Introduction: Living at Risk
The coronavirus pandemic has been a huge source of stress for countries and regions around the world, and Russia is no exception. The first cases of coronavirus in Russia were recorded in March 2020. In July 2020, Russia had the fourth highest number of infections in the world (RBC 2020). Moscow has been the hardest hit since the start of the epidemic, accounting for 233,545 cases or approximately 30 percent of the Russian total, followed by St. Petersburg, with 29,346 cases (BBC 2020).
As has happened in other countries, the gendered aspects and consequences of the crisis have been discussed in public space here ever since the self-isolation regime was introduced. An analysis of surveys conducted in Russia during the lockdown suggests that the pandemic has exacerbated the gender gap by increasing gender inequality. Women make up the majority of the workforce in the sectors (retail, catering, and tourism, along with the self-employed and small-business owners) that have been most affected by the pandemic in Russia. They were the first to lose their jobs. According to the Ministry of Labour of Russia, since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, the proportion of unemployed young people (20 to 23 years of age) has grown from 15 percent to 23 percent (Banki.ru 2020), so girls and young women are at serious risk during this pandemic and in a post-pandemic world.
The rise in domestic violence during the self-isolation period became a sore point in relations between Russian society and the authorities. While domestic violence statistics have always been somewhat unreliable (a fact that activists continue to stress), the number of calls made by young women to the nationwide helpline grew by 24 percent in March alone (Schipacheva 2020; Yasenitskaya et al. 2020). Nadezhda Zamotaeva, director of the Sisters Center for Combating Violence, argues that the number of calls from women to the center regarding cases of domestic violence increased threefold in April to May 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. According to Zamotaeva (2020), girls between the ages of 14 to 20 remain the most vulnerable group.
Girls and young women are now at even greater risk of sexual exploitation. Women's activist groups point to the sharp increase in the activities of webcam platforms offering girls what is known as easy money. A recent headline on Russia's largest internet portal, Life.ru, read, “How Coronavirus Made Camgirls Rich.” Activists note that not only do articles such as these lure girls in with promises that they will make a fortune, but they also normalize this kind of commercial sex (Netovar.org 2020).
The growing gender inequality makes girls more vulnerable than before. It is already clear that their chances of entering the labour market are minimal (Trushin 2020), and they are highly likely to remain economically dependent on their parents for far longer than was previously the case since this category of young citizens does not receive any assistance from the state in the form of child or unemployment benefits (Kudyukin et al. 2020). The state, like most experts, does not see girls as a vulnerable social group because it is considered perfectly normal for girls to stay at home indefinitely while they do what is called finding themselves in their personal and professional lives (Kudyukin et al. 2020). The problems that girls face when they are trying to gain economic and psychological independence are essentially put off until later, transferred to some distant future. This traditional view of girls as inferior is still widespread in Russia and is actually growing thanks to its anti-gender ideology, according to which, the state framed the norms of a conservative gender order and this then became formalized in law that decrees that the norms of young femininity define motherhood as a woman's natural destiny and main goal in life. Gender researchers Oleg Riabov and Tatyana Riabova (2014) highlight an important feature of the Putin regime that contributes to its popularity which is the remasculinization of Russia through the creation of attractive images of national masculinity and the attribution of masculine characteristics to the country. Given this, it is not surprising that during any emergency, and this is true of this pandemic, it is girls and young women who are pushed into the margins of public discussion, if not excluded from it altogether.
In opposition to this we are interested in a different approach that sees girls, in the words of Catherine Driscoll (2008), “as a site of both resistance and conformity” (20). Following Driscoll (2002) and Claudia Mitchell and Jacqueline Reid-Walsh (2005), we approach girlhood as a zone of possibilities (as well as conflicts and risks) associated with the visibility girls want in the public sphere and their desire to act freely and independently as they increase their agency. In Russia, this vision of girls dates back to research on girlhood that began in the 2010s. From the beginning of this period, known to gender researchers as the Russian conservative turn (Zdravomyslova and Iarskaia-Smirnova 2015; Zdravomyslova 2016), the zeitgeist has been defined by anti-Western rhetoric and a clash of values—security and conformism versus freedom and openness to change. However, young Russians do not see the West as an alien and hostile force, and European values remain an important benchmark for them (Pipiya 2018; Radaev 2018). This generation of Russian 14- to 19-year-olds (called since 2020 the “pandemic generation”) demonstrate a high level of interest in personal and public safety (Rean and Shagalov 2018). Security is among the top three priorities for this generation of girls (and also boys), alongside the home (feeling comfortable in one's domestic environment) and the family as the foundation of everything (Shamis and Nikonov 2020). But, at the same time, it turns out that girls are even more publicly active than boys (Smirnov 2016). They are deeply involved in social media and take part in the many discussions focusing on gender and gender-based violence. This wave of activism could go far in Russia, and not only within feminist circles because, despite the current dominance of the conservative ideology and the lack of a strong and stable feminist tradition in this country, the idea of girls’ civic activity is becoming more popular among pandemic generation girls (Zhilyaeva 2018). We believe that this is similar to the idea of “girl energy,” which is defined as “explosive self-determined femininity that aims to result in an equal society” (Tormulainen et al. 2017: 68).
