MOSCOW, June 30, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Russian government plans to raise the
pension age have sparked a rare outpouring of anger, not least among women
who say it will cause hardship at a stage of life when they already struggle
to work.
On the day the first football fans descended on Russia for the World Cup,
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev announced plans to increase the age by eight
years to 63 for women and five years to 65 for men.
Critics immediately complained that with men’s life expectancy at 66, many
may not live long enough to get their pensions.
But Russian women are angry for another reason: once in middle age, they
will struggle to find work to tide them over for the extra years without a
pension.
“It’s very hard to find a job as a woman over a certain age. Women are
scared of being left without a pension or a job,” said Muscovite Tatiana
Volochkova, 57.
She receives a state pension of 17,000 rubles ($269) but continues to work
as an accountant. Many women say the eight-year rise in their retirement age
is disproportionate.
“A gradual reform is probably necessary but not with such a big difference
(in the rise) between men and women,” Volochkova said.
– Removing the safety net –
Valentina Zholkina, 44, has been unsuccessfully looking for a job in Moscow
for two years.
The company she used to work for shut down while she was on maternity
leave. Now she says employers are put off by her age.
“In private, they say that after a certain age, it’s not right for women to
sit behind a banking counter,” she said.
Zholkina said that older men can take temporary physical work if they are
short of money.
But older women struggle to get employed even in low-paid jobs. Receiving a
pension at 55, she said, at least gave them a safety net.
– All yours, Babushka –
Anna Nesterova, a 50 year-old Moscow-based designer, said the pension
reform could also affect young families as Russian grandmothers play a larger
role in bringing up children than in the West.
“People have a choice either to send their child to nursery or leave them
with the grandmother. Many still choose the family option,” she told AFP.
Others say grandmothers sitting at home with children is a thing of the
past.
“Babushkas (grandmas) are modern now. We don’t want to sacrifice all our
time looking after children,” said 67-year-old pensioner Antonina, who
refused to give her last name.
But she agreed that an eight-year increase is too much. “In Russian
families, everything depends on women. You need to balance work and family,”
she said. “Sixty-three is very high.”
– ‘Huge’ problem –
Alyona Popova, a women’s rights activist who runs an organisation to
support women professionally, said attitudes to older women in Russia are
“very different” from those in the West.
“We have quite a sexist society. People often think female pensioners
should be sitting at home with grandchildren” — a legacy of the Soviet
system, she said. Some women meanwhile are scared of being replaced by
younger ones, she said.
“Many women, often former teachers, come to us saying they can’t find a job
and have no money because they spent it on their children or grandchildren.”
She said the reform will hit women and the poor hardest.
Paris-based Russian analyst Tatiana Stanovaya said Russians see an early
pension as a “kind of compensation for social injustice”.
“People are ready to put up with a lot during their life, including the
limitation of political rights, and see this as a kind of well-earned social
victory.”
– Petition to Putin –
President Vladimir Putin’s sky-high approval rating dropped after the
pension proposal.
In a rare show of public anger, over 2.5 million Russians signed an online
petition asking him to drop the reform.
“Protests in Russia are starting,” said Boris Kravchenko, the chairman of
the trade union that launched the petition.
He said his organisation has applied for protest permits in 70 cities from
this weekend, despite its loyalty to the Kremlin.
No protests have been called in cities hosting World Cup football matches,
where they are banned.
The analyst Stanovaya agreed Russia needs a pension reform but said
authorities underestimated this and have a “communication problem”.
“They only think about how to sell it to the people in order to avoid
protests.”