: perceptions of the local institutional environment, social network effects and individual characteristics are all important in determining entrepreneurial behavior.
Researching the gender aspect in business development (the case of Moldova, Ukraine and Belarus)
… Journal Lex et …, 2009
The SME sector covers economic operators that substantially differ by many parameters: size of enterprises, types of activity, etc., including entrepreneurs' characteristics-their ethnic, gender, age and other peculiarities. The specificity of different groups of enterprises and entrepreneurs is important both for attracting attention of the society to their problems and for the elaboration of business regulation policy on local, national and international levels. The purpose of the paper is investigation of characteristics of female entrepreneurship in some countries with transition economy-Moldova, Ukraine, and Belarus. In particular, possibilities of women-entrepreneurs to access different types of resources are presented, peculiarities of women's character that influence the entrepreneurial activity are elucidated, need of governmental assistance to women that initiate and develop own business is examined. Common characteristics and some peculiarities in the female business development in the three countries are outlined. The investigation is based on results of questionings and interviews with women-owners and managers of enterprises, first of all,
Female entrepreneurship in transition economies: the case of Lithuania and Ukraine
Feminist Economics, 2007
So far, little research has focused on female entrepreneurship in a transition context. Using an institutional perspective, this paper compares two countries at different stages in the process of transformation. Lithuania followed a rapid transitional path leading to EU membership, whilst Ukraine is on a much slower development path. While women entrepreneurs in Lithuania and Ukraine share many common features and problems, there are important differences between the two countries. This indicates a need to recognize the diversity that exists between transition countries, reflecting different inheritances from the Soviet past, as well as differences in the pace of change during the transition period.
‘Soviet Heritage’ and Women’s Entrepreneurship in Russia
2018
В России, как и в большинстве других стран, можно наблюдать различия между предпринимательской деятельностью мужчин и женщин. В этой статье, однако, конкретно рассматриваются различия, которые могут быть связаны с сохранением норм советского времени. Они связаны с довольно разными социальными ролями, которые женщины и мужчины выполняли в советской системе, определяемой потребностями государства при строительстве социализма. Главная идея статьи в том, что советские нормы в сфере гендерных отношениий продолжают формировать гендерные роли в современной России, что также способствует объяснению характера женского предпринимательства в современной России. Эмпирические данные основаны на наблюдениях и проведенных интервью в двух регионах России в 2002-2016 гг.
The overarching problematic of this study is to understand how initiatives developed by international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) come to organize processes of economic and social 'development' in Jerge-Tal, a village located in a remote mountainous region of Kyrgyzstan. My objective was to examine how courses developed and delivered by the Women Entrepreneurs Support Association (WESA) coordinate with the actual needs, capacities, and work processes of women entrepreneurs and the broader contexts in which they live and work. I used Institutional Ethnography (IE) as a framework of inquiry to investigate how development agendas aimed at improving the well-being of women are coordinated at institutional and local levels. Training programs for women entrepreneurs are part of a strategy developed by Western gender specialists concerned with how to address the problem of women's social and economic marginalization. As such, they are tied into an international development programming complex wherein concerns with women's well-being are articulated through institutional processes (such as accounting systems, accountability systems, and computerized technologies) which produce definitions of gender, establish gender mainstreaming programs and policies, and assess effective implementation and compliance with these processes. This study contributes to better understanding how such processes operate. The insights provided offer a starting point for developing a body of knowledge about local development processes that is empirically informed, politically useful, and, at least to some extent, locally produced. This kind of knowledge is politically useful to the local peoples who have contributed to it, but also to the institutions that study and serve them (or fail to serve them), and those seeking to better specify what concepts like colonization, capitalism, and transformation mean in the post-Soviet Kyrgyz context.