To Be Marked and Unremarked

Gendered Individual Descriptions in a Soviet Journal

Carol L. Cunningham

May 28, 1998

Abstract

This paper focuses on the number count of descriptions of individuals, and the proper nouns, general nouns, and adjectives associated with them in three issues from 1974 of the Soviet weekly journal Ogonek. Out of the total of 169 descriptions gathered, only 15% were female, and when females were described, the number of adjectives attached to them was smaller. Female individuals were more likely to have no proper name attached to their descriptions. While I also looked for evidence of differences in semantic categories according to gender, such as women being more likely to be referred to by their role in the family unit or have adjectives attached to them relating to their physical appearance, my sample of female descriptions was not large enough to make a conclusive determination on this point.

Introduction

This paper examines differences in individual descriptions based on gender in three issues of a Soviet weekly journal. The area that I have focused my data collection on is the number count of descriptions and proper names, general nouns, and adjectives contained these descriptions. Is there really a large discrepancy numerically between the number of female versus male subjects discussed? And is there a difference in the semantic categories of nouns and adjectives that a male description is more likely to receive as opposed to a female one?

Background

Ogonek is a weekly journal that started publication in 1923 and is still in circulation today, though it does not have as wide a readership as it enjoyed during the Soviet era. Its name means little spark in Russian. I chose to examine issues out of this publication because it had a large and diverse target audience. It was aimed at moderately-educated general readers as well as intellectuals (Lovell 1996:990). Ogonek touted the ideology, goals, accomplishments, and global appeal of communism in an upbeat, optimistic tone by using a variety of written genres. The issues that I used contained not only articles about the happenings of the Central Committee and news of international importance on the Communist front such as goodwill joint art exhibitions with neighboring countries, but also interviews with popular Soviet icons such as Yuri Gagarin, biographies of folk artists, stories for children, poetry, and even a crossword puzzle. It tried to have a little of something for everyone.

The data sample that I used for this study consisted of the first three issues of this journal from 1974, which is during the period when Leonid Brezhnev was the general secretary of the U.S.S.R. Geoffrey Hosking, a noted Soviet historian, describes the Brezhnev era as "stable, hierarchical, and conservative" (374). It was a time lacking major upheavals such as purges, war, or rapid urbanization that characterized the reign of past general secretaries, and as yet not occupied by political and social dissension that would be seen during the perestroika years. By choosing to examine material from a 'stable, conservative' time period, especially one in which ideological rhetoric was also characterized by these traits, I hope to have gathered a perhaps more representative sample.

Status of Women in Soviet Society

By the time of Brezhnev, the official Communist Party line regarding the status of woman was that equality was an accomplished fact (Kerig, et al. 1993:393): they were now in a 'post-feminist' period (Bakisian 1995). It was the Soviet government that had granted women suffrage, and opened the door for them to higher education and the workplace. The goals espoused by Western feminists had already been 'achieved': theoretically, women had the same legal and political rights that men possessed, and supposedly now had equal access and opportunity to education and jobs. And indeed the status of women had changed greatly since pre-Soviet times. In 1970, women constituted 51% of the labor force and exactly half of the population entering institutions of higher education (Jancar 1978:14,16).

However, Party doctrine did not reflect the reality of a woman's position in society. While the socialist government had tried to encourage the masses, sometimes forcibly, to adopt socialist doctrine and ideology, the actual conversion of Soviet society was in many ways superficial at best. This was especially true in the area of the status of women.

Pre-revolutionary Russian society and peasant culture was patriarchal, and the vestiges of patriarchy remained in Soviet times (Kerig, et al. 1993:394). Housework and child care were still considered strictly the responsibility of the woman. And while they may have constituted half of the enrollment in universities and over half of the workforce, women were often relegated to lower-paying, lower-prestige jobs such as in the healthcare and light industry fields. Women made up less than a fourth of the communist party membership in the U.S.S.R. in 1972, and less than five percent of the Central Committee in 1975 (Jancar 1993:92-3).

In reality, the ideal Soviet woman was supposed to be like the American 'Supermom', able to juggle a career, maintain the household, and rear the children while the Soviet man pursued rising in the Party and in his profession, unburdened by 'peripheral' items such as lending a hand with the housework or the children.

