"Woman plus..." A Woman Unaware of Barriers

A Woman Unaware of Barriers

The Moscow Center of Crafts was founded in 1991. Its mission is to provide training and jobs to unemployed women. Today Center’s training programs cover 24 traditional and modern trades, including: knitting, wood curving and painting, design of leather clothes, headdress and footwear models, interior decoration, and many others. The Center provides at-home job to over 300 unemployed women.

Raisa Ivanovna Yemelyanova, the leader of the Center, has a fame of ‘a woman unaware of barriers’; some say that she always gets what she want and goes in and out of any door. And just think: her first occupation was in aircraft industry...

For twenty-eight years Raisa Ivanovna worked in the Civil Aviation Institute testing air navigation equipment. On-board test engineer, she participated in pilot-testing of many airplanes — Tupolev-154, Ilyusin-62, Yakovlev-40 — right from their first flights. She has to admit, it was a dangerous job: every year was marked with funeral rites as airplanes with her colleagues aboard crashed... She has first-hand knowledge of what it is like to be on an emergency board. In one case, two engines out of three failed. Another accident happened when the rudder jammed and the plane began to spin down... She was born lucky, she says, ‘and somehow I was always absolutely confident that nothing bad could happen to me.’

Social activities always attracted Raisa Ivanovna as intensely as her major job did. She used to be women’s board chair at her institute, and then Moscow women’s board member.

‘I was always fond of women fellowship’, she says. ‘You meet many interesting and extraordinary persons among them — active, intelligent, educated... And what is inherent in most women, they are conscientious and devoted to whatever they do: once they get started, nothing can stop them.’

In 1990, Raisa Ivanovna attended a business management training program offered by the Moscow Academy of National Economy. On graduation, she decided to find some practical application of her new knowledge. They were six fresh graduates of the Academy who decided to open an enterprise of their own. The idea was to combine profit-making with being useful to people. It was the time when state employees were being dismissed by scores, and women first... To find some way to help them became her obsession. And then, all of a sudden, the answer came. Many women practice needlework, modelling, painting and other crafts as their hobby, and do it skillfully. Then why not make it their profession? This simple concept laid the basis to the Moscow Center of Crafts.

‘When we began, it was all very modest,’ Raisa Ivanovna recalls. ‘ We applied to the Labor and Employment Department, and they contracted us to run a professional training program for unemployed. Being government contractors, we obtained a low-interest bank credit, bought rough materials and equipment, and organizes at-home workplaces for our protegees. At first, we had two production lines only: hand and machine knitting, and leather clothes. It was the time we had to spin like mad searching for customers. And we are thankful to the Committee: now and then they ordered some souvenir items from us... Eventually we gained strength and actually began to train unemployed...’

Survival trains hard. And, just like most small enterprises run by women and working in social sphere, the Center faces the problem of survival daily.

‘Social sphere is the most difficult area to make business in. It requires significant investments, both in cash and personal efforts, while offering miserable return on them. Masculine business, you know, is associated with banks, insurance, natural resources... And feminine is practically limited to small enterprises operating in the social sphere.

‘Unfortunately,’ Raisa Ivanovna adds, ‘we live in the country where small businesses are completely deprived of governmental support. In short, no privileges, maximum taxes. Almost 95% of our profits are spent to cover tax obligations. Therefore, no funds are left for development’

‘In America, I visited an enterprise like ours. They combine manufacturing and training functions, just like the Center of Crafts does. But, unlike the Center, they have a privileged lease contract, they sell their product under social contract with the government, they pay 20% of turnover as taxes, and all the rest is left to them. When I described the situation we worked in, Americans just wouldn’t understand the reason why the Russian government established such policies. What use killing businesses with taxes? Once closed, they wouldn’t bring a penny to the national budget. Then why not let them be?!’

Two years after she had established the Moscow Center of Crafts, the Chamber of Crafts asked Raisa Ivanovna to replicate the training program of the Center in their organization. The challenge resulted in complete success; moreover, along with new crafts, she added foreign languages to the list of disciplines taught. Since then, many graduates have been employed by corporate members of the Chamber of Crafts.

‘We cannot guarantee employment for all our trainees,’ Raisa Ivanovna says. ‘It depends on their diligence and, finally, proficiency. Therefore, to get employed, they have to past certain tests.’

