Gender Connotations of Socio-Political Agenda in the Electoral Programs of Presidential Candidates 2018

This work is devoted to the study of gender connotations in the political discourse of Russia on the example of the presidential candidates' election programs. In order to achieve this goal, some tasks were solved: identifying the main ways of interpreting male and female social roles, the features of designing gender stereotypes, and revealing the specifics of manipulating gender identity in program statements of candidates. The main method in this work was a critical discourse-analysis of pre-election programs. The conducted research has shown that there are several positions according to which the politicians, who form the socio-political agenda relevant to the Russian context, interpret the social roles of men and women. It was also established that the appealation to male gender identity in policy statements has become more common practice than to women's gender identity. In addition, it was clarified that pre-election programs reflect a masculine discourse, which in turn is dominant not only in the political sphere, but also in society.