Gender and the Russian Language

Unlike English, Russian is heavily marked for gender distinction at the morphological level, which is the reason that I chose to focus on the general nouns and adjectives used in individual descriptions in my data collection. Russian has three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. Every noun falls into one of these three classes. Consider the following Russian examples:

Masculine, Generic Form Feminine Form

/u_'itel'/ 'teacher' /u_'itel'nica/ 'teacher (feminine gender)'

/n'em'ec/ 'German (person)' /n'em'ca/ 'German(woman)'

Suffixes are attached to feminine forms of nouns to distinguish gender (Comrie, et al. 1996:6), and as in other Indo-European languages such as French and German, it is the masculine form that is used as the generic.

Adjectives are another area which show the markedness of the feminine gender in Russian. They must agree with the gender of the nouns they modify. This is also indicated by a suffix:

Masculine, Generic Form Feminine Form

/molodoj u_'itel'/ 'young teacher' /molodaja u_'itel'n'ica/ 'young teacher(fem)'

It is the masculine version that is the generic, dictionary form of the adjective.

Implications of Gender-Marked Language

Language, as a tool of socialization, both reflects and enforces traditional gender roles in society. It also shapes the way individuals perceive the world. Sheldon argues that it was the male-as-norm phenomenon in English (e.g. use of 'he' pronoun as generic and the sheer number of times used as compared to 'she') that led her young daughter to conclude that there were more "he's" than "she's" (1990:4). In another instance, McConnell and Fazio (1996) looked at the effect that using the man-suffix versus using a person-suffix in English (e.g. chairman versus chairperson) had on attributing personality traits to an individual. They found that when -man was used, the subjects interpreted the individual as having a more masculine personality as compared to when -person was used. If this is an example of some of the effects of the male-as-norm phenomenon where the language has a choice of using more neutral language, then the impact must be even greater when the language is as marked for gender as Russian.

Predictions

I predict that the percentage of male descriptions in the data will be significantly higher than that of the female descriptions. There will also be a differentiation along gender lines in the use of proper nouns: females will be more likely to be referred to by their first name or no name at all. When women are described, more of the attached adjectives will focus on their physical appearance and age than they will for men. And last, general nouns referring to female individuals are more likely to reveal their status in the family unit, be a gender-distinguishing noun such as woman or girl, or show that they work in a 'feminized' profession such as healthcare or light industry.

Methods

For the purpose of this study, I made my methods purposely narrow. Only articles that contained descriptions of individuals were included in my survey of the data. Because gender is more ambiguous for the plural in Russian, any descriptions of groups of people were excluded. I determined the gender of each individual description primarily by looking at the verb in sentences where the individual was the subject, and in some cases, by the suffixes of the adjectives that modified the individual.

I collected data for three areas. The first area was any proper name given for an individual. Also collected were any nouns directly referring to the person. Any adjectives attached to either proper or common nouns were included as well.

Once the data for each of the issues had been collected, I took general statistics on the number of articles examined, number of individual descriptions found, and the gender count and percentage of these individuals. I further subdivided the proper nouns into six categories, from full name including patronymic to no proper name given at all. Each individual described was placed into one of these sections. I then calculated percentages of the total of individuals in each subgroup, and also computed separate percentages based on gender. These results are presented and discussed in the next section.

Data for the general nouns and adjectives was also further subdivided by semantic categories. Since individual descriptions did sometimes contain more than one noun or adjective, though not from the same semantic category, I did not calculate percentages for them as I did for proper names, except in specific instances connected with my hypotheses. These are presented in the next section. I did distinguish by gender in listing the number of times an adjective appeared, which produced some interesting results. The complete list of general nouns and adjectives that I found, translated into English, and their number count is listed in the appendix.

Results

The results of my study strongly support my first prediction. In the three issues of Ogonek that I examined, there were a total of 114 articles that included 169 descriptions of individuals. 26 of these descriptions (15.4%) were of female individuals and 143 (84.6%) were of male individuals.

The statistics on proper nouns used to describe individuals are shown below:

Table 1 Breakdown by Percentage of Proper Nouns Used to Refer to Individuals

Total Male Female

Full name .21 .21 .19

(first, patronymic, last)

First and patronymic .08 .07 .11

First and last name .28 .27 .35

First initial and last name .29 .34 .04

First name only .03 .02 .08

Last name only .05 .06 .00

None .06 .03 .23

Total 1.00 1.00 1.00

There are two categories that show a marked difference in usage according to gender: 34% of the proper nouns referred to males by their first initial and last name, but only 4% of the females were referred to in this fashion. In the category where no proper name was attached to the individual, 23% of the individuals were female, while only 3% of the male descriptions had no proper name attached to them.

