THE FICTION OF AGGRIEVED WOMEN OR " EXTRA HELP IS NOT HARMFUL"? DO WOMEN ACADEMICS NEED ANY SOCIAL PROTECTION?

The article is dedicated to the history of gender asymmetry in Russian Academy of sciences. The author analyzes emotionally-saturated data from biographical interviews and autobiographies written or told by women academics. The focus was on women answering questions regarding women organizations (uniting women academics and women professors at universities) and the presence or absece of help. This article builds on previous long-term research in gender issues within the scientific community of Soviet and modern Russia, exploring the values of a variety of women academics (some being family-oriented, others predominantly not) as a challenge to the contemporary Russian academic community. The main conclusion of the author is to explain the reasons for the marginalization of women in the academic community less in the abstract spheres of cultural dispositions and traditions of academia in Russia, but most of all in the concrete everyday practices of the academic environment, where women retain little hope of improvement in their life and work conditions.