Entrepreneurial Women and the Business of Self-Development in Global Russia

A 2007 survey indicated that Russia was the only country in the world where more women than men actively sought to start their own businesses. In a social context of significant gendered inequalities in the labor force, many educated women perceived business management as a path to upward socioeconomic mobility and self-development (samorazvitie). To be a businesswoman in President Vladimir's Russia was not easy, however; it meant going against the grain of cultural assumptions that "normal" women strove to become mothers and wives. Women who headed their own firms often faced difficulties finding spouses, professional partners, and friends who respected them and their social contributions. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with urban managerial women in a variety of commercial sectors, this article asks: how did these women make sense of their place in Russian society? Rather than attempt to alter gendered social and economic inequalities, women focused on changing their own self-perceptions and constructing new narratives about their lives. They found language for doing so in their workplaces and in an array of globally circulating motivational seminars and media that have appeared in Russia during the past two decades. This article examines the cultural logics by which modes of change focused on the person became so compelling for these women, as well as the ways in which self-development was culturally productive in a context of political disenfranchisement. © 2013 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.