Russia abolishs law banning certain professions for women

These days on the legendary Moscow subway, there's something different.

Women have returned as train machines for the first time in more than one generation.

There was an ad in our local newspaper for subway employees... where women were wanted. I was one of the first to be called, and I recorded”, says Christina Vaculenko, a motorist.

Trainers are just one of more than 350 professions available to Russian women after the government abolished a late Soviet-era law that protected women from professions seen as dangerous “” for fertility.

The change marks a victory for activists who defend women's rights, who spent decades challenging the law in court... who can already pursue their careers in the field, whatever direction this takes.

I figured I couldn't work even though I had a license. That certainly made me angry. I didn't even think that the government could allow me to study, but not to work. Funny! ” says Evgenia Markova, truck driver.

But that was not always the case.

The Soviet Union brought women some benefits in terms of their rights, much more than what it offered for western capitalist women.

... women recruited into Communist causes with the promise of equal rights, education and access to the workforce.

It was a policy that played an important role in the country's productivity in the field of defence during the darkest days of World War II.

But as women's rights activists say, expectations were for women to make both careers and family.

“The main slogan of former Soviet republics was that men and women are equal in the workforce. But it wasn't true. Our reality during that time and in Russia today is that women have dual duties”, says Alena Popova, Activist for Women's Rights.

Today the achievements for equal rights are far away..

In Russia women earn an average of 30 percent less than men... among the deepest wage differences among industrialized countries.

Russia has also faced strong criticism for decontinating various forms of domestic violence... part of a government effort to preserve Russian subx0-traditional families with no regard for the threat of women, as critics say.

But polls and life experience show that changing gender attitudes is sometimes harder than changing the law.

Sometimes older truckers who are 50 or 60 years old say they disagree... don't you agree? It's your right to go ahead, say Evgenia Markova, truck driver.

Meanwhile, women continue to have no access to about 100 professions, including those in mines and construction, a limit to which they continue to fight.

I think all professions should be open to women because they themselves have the right to decide which profession they do for them and which one does not, says Svetlana Medvedev, captain of a ship.

But for now, increasing hundreds of new women's professions is a victory over lost time. /voa