It is quite natural for these girls who belong to what has been called generation Putin, (those born in the 2000s) to compare their own experience of what is happening with girls of their age in other countries. In the midst of the crisis caused by the pandemic, Russian girls are more aware of themselves as living in an atmosphere that Zygmunt Bauman calls “liquid fear,” or “a vision of the world that includes insecurity and vulnerability (2006: 3). As Bauman explained in an interview with Aljazeera agency, in 2016,
We are walking, as if on a minefield. We are aware that the field is full of explosives, but we can't tell where there will be an explosion and when … We are incredibly more free than our grandfathers or great grandfathers were. But we paid the price. We had to exchange it for security.
Bauman called the search for new conditions for the co-existence of freedom and security the most important feature of the era of liquid fear. They are “two crucial values without which human life is simply inconceivable” (2016).
In Russia, as in other countries, the crisis that has penetrated all spheres of life and affected every social stratum, age, and gender group is determined largely by the new relationship of freedom and security in a situation in which the value of security suddenly and dramatically increased and continues to do so. In a conservative environment and in the situation of the unavoidable restrictions on freedom for the sake of safety that were introduced during lockdown, girls were made more vulnerable than before and their urge for agency became a real quest. Referring to Kathy Miriam's idea that girl's agency can be “defined as a capacity to negotiate with a situation that is itself taken for granted as inevitable” (2005: 14) we are raising the issue of the constraints created by the situation and the capacity of girls of the pandemic generation to negotiate with it and act.
Rationale, Method, Data, and Ethics
We extended a research project of the Gorbachev Foundation, “Russian Girls in Turbulent Times” (see Zdravomyslova 2019) that began in 2017 to include work on Russian girlhood and COVID-19. This earlier project analyzed the challenges faced by girls as conservative tendencies developed in Russian society that intensified anti-Western, anti-liberal, and anti-feminist discourse. Since then we have found that the challenges of these current turbulent times are diverse; social inequality and gender inequality are increasing, threats are being made to the psychological and social safety of girls and all this is expressed in the phenomenon of increased violence, including the forceful imposition of traditional gender beliefs on girls (see Onegina, 2019). So, we continued this project with a new study, “Russian Girls Create Freedom and Security during a Pandemic” because the pandemic is yet another powerful challenge that the current generation of girls in Russia, as well as around the world, have to navigate. At the start of the 2020 pandemic, Russia was forced to take the same measures that other states have taken to deal with the crisis. It enforced quarantine and introduced a self-isolation regime and online training in schools and universities. We could see that the changes related to the pandemic exacerbate all the previous problems that girls face in everyday life in a situation of growing insecurity given this new threat of infection and the concomitant COVID-19 restrictions on their freedom.
We conducted the study in accordance with accepted ethical standards. Our over-riding principle in conducting the interviews was to ensure the health and safety of our respondents by guaranteeing their anonymity and by adhering to standards of confidentiality in the research process based on social responsibility, respect, and fairness. The recorded interviews were transcribed and discussed with the girls we interviewed. Anything a girl said in an interview that could identify her was removed from the transcript. In accordance with the practice adopted in Russian social research, we used pseudonyms for the respondents.
The participants in the current study are different from those in the 2017 study. However, in both cases, we found respondents through the social networks Facebook and VK. The girls agreed to participate in the project without payment. They were fully informed about the purpose of the study and its theoretical and practical objectives. As is customary in most Russian sociological surveys, the procedures for obtaining consent were oral and were arranged via Skype. During the lockdown period, this was especially important for reasons of health and the medical safety of respondents and researchers. The girls fully understood the purpose of the study and appreciated the confidentiality.
All our respondents were either in their final years at school or in their first years at university. All the girls who took part in the survey live with their parents, depend on them financially, and turn to them for help in difficult situations. We conducted interviews with girls during which we talked about the changes that have taken place in their daily lives, their plans for the future, and the meaning and significance for them of freedom and security. Interviews were conducted via Skype. The contact with the girls was easily established: the informants expressed interest in the research topic and it was obvious that it was important for them to clarify for themselves what was happening to them and around them during lockdown.