For adjectives, female descriptions were less likely to have an adjective attached (8 out of 26 descriptions, 30%), as compared to males (62 out of 143 descriptions, 43%). When adjectives were attached to female descriptions they were slightly more likely to be negative, or related to age and physical appearance as compared to males, but since my data on this area were so small, these results are far from conclusive.

Table 2 Adjectives -- Selected Semantic Categories

(out of 26 descriptions) (out of 143 descriptions)

Age 2 .08 6 .04

Physical appearance 3 .11 3 .02

Negative connotation 3 .11 2 .01

The data that I accumulated for gender differences by semantic categories of the general nouns was also not as solid as I had hoped for. There were not enough occurrences of female descriptions to confirm my predictions in this area, but the common nouns do tend to differ slightly along gender lines.

Table 3 General Nouns--Selected Semantic Categories

female male

(out of 26 descriptions) (out of 143 descriptions)

Category Total occurances % Total occurances %

Leadership roles 2 .08 49 .34

Role in family unit 3 .11 7 .04

Gender nouns 2 .08 3 .02

(such as girl, boy, woman)

However, there is something interesting going on in the sphere of the male descriptions: over a third of them mentioned either the military or party rank of the individual.

Discussion

Over and over again in my data, I see that women are being rendered invisible by one of three means: they are simply not talked about; when discussed they are less likely to be given a name, one of the most essential parts of a person's identity; or they are given only the briefest of descriptions. The small percentage of female descriptions compared to those for males is a clear indicator that while women are marked and stand out grammatically, they have gone unremarked in the data I looked at. And when women were mentioned, the descriptions were shorter as compared to those for men: women were much less likely to have adjectives attached to their nouns. In two of the articles from the second issue of Ogonek (1974:4,9) the family of the male individuals who are the focus of the story are discussed. The fathers are identified by their first name and patronymic and their profession is discussed in both articles, while in the former the mother is not mentioned at all and in the latter, the only phase attributed to her is that she "worked hard". Kerig, et al. alludes to the fact that the 'woman issue' (i.e. women's equality) had been effectively put on the back burner in the late Soviet period (1993: 391). Perhaps this lack of exposure or discussion about the marked sex was a tactic designed to silence possible dissension by non-acknowledgement.

The second area of my data that proved enlightening was the high number of male descriptions with military or government rank attached to them. Hosking notes that by the late 1960's, one of the key characteristics of Soviet society was the importance attached to hierarchy (1990:374). While being a breadwinner in the monetary sense was not the expected norm for men in this socialist culture, achieving high rank, especially in the Party, was desirable and encouraged. Rank not only equalled prestige but possibly opportunity and access to scarce resources. August remarks that men are "success objects ... judged by their ability to provide a standard of living" (1995:272). And while the measure of what success was may have differed slightly in Soviet society, the pressure to perform and the emphasis on the rank occupied in the hierarchy for men is quite evident in my data.

Conversely, this same data reinforce the dominance of men over women in Russian society. Only eight percent of the of the female descriptions had common nouns that indicated governmental or military leadership roles, and this correlates with the lack of women in the higher party structure discussed at the beginning of this paper.

Conclusion

Language is an active tool of society, often used to reflect and reinforce established norms, especially in the areas of gender. In this study, there was an acute lack of visiblity of women in general: individual descriptions for this gender were brief, often carried no identifying proper noun, or were simply not even discussed. Societal expectations for men were reinforced: to have rank in the military or Party was most desirable, to not possess it was to be seriously lacking. Words do have power, not only in their content, but in the sheer amount of times they are used, and the lack of usage of words for marginalized groups in society is one of the clearest ways to see the who really holds the power.

