vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #162 / Social life / Reading article...

Last year in our office the pressure was on. Since I had only been in the country for five weeks, the women on staff took to warning me: “Don’t forget International Women’s Day.”

Some of the foreigners would say, “I don’t care personally, but the Russians will never forgive you if you forget.” (Despite the International part of the holiday’s title, it’s not something we celebrate in the West.) But then they would give me a look that said, And you’d better not forget us foreigners, either.

Our office was overwhelmingly female – seven women, while our translator Tolya and I were left to come up with a suitable salute to our favorite half of the human race. I wasn’t sure what to do. Tolya assured me candy and champagne would do the trick. We scraped together the contents of our wallets, scrambled around in the slush and bought enough for a small celebration.

Since then, the balance has lurched radically in the other direction. The guys outnumber the women 4-3 (our staff has shrunk a little), and there are only two Russian females. Still, the men are braced for the task. For a month, I have asked every three days, “So when is Women’s Day again?”

“March 8,” my girlfriend would tell me.

“Just checking,” I said. “I don’t have anything special in mind.”

“You’d better.”

Part of the problem is cultural. A Russian man is exceedingly gallant in small but important gestures: helping with coats, toasting the ladies, even carrying his wife’s purse – something no self-respecting American male would be caught dead doing. Russians, as near as I can gather, view Westerners as exceedingly sterile and sexuality repressed because of our ironhanded enforcement of a gender-blind work world.

On the other hand, women here are sometimes subject to on-the-job sexism that would be cause for a reprimand from the boss (or a lawsuit from female co-workers). Male co-workers sometimes recite dirty poems or tack up posters of naked women (like the one our company’s drivers have on the door of their office), and women complain that they aren’t taken seriously in business.

Maybe as Westerners and Russians, we can learn from each other. But there’s one thing I have already learned: Don’t forget International Women’s Day. We’ve already made plans to buy candy and champagne.