Elements of grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967) were used to describe the new everyday experiences of girls. The key categories investigated were security, insecurity, and freedom. In line with the points made by Fiona Vera-Gray (2016, 2017), in our analysis we used the concept of situated agency that views girls’ and young women's agency as their ability to make choices in the context of coercion and constraint, rather than viewing girls and young women as free and autonomous agents.
The Growing Insecurity
The crisis hit from out of the blue: the once familiar world turned into a frightening place. Then the opportunities for personal choice shrank, the plans for the coming months were ruined, and the way girls lived their daily lives changed.
As Alina said,
When I heard about the pandemic, I experienced several feelings at once—shock from the unexpectedness of it all, disbelief, the feeling that none of it was real. The defining features of self-isolation and social distancing are ‘strangeness’ and ‘fear of others.’
As Maria put it, “I was scared to be in crowded places. Whenever I left the house, I was scared. I was worried that passers-by would infect me.” Nadia added, “My parents said I couldn't use public transport and asked me to keep contacts with other people to a minimum.” Katerina admitted, “I was crying, I had panic attacks. Watching the news about the pandemic is frightening and frustrating for me. Health is now above all for me.” For Olga, “It feels like this will never end.” Liza noted that “everything is so strange … surprise and fear. This virus, it's something that is beyond our control, something we can't fight. You don't feel safe.”
The experience of insecurity is constantly exacerbated by government failure to take effective measures to help citizens and families during the pandemic. As Olga said,
People lost their jobs, they do not buy anything from anyone. I think it will be difficult to get back on your feet. And the state does not support me and people like me. I am already 16 years old, and I am not entitled to an allowance (10,000 rubbles per month).
Families were already faced with a worsening economic situation. “My dad was worried that his department would be closed. And if it was, then they would all be furloughed without pay,” added Olga.
Insecurity increased along with distrust of the state, the media, and just people in general. “I know a lot of people who think that it's all been invented by the authorities and that the virus doesn't even exist. I mean, I don't know who to believe at this point,” said Maria. As Darya put it, “Of course, I don't trust anyone. And everything they said about state support, even during the pandemic, is far from the truth. That's why everyone relies on themselves. It's survival of the fittest, as they say.”
Living in danger of being infected is the new normal and will remain so for some time. “It scared me at first, but not so much now. I'm used to it, so I'm not panicking anymore,” explained Nadia. “We've started to pay more attention to what is happening around us, and we're more careful now. It's an extremely dangerous disease, so we've got to be careful and vigilant,” said Darya. While self-isolation has not been a disaster for the girls, who understand that lockdown will not last forever, they are aware of new constraints that make them more vulnerable now and will continue to do so in the future.
Alina described security as “the certainty that nothing bad will happen, and confidence in what the future holds.” But the girls know, too, that plans can go out of the window since “there will be a second wave and everyone will start getting ill again,” as Katerina insisted.
Constructing Safety: A New Experience of Everyday Life
When, in the words of Jürgen Habermas, “existential insecurity spreads throughout the world” (2020) these girls look for a social and psychological space for themselves in which they can create stability and safety. The pandemic is like a lingering threat in the background, and girls are growing accustomed to living with this constant liquid fear with its insecurity and their vulnerability. As Alina defined it, “Insecurity is that feeling of uncertainty when you are faced with something you can't control. Like this virus. It's something we cannot control, [and] we cannot fight it.” This is countered by what Vera-Grey (2016) calls a pre-emptive safety work strategy. In the narratives of the girls, we see several ways in which they construct this safety. The girls are more concerned than ever about their health and the health of their loved ones, although they have no idea of how long they will need to observe the personal safety rules of wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) and practicing physical distancing (called social distancing in Russia). These girls of the pandemic generation have become more responsible and this can be seen in their adherence to the rules of personal and public hygiene. “You have to wear a mask if you want to take the subway or taxi. Now we think about health in a different way. I mean, it didn't bother me that much before. Not anymore,” said Maria. “Now I'm more worried about germs. I make sure everything [is] clean and I always have antiseptic wipes,” added Lisa.
