Factors Influencing Women's Employment and Leadership: a Comparative Analysis of the Public, Private, and Civil Society Sectors in Contemporary Russia

The central research goal is to identify the main aspects affecting the representation of women in private, public and civil Russian sectors and to form proposals on how to reduce gender asymmetry in the analyzed segments. Feminist institutionalism examines both the recognition of how institutions replicate unequal power distributions and how they can be presumably modified from a gender perspective. Based on the idea of regendering organizations, the study presents a theoretical and practical approach to emphasizing the importance of gender equality with consideration of women’s empowerment. The empirical data is based on semi-structured interviews with representatives of the analyzed sectors. The main method of data analysis of the master thesis is a qualitative content analysis combined with a quantitative analysis of categories’ frequencies. The research displays the factors that influence the low/high level of female representation and the institutional conditions for women to overcome existing barriers.