SUMMARY

The current issue of the journal is focused on the Federal draft law "On State Guarantees of Equal Rights and Equal Opportunities of Men and Women in the Russian Federation".

The complete text of the draft lw is presented in the issue. It consists of six chapters:
Chapter 1 "General Statements"
Chapter 2 "Guarantees of Equal Rights and Equal Opportunities for Men and Women in Social/Economic Fields"
Chapter 3 "Guarantees in the Fields of State/Municipal Services"
Chapter 4 "Guarantees of Voting Rights for Men and Women"
Chapter 5 "Mechanism of ensuring equal rights and equal opportunities for men and women"
Chapter 6 "Implementation of the current Federal Law"

The Explanatory Note for the Federal Law Draft provides a brief summary of the key articles. It presents the list of laws of the Russian Federation, international laws and Decrees of the President taken as fundamental documents for designing the law draft. According to the above mentioned documents the Russian Federation declared ensuring equal rights and equal opportunities as one of the main priorities of the state politics. Nevertheless women's civil rights are still being violated: for instance, among the Deputies of the State Parliament of Russia (the Duma) there are only 7% of women. Therefore the following priorities for the governmental activities in terms of ensuring equal rights and equal opportunities of men and women have been outlined in the draft:

o main approaches to formation of effective state policy in the field of equality between women and men have been defined;
o obligations of the State and employers on ensuring social/economic rights of women and men;
o obligations of all subjects of law on practical implementation of voters' rights as well as rights of women and men at state positions and in the formation of the governing bodies of the state/local levels;
o the law draft is to establish the mechanism of ensuring equal opportunities for women and men;
o the law draft is to establish the procedures of filing complaints in cases of gender discrimination and, therefore, to provide responsibility of authorities in cases of violation of legislation on equal rights of women and men.

The significant article by Dr. Svetlana V. Polenina, supervisor of the working group of law makers, has presented commentaries on the Law Draft "On State Guarantees of Equal Rights and Equal Opportunities of Men and Women in the Russian Federation". In the beginning of the article the author has stressed that the law draft is to ensure implementation of the UN Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women of 1979 ratified by the Russian Government. Then Dr. Polenina has analyzed other documents taken as the basis for developing the current law draft.
The author has provided substantial analysis of the issue of discrimination against women in relation to the law draft under consideration.
It is also extremely important to mention that gender expertise of legal documents/law drafts is to become an obligatory procedure for the state bodies if the law draft is adopted.
Another new thing about the draft is obligatory introduction of the course on gender studies into curricula of the state educational institutions on the regular basis.
The crucial part of the law draft is Article 6 (chapter 1) declaring monitoring in the field of ensuring equal rights of men and women. That was proclaimed at the Women's World Conference in Beijing as well as at the UN in June 2000. Nevertheless currently there is no regular monitoring on this issue.
Special chapter of the draft (chapter 2) is focused on guarantees in the social/economic field. This is a necessary statement because the second phase of privatization is expected in Russia. It will be important to bear in mind violation of women's economic rights which took place in the first phase.
Besides, Dr. Polenina considers articles 8 and 10 to be worth mentioning. Article 8 is focused on equal rights and equal opportunities in social labor relations: they are supposed to have an equal access to employment, equal payment, re-training opportunities.
Article 10 is also significant for combating discrimination in employment field; it deals with responsibilities of employers to prove absence of intended gender discrimination in certain cases.
The author has provided detailed analysis of the Chapter 3 which deals with the issues of state/municipal field in terms of ensuring gender equality. Besides, readers can receive information about equality in elections and the principle of implementing the legislation on political parties.
The important innovation of the law draft is about establishing special departments/assigning commissioners on ensuring equal rights and equal opportunities of women and men.

The informational note on the round table discussion of the current law draft held at the Mayor's Office, Yaroslavl, on November 27, 2001 has been included into the issue of the journal. The outcome of the discussion was the Letter to the Deputies of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, signed by Z.K. Kochubey, a Chairwoman of the Yaroslavl City Women's NGO, on behalf of participants of the round table.

The next article of the journal issue has presented the information about legislation activities of the State Duma of the Russian Federation for 2001. For the period of 2001 the State Duma adopted 195 laws; 141 laws were signed by the President. Most laws are focused on social issues, such as state pensions for the retired, for the citizens with children. Several documents are dedicated to amendments to the Labor Code.

The last article of the current issue has been presented by N.L. Krylova. It is the last about of the series on Russian women's employment in Africa.
Ms. Krylova has provided data of her analysis of different models of interaction between employers and foreign citizens and dynamics of labor market in Africa. The author's analysis has covered such African countries as Nigeria, Senegal, Republic of Mali, Namibia, Tanzania, Algeria, etc. The information about different labor codes of African countries included into the article is also of great interest.

The summary is prepared by
Larisa Ponarina