Why there is more women in Russia than Men?
Answers
Answer:
This region has been predominantly female since at least World War II, when many Soviet men died in battle or left the country to fight. In 1950, there were just 76.6 men per 100 women in the territory that is now Russia. That number rose steadily in subsequent decades, climbing to 88.4 by 1995 before declining again.
The gender ratio in Russia is currently 86.8 men per 100 women, and the ratios in Latvia (84.8), Ukraine (86.3), Armenia (86.5), Belarus (86.8) and other former Soviet nations are similarly low.
(By contrast, the ratio in the U.S. is 98.3 men per 100 women, and the global ratio is 101.8 men per 100 women, according to 2015 United Nations data. The U.S. has been more female than male since at least 1950, while the global population first became majority male around 1960.)
So what are the factors that set the former Soviet bloc apart?
The population in Russia and the former USSR as a whole is older than that of the world. Most of these nations, including the most populous, also have low fertility rates compared with the global average. This skews the population’s gender ratio because older people are more likely to be female, while more younger people are male.
Answer:
For a long time now the number of women in Russia has far outweighed that of men. What is behind this demographic phenomenon?
In 2018 the Russian Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) tallied up the population for its “Men and Women of Russia” report – it revealed that 146.9 million people live in the country, with 68.1 million (46 percent) males and 78.8 million (54 percent) females.
Natalya Nosova
This gender disproportion has been around for over a century. According to the 1897 census, there were 32.1 million (49 percent) men and 33.8 million (51 percent) women in Russia, and since then the gap has only widened. From 1959 to 1971 Russia was composed of 45 percent men and 55 women – WWII took a heavy toll by wiping out over 25 million soldiers.
Natalya Nosova
But if we look deeper into the age tiers, the distribution changes. Of people aged under 29 there are more males than females, but among those aged 70+ there are 2,377 women for every 1000 men. This difference is striking in regions like Veliky Novgorod, where the average age of a woman is 44 years. Meanwhile, women make up 49.7 percent of the economically active population of Velikiy Novgorod, almost 75 percent of local civil servants are female and women amount to 85 percent of civil servants in local municipal authorities.
Velikiy Novgorod is a land of babushkas. “There are so many of them, I don’t see as many middle-aged women [anywhere else],” says Anna from Veliky Novgorod. “You go into a shop – grannies are everywhere. You walk your dog – it seems all other dog-owners are babushkas.” Ekaterina from the same city confirms that the gender gap wasn’t so huge for younger generations: in her youth, in the 1990s, she didn’t witness any significant shortage of young men.
This tendency is prevalent in Russia where there are more old women than old men. There are, however, regions with harsh living conditions where men make up the majority of the population – but only in rural areas. They are the Murmansk, Chukotka, Kamchatka, and Magadan regions, and the Yamal-Nenets and Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrugs. All are located in Siberia.
Natalya Nosova
As the Rosstat report shows, women seem to run the country. Seventy-two percent of Russian civil servants are female, while within bodies of municipal authority there are even more: 76 percent. There is only one category where men outnumber the opposite sex and that’s the loftiest positions of civil service (heads of departments etc.), where they account for 60 percent of the workforce.
At the same time, among economically active Russians (aged 15-72), the two sexes are almost equally represented (37 million men and 35 million women). Education, healthcare, and sales are the areas where women are significantly prevalent.