Constructing safety is connected with an enhanced sense of belonging to a family. During the lockdown, parents and children were forced to spend all their time together. As they talked about this experience, the girls reflected on the relationship with loved ones that could encourage their resilience. “We started to take care of each other much more,” said Alina. Family members became closer and learned to make joint decisions. Here we can see a kind of safety work in action since, as a result, not only is the sense of belonging to a family enhanced, but a sense of security in a pandemic situation is also established. Maria explained,
We pulled ourselves together. Now, we go for runs every day, keep active and eat healthily. My sister and I put on a lot of weight during the lockdown and we realized that something had to change … Our mum supported us by helping change our diet, and our dad started going for runs with us. It was a joint decision. On the whole, we get along as a family. The only time we argue is about everyday nonsense.
However, the close proximity with each other into which family members are being forced does not automatically lead to the strengthening of the sense of family belonging. What happens more typically is that members of the family strive instead for greater autonomy. For Olga, “The most difficult part was that we were together all the time. We barely had to say a word to set each other off. I mean, we just got angry at each other.” Lena observed, “One month into the lockdown and we were sick of each other and wanted to self-isolate in our own rooms.”
Previous studies have shown that according to Russian adolescents, “the concept of family is very weakly connected with the concept of freedom” (Kourilsky-Augeven et al. 2008:117). The interviews we conducted showed that during a period of quarantine, family togetherness leads not to the adoption of family values, but creates, rather, some tension between safety and freedom.
During lockdown girls got into the habit of following information from various sources about the changing epidemiological situation and its danger. This was an important part of safety work because continually evaluating the situation to decide what constitutes “the right amount of panic” (Vera-Gray 2016) is conducive to a sense of security. Lena explained,
I usually check the latest statistics on the pandemic from Yandex every morning. Or I watch the news when they're talking about the figures. Or I talk to my mum, because she knows some doctors who work in hospitals that deal with infectious diseases.
“I would check how many new cases there were in Russia and in St. Petersburg every morning,” said Liza.
At the same time, however, there is also denial of the reality of the danger of a pandemic and this leads to the rejection of safety work. As Nadia said, “I'm not really following the news about it. I'm just waiting for things to return to normal.” A distinctive feature of the incidence of COVID-19 in Russia is that the majority of patients were in the age range of 18 to 40. Experts attributed this to people ignoring the new rules relating to public behaviour such as self-isolation and social distancing (Bashmakova 2020; Semenov 2020). Statistics on the incidence of COVID-19 show that this is a common behaviour pattern among Russian youth.
So, Lyuba and Irina are trying to push any and all information about the pandemic from their minds and do not look at living through it as a new experience. “You can get treated for coronavirus. There's no point being afraid of it. I am sure that neither me nor my family will be affected,” says Irina who does not follow the news on the pandemic and does not think she needs to use PPE. According to Lyuba, COVID-19 is “like the flu.” She is not interested in the latest coronavirus developments either and flaunts her attitude to danger. She claimed,
The only reason I wear gloves and a mask on public transport is because they won't let me on the subway otherwise, not because I'm scared or anything like that. I've not spoken to a single teenager who thinks wearing a mask is necessary.
From the interviews conducted, it is clear that two completely different models of girls’ behaviour in a situation of increasing insecurity are evident. The first is an acceptance-based reflective model, which means accepting the risk of contracting the virus, including the constraints associated with it, and focusing on safety work. The second is a denial-based model, which means ignoring any information about the pandemic and refusing to learn about safety.
Referring to the idea of the inextricable link between freedom and security and their increasingly fragile balance (Bauman 2006) in a “risk-sharing society” (Beck 1992:19), we consider girls’ understanding of freedom in the pandemic they are facing.
Constructing Freedom and Agency
Girls do not derive their ideas about freedom from some theories. Their understanding of freedom and their urge for agency are grounded in their lived experience which now includes the 2020 pandemic. As Vera-Gray rightly notes elsewhere in a different context,
From the perspective of lived experience there is an opposition between taking actions to increase our safety and taking actions to increase our freedom—increasing one means decreasing the other. And at the same time, this does not mean that any acknowledgment of the limits of particular situations effectively denies women autonomy (2016: n.p.).
During the pandemic, by accepting the restriction of freedom for the sake of safety, girls try to define for themselves a space in which they are safe and free and that they can control on their own, or, in other words, their agency space. Alina explained,
We do have control over our family relations; we can always come to some kind of understanding. We also have control over our studies and our friendships. And this provides a sense of security and freedom.
In lockdown, the space in which they routinely live their lives is condensed into the size of a house or flat, but time has expanded since the line between home and school, home and work, or free time and working time has disappeared. This was one of the main challenges that the girls talked about.
I had to take my classes online because of the virus. Naturally, it was difficult to begin with, because you need to know when your deadlines are and how much time you will need for each task. You've got to plan your day so that you can do everything you need to do. Then you get used to it, yeah,” said Katerina.