Just like when she used to be a test engineer, Raisa Ivanovna, now being a company owner, actively engages in social affairs. She is the director of Women for Development and Creativity project which is a collaborative effort of Moscow women’s organizations to celebrate 850 anniversary of Moscow. The list of participating organizations includes: Moscow Center of Crafts; Karmin company; Business Women and Women’s Enterprises associations; Russian Cosmetics and Slavyanka enterprises; Women and Conversion union. The mission of the project is to draw public attention to female organizations’ activities and to promote social awareness of complexities and responsibilities associated with the burden assumed by women committed to the task of making improvements in the social sphere. The project includes the following activities: demonstration of actual achievements made by women’s organizations in new economic environments; public actions to promote youth and children’s art; workshops and conferences to promote public discussion and education.

The first phase of the Project supported by the Moscow Government Committee of Public and Inter-regional Relations has already been implemented. ‘We have done an enormous work,’ Raisa Ivanovna says.

‘During last six months we organized, first, the Podium at Pushechnaya festival. The idea was simple and clear: we wanted graduate and student clothing makers to show up with collections of their own design, so they could advertise themselves and find sponsors. Mark that not only Moscow students participated, but also those from Ivanovo, Kostroma, Yaroslavl. Along with demonstration, we organized sales free for participants. We invited a competent jury chaired by Vladimir Zubets, a prominent Russian couturier, to select best models from those presented. The show was quite colorful. However, it had been a tough job to make all the necessary arrangements.

The festival was followed by the children’s contest of knitted and sewed models. It was a natural feast of fantasy! Could you believe it that children would turn out to be this inventive?! Colors and patterns mixed in most untraditional ways. And Vyacheslav Zaitsev was excellent in facilitator’s role: he did it so professionally, aesthetically, and with good humor! It seemed, something virtuous, tender and careful was present in the very air of the show... There were two juries. One was recruited from lay women present. Most of all they wanted to encourage those of participants who had impressed the auditorium with their inventions, though their models might be not this professional, after all. And the professional jury assessed everything from a regular standpoint: they compared every seam and line to highest standards, along with models’ novelty and overall outlook.

We also sponsored the disabled children’s performance. They sang, danced, played. And just imagine that they were girls and boys with impaired hearing, or locomotor diseases, or even mentally disabled... They were so artistic, so beautiful, so sensual in their performance! And not a one of them felt inferior!’

The Committee of Public and Inter-regional Relations, together with women’s public organizations, arranged for a TV-marathon on the Moscow TV-channel featuring prominent women’s movement leaders — Ludmila Shevtsova, Tatyana Paramonova, Nina Gabrielyan; Fyodorova, the couturier.

‘Oh, what a marvelous marathon it was!’ Raisa Ivanovna exclaims. ‘It clearly demonstrated that our women can be real leaders! Any of them could make an excellent President!’

Other activities within the framework of the project included the Analytic Conference in Ivanovo city (discussion there turned around various problems of women’s movement) and Women and Authorities Conference held at the Academy of National Economy, Moscow.

In "Moscow" pavilion of the Russian National Exhibition Center, Women. Moscow. Russia exposition took place. It was a week of women’s projects and initiatives presented, female and children’s organizations introduced to public, discussions and round tables unfolded. And all the above was done within six months. Imagine the level of efforts! For five years now Raisa Ivanovna has not spent a single week on vacation. She admits that working this hard is no good — and yet she simply cannot make herself stop and have some rest... The second phase of the project is at hand, anyway.

‘We plan to make our input in Moscow 850 celebration by installing a Craftsmanship Street exhibition,’ Raisa Ivanovna shares her plans with me. ‘Out in the open visitors will see how handmade items are elaborated, and then they will be able to buy them or enroll to our training programs and make them for themselves... And our friends from Tretyakov Gallery have promised to make a public presentation of a collection of women’s art from their reserve at the city jubilee...’

Plentiful are plans of Raisa Ivanovna, and all of them are connected to women’s movement and initiative in one way or another... ‘Women’s public organizations’, she says, ‘and women, and children, and youth, we all face copious problems these days. That is why we initiated this project — to help them solve these problems. The only thing I want is that governmental support will continue and not extinguish as soon as the Moscow celebration is over.’

So we wish Raisa Ivanovna good luck and hope that all her plans were to come true.

Elena Chernomazova

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