COMPARING RUSSIAN AND AMERICAN UNIVERSITY STUDENT PREFERENCES

A substantial body of scholarly research explores attitudinal barriers to women’s equality in the political arena and the workplace. This research advances that line of inquiry through an analysis of Russian and American university students’ preferences for a man or a woman as their boss. This cross–national approach allows for an examination of national as well as gender differences. As a simple, quantitative measure, the «preference question» captures the willingness to reject gender as a basis for assigning leading positions in society. But this study moves beyond the standard results provided by survey research by asking students to explain why they opted for a male or female boss, or why they view gender as irrelevant for determining who is a «good» boss. These open–ended responses allow us to address the following themes: To what extent has a commitment to gender equality penetrated American and Russian society? How do university students justify their preferences regarding gender and bosses? What kinds of traits—rational, calm, caring, decisive, and so on – do students wish to see in their workplace superior? What do these attitudes tell us about Russian and American culture? About larger issues concerning competing models of societal evolution?

Literature Review. Alternative models highlight different aspects of contemporary world developments; these include an emphasis on distinct “civilizations,” the rational choice school, and globalization. Each suggests different patterns of gender attitudes. The World Values Survey collected individual–level information on gender attitudes in 46 countries. Utilizing this data set, Pamela Paxton and Sheri Kunovich[569] identified clusters of countries, with Eastern Europe exhibiting «a more negative gender ideology than other countries», a result the authors attribute to the communist legacy.

The communist legacy receives a great deal of credit or blame for current gender attitudes in Russia. That legacy involves multiple ingredients: the idea of women’s emancipation as either a discredited communist ideal or as a goal already achieved; the focus on motherhood as crucial to women’s self fulfillment and destiny; a state dominated society that viewed women as productive (workers) and reproductive (motherhood) resources; and an approach to explaining women’s absence from leading positions as the “natural” outcome of factors rooted in immutable biological differences. Overall, there is a tendency to view women’s issues through prisms that reflect collective or state goals and neglect issues connected with women’s advancement in the workplace and political realm: the protection of motherhood, the worker mother, and the demographic crisis.

Salient characteristics of American culture typically include traditional ideals like equal opportunity and individualism, both championed from below by the emergence of a strong women’s movement in the 1970s. Society, rather than biology, is viewed as the primary force shaping expectations about the roles of men and women. A liberal feminist ideology stresses an emphasis on women as individuals rather than as wives and mothers.

The unique civilization model suggests that university students in Russia and the U.S. will view the issue of women and men as bosses through different frameworks, with the former more skeptical of women’s capacities for leadership.

The Rational Choice Model. The rational choice school holds that in a given situation people will make the same «rational» choices regardless of cultural perspectives. According to this model, the responses of Russian and American university students should reflect a high degree of self–interestedness, of choices that the students believe best further their personal goals. In this case, we look for student responses that offer reasons why a male or female boss might be better for one’s own prospects or comfort level at work. Those responses could be rooted in specific cultural milieus rather than identical.

Globalization: Economic Development and Modernization. Mainstream modernization theory holds that economic development has homogenizing and largely positive effects on women. As urban, industrial societies with exceptionally well educated women heavily involved in the work force, Russian and American societies count as good candidates for the modernization produces egalitarian gender attitudes model. This should particularly be the case with respect to university students, who frequently conceptualize themselves as carriers of change, as moving forward. U.S. polls demonstrate that the youngest generations express the greatest support for gender equality, with higher education further re–enforcing that tendency. In the Russian case, a survey of Voronezh State University women students majoring in English, a group probably more Westernized than students in general, revealed an almost uniform desire to work and to find an interesting career, with many endorsing financial independence for women. Only 16% of these students agreed that women should not be bosses[570].

If the modernization thesis holds, students will opt for “skilled” bosses and not regard competency as depending on gender.

The Research Design. Undergraduate university students were surveyed in 2005 at Volgograd State University (VolGU), the Volgograd Academy of Public Administration (VAPA), the Volgograd Academy of Law (Ministry of Interior), the Volgograd Pedagogical Institute, in 2006 at Penn State Harrisburg (PSH), and in 2007 at Moscow State University (MGU). The survey includes 796 students: 386 Americans (188 women; 198 men), 410 Russians (276 female; 134 men), all between the ages of 17 to 24; VGU and MGU form, respectively, 48% and 34% of the Russian sample.

· A majority of Russian women, American women, and American men, reject favoring a male or female boss in favor of the position that gender does not determine a “good” boss. However, 38% of Russian females preferred a male boss compared to 26% of their American counterparts.

· American male attitudes parallel female opinion, while a substantial gender gap exists among Russian university students.

· Russian men who prefer a male boss refer to their ability to handle crisis situations, their toughness, strength, strictness, and inherent leadership qualities; their PSH counterparts state that they would be more comfortable with a male boss and consider male superiors more energetic and assertive.

· The position that both men and women can be good bosses does not necessarily stem from abstract, egalitarian principles that reject gender stereotypes.

· The American sample expects greater rapport and fair treatment from a female boss than does the Russian sample.

The predominant pattern among university students in Russia and the United States—with the exception of Russian men—fits the economic modernization model: the idea that merit is not related to gender. But aside from the «no preference» option, Russian and American university students’ choices, even when similar, often point to different assumptions about the nature of male and female bosses. Rational self–interest plays a role, as there is considerable student concern with having a boss who will treat you fairly and with whom you can readily communicate. Student opinion is far from unanimous, however, about which gender scores better on these matters, although women bosses receive higher marks in this area from the U.S. sample than in the Russian survey.

Новосибирск, Новосибирский государственный университет

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