Liza described her experience, saying, “I was able to spend my time doing what I wanted to do! And the teachers take an individual approach to you.” For Lena, “That was difficult. Everything was so disorganized, and we were all lost after the school holidays,” she said. “You can't just go and hang out with your friends. You've got to do it online. I'm sick of it,” added Nadia. The virtual interaction with the outside world and the feeling that they were in control of their time gave the girls a sense of freedom and a chance to express their agency. However, the inability to manage time led to girls being unable to cope with the situation of lockdown; they started worrying about the lack of freedom and agency.
All the girls we interviewed talked about freedom as the opportunity to be independent, the opportunity to “live for yourself,” and make your own choices.
As Liza explained,
Freedom means being independent, not having to rely on your loved ones, being able to go anywhere you want, to think what you want. It means being at peace with who you are and not looking for something in others to make you feel whole. That is, when you don't constantly need to be around others. I think that is true freedom.
Lyuba articulated her notion of freedom:
I do everything myself. I don't need anyone's help and I don't want to owe anyone anything. If I want something, then I do everything I can to make sure I get it. If I want something, then I do everything I can to make sure I get it. I love my independence. I am completely free!
During some interviews we could see a growing distrust of the outside world in the girls and their desire to distance themselves from everything associated with it such as pandemics and other possible disasters, the state and employers, public life, and especially politics. Maria noted that “dealing with a pandemic would be easier than dealing with politics.”
As Alina expressed it,
Of course, I would like to see the economic situation become better, to have more opportunities for young people, more social lifts, more freedom to express their opinions because now there is too much political campaigning. But as for politics we can't fight it.
Lena said, “I wouldn't want to work in a company. I want to work for myself. As boss, I'd be able to create my own atmosphere. Maria agreed. “I want to be my own boss,” she said.
They talked about the firm desire to carry out personal projects in the future, in spite of the fact that new restrictions were being created for girls and young women in the dangerous post-pandemic world. These projects were built around the freedom to choose one's profession, country of residence, and lifestyle. “I don't want to work in finance or be a lawyer. I want to do something creative,” said Olga. “I want to ace my final exams and get accepted into a prestigious university in Europe or Canada. The most important thing is to study something that you're interested in, not what will make you the most money,” explained Liza.
These girls’ clear desire for privacy and independence, fuelled by the pandemic's increasingly rapid invasion of their digital space, reinforces the understanding of freedom as autonomy, as the desire “to live the way I want.”
Concluding Remarks
The coronavirus has created a new social, political, and psychological reality in Russia and around the world. Russian researchers believe that the situation of the pandemic and its consequences reinforce patriarchy, stigma, and conflict (Temkina 2020). One can expect that the opportunities and life chances of girls and young women, whose vulnerability is rooted in the growing gender inequality, can be further reduced. In this era of liquid fear, the pandemic has made girls’ insecurity even more visible and challenging.
Referring to the belief of Vera-Gray (2016) that “all agencies are located” (n.p.) we can say that during the pandemic Russian girls are mastering their agency in a situation of forced social isolation and increasing uncertainty about the future. In this situation, a reflexive approach, or what we think of as safety work arises. Girls learn to plan their time more rationally and responsibly. They get used to extracting information, analysing it, and determining the reasonable measure of panic. The girls are more concerned than ever about their own health and the health of their loved ones. During the lockdown, parents and children have been forced to spend all their time together. Some of the interviewed girls reflected more on the notion that loved ones are the people who provide stability during difficult times and this meant that they learned to participate in joint family decisions.
As mentioned above, an acceptance-based reflective model of risk mitigation led some girls to focus on being safe and on trying to keep others safe. Those who followed a denial-based model ignored the risks associated with the pandemic and refused to implement safety measures others than those prescribed for the public in general.
In this pandemic, it is clear that girls are more concerned with security and insecurity than ever before, while at the same time they are very sensitive to constraints on their freedom and agency. Both are equally important for those who adhere to the acceptance-based reflective model and those who follow the denial-based model.
In search of freedom and agency, girls are becoming increasingly alienated from power structures and politics. They are focused on their personal lives, which they see as being independent of global or domestic influences. The pandemic and what it means for the future creates new challenges for young women and girls, but it cannot constrain their urge for agency and their desire to change their own situation.
Acknowledgments
We thank Maria Bashmakova, a journalist from St. Petersburg, for her help in organizing the interviews and for her interesting observations that were important for understanding the behaviour and attitudes of girls of the pandemic generation. We are grateful to managing editor Ann Smith for her positive criticism, excellent editing, and understanding.
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