Adjective List

(F=female, M=male; if no numbers indicated only one representation in data)

(+ indicates negative connotation attached)

I. Government, academic, or work-related

general (10 M) first (6 M) scientific (M) main(2 M)

thirteenth(M) folk (3 M) controlling (M) workers' (M)

politically active (M) fascist (M) war (M) scholarly (M)

II. Age

young (6 M, 1 F) elderly (F)+

III. Physical characteristics

little (2 F) large, tall (2 M) peasant-like (M) pale (F)+

IV. Personality traits

skilled (M) bright (M) distinctive (M) great (2 M)

legendary (M) good (M) bitter (F)+ lively (M)

experienced (M) special (F) elegant (M) musical (M)

rich (M) ardent (M) strange (M)+ firm (M)

famous (M) unruly (M)+ best (F)

V. Place of origin

Siberian (M) Leningradite (F) Muscovite (M) Russian (M)

American (2 M)

VI. Miscellaneous

future (M) other, different (M)

Noun List

(F=female, M=male; if no numbers indicated only one representation in data)

(# indicates presence of feminine suffix)

I. Formal communist terms

comrade (9 M) member (6 M) hero (10 M) compatriot (2 M)

worker (M) heroine (F)# communist (M) citizen (M)

gentleman, Mr. (M) pioneer (M) propagandist (M) lady, Ms. (F)#

II. Leadership roles

president (M) leader (M) brigandier (F) mayor (M)

commander (M) lieutenant-colonel (M) head, chief (12 M) deputy (M)

representative (2 M) candidate (M) senator (M) prime-minister (M)

general-lieutenant(M) deputy (F) minister (3 M) secretary (16 M)

director (1 F, 6 M)

III. Technical professions

mechanic (M) spinner (F)# weaver (F)# fitter (M)

operator (2 M) milling machine operator (M) engineer (3 M)

aero. engineer (M) metallurgist (M) steel founder (M) machinist (F)#

technician (M) apprentice (M)

IV. Academic, media, and cultural professions

dancer (F)# teacher (M) graduate student (F)# journalist (M)

architect (M) critic (2 M) reviewer (M) translator (M)

correspondent (F) writer (F) actor (2 M) accompanist (M)

producer (M) painter (2 M) doctor (3 M) author (1 F, 2 M)

portraitist (M) academician (M) instructor (2 M) scholar (M)

physician (2 M) artist (5 M) musician (M) composer (2 M)

master (1 F, 4 M) writer (2 M) poet (4 M) editor (M)

professor (M)

V. Positions in family unit

mother (2 F) father (4 M) son (2 M) daughter (F)

uncle (M)

VI. Miscellaneous

prostitute (2 F)# bartender (F)# acquaintance (F)# young girl (F)

man (2 M) boy (M) millionaire (M) woman (F)

Muscovite (M ) person (6 M) mister (M)

Notes

1. And even in Soviet canon, the issue of gender has been divisive. Kerig, et al. (1990:391) remarks that the 'woman question' and how important it was to the future of communism was a subject of much debate in early Soviet times, eventually eroding in later years to a 'this is not the time' and 'it will be dealt with later' attitude in much of the official discourse on the subject.

2. Examples given in standard Slavic transcription. See Levin (1978:2-3). All definitions of Russian

words checked in Smirnitsky (1977).

3. In Comrie, et al. chapter six 'Sex, gender and the status of women' is devoted to an interesting the discussion on the uncertainty about whether to mark gender in the noun class of professions. The more prestigious a profession is, they argue, the more unlikely it is to have a marked feminine form:

/u_itel'/ 'teacher' (generic implied but masculine noun)

/u_itel'nitsa/ 'female teacher'

but

/prof'essor/ 'professor, lecturer' (no equivalent form with feminine suffix).

This trend is something I watched for in my data bu,t because I had such a small pool of female descriptions, it is not discussed in the main body of the paper. All of the words used in female descriptions that had no feminine suffix marking were clearly recent foreign borrowings (e.g. /d'eputat/ deputy, /t'exn'ik/ technician). But Comrie's arguments do seem to have some merit, because other foreign nouns connected with less prestigious professions were clearly marked for gender:

/prost'itutka/ 'prostitute' /maš'in'istka/ 'machinist'.

4. See Graddol and Swann (120-4) for discussion on the markedness of the feminine gender in French and German, and Corbett (1988) and Van Schooneveld (1977) for a synopsis of grammatical gender in Russian.

5. Verbs in the past tense when the subject is singular have a suffix marking for (biological takes precedence over grammatical) gender agreement.

6. The patronymic is a name form derived from the father's first name with the addidition of a suffix ( /-ov'i_/ or /-'ev'i_/ for the masculine, /-ovna/ or /-'evna/ for the feminine). The first name and the patronymic is a commonly used form for polite address (Stilman, et al. 1972:168)

References

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