Gender in the Everyday Life of the Russian Home

Despite significant shifts in Russia’s social and political spheres since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, traditional gender norms within the domestic sphere have remained generally constant to the present day. The home is a crucial site of gender identity construction due to its importance in Russian culture as a space that has long functioned as a refuge from public life and official discourse. Based on ethnographic interviews with twenty residents of Ufa about their daily practices in the domestic sphere, this study aims to illuminate the domestic social structures within the Russian home in order to achieve a greater understanding of broader social relations in Russia today. Viewed through the lenses of everydayness, narrative, gender, and the home, traditional gender norms reveal a stabilizing function for families, which there appears to be little motivation to change