Gender competence
and Dictionary of Gender Terms

Alla Denisova
Dictionary editor

During the last decade the discussion of our country international obligations in observance of human rights, in particular of women rights, took on a public char-acter. The interest to these problems in the mass media has considerably increased; at the same time the institutionalization of domestic gender research has occurred and the public consciousness is nowadays in the process of learning numerous new per-ceptions. For many people it resulted in realization of necessity of gender education.

Moreover, it can be stated, that with the beginning of activity on working out in Russia of legislative basis for realization of equal rights and equal possibilities for men and women, the gender literacy becomes one of essential features of profession-alism not only for public movements activists and journalists, but also for representa-tives of legislative and executive powers. Thus the name of the project, within which bounds the present dictionary was created, - "Gender Education for everybody" - be-comes an acute requirement of our time and a necessary condition of modern society development.

The project was initiated and carried out by the Regional public organization "East - West: Women Innovation Projects", which considers informational support of women movement and gender education of society as its main objects. The project could not have been realized without financial aid from the Canadian Fund of Rus-sian women support and without longstanding partnership of our organization with Henry Belle Fund; the authors' team, scientific consultants of the project and editor express their sincere gratitude to above mentioned funds.

The edition has the following bibliographic data and annotation:

DICTIONARY OF GENDER TERMS (Edited by A. A. Denisova)
Regional public organization "East - West: Women Innovation Projects".
M.: Information XXI century, 2002, 256 pages.
The Dictionary of Gender Terms, which is of encyclopedia type, is the first lexico-graphic edition representing Russia gender terms and their English equivalents. The gender terms comprise words word expressions of professional speech, designating special notions and comprehension in gender research and integrating the scientific knowledge in Philosophy, Sociology, Political Science, Cultural Science, Psychology and Linguistics, Literary Criticism, History and some parts of Sexology. The edition includes vocabulary articles of 49 researchers from Russia and neighboring countries. It is intended for scientists, lecturers and students, journalists, representatives of power and administration, participants of public movements and, in the whole, for gender education of Russian society with ultimate aim to form modern notion of equality of men and women, accepted in the world.

Specialists in gender research from Russia and neighboring countries were invited to work over the dictionary; many of them showed frank interest to it and agreed to place at our disposal their unique research data: there are remarkable enthusiasts in the community of gender researchers who are ready to contribute their share to the undertaking, which, in the opinion of the dictionary authors, is useful for the public.

Selection of terms for the dictionary was made as a direct choice from scientific and educational texts on gender themes and according to the recommendations, contained in the letters from the authors (correspondence with authors and consultants of the dictionary amounts to 1,600 letters). Surely we cannot declare that the dictionary terms, comprising 378 Russian words, cover all gender terminology. That was the main reason to avoid definition "encyclopedia" in the name of the dictionary though it really belongs to the type of lexicographic editions. It is important to mention that the time of the project was limited by a year and a half, including work of the pub-lishing house, printing-works and distribution of the edition.

In conformity with the enlightening concept of the edition we aimed at work-ing it out in such a way that its users would not understand its terms as purely scien-tific notions, which had nothing to do with everyday life. We believed that enlight-enment approach would increase the value of gender research in the eyes of society and would indirectly show the possible mechanism of changes in the real situation.

We express our special gratitude to: A. V. Kirilina, consultant and author of the majority of dictionary articles of linguistic terms; E. R. Yarskaya-Smirnova, who en-listed to work and headed a big team of authors; N. A. Shvedova, author of numerous dictionary articles of Political Science; S. G. Ayvazova and T. A. Klimenkova for numerous consultations on all the stages of work; E. V. Kochkina for valuable pro-posals on the contents of terms; O. A. Khasbulatova, consultant and author of many articles; M. G. Muravieva , author of many articles in History; E. V. Israelian, con-sultant from the Canadian Fund of Russian women support, and to many other par-ticipants of the project.

Sometimes during the conferences on gender equality famous representatives of power or state administration say (quite sincerely and with good intentions) that women movement is a wonderful thing … because it is very important and honorable to be wife and mother. In this moments we quite clearly and with sadness realize that only a few people in Russia understand the meaning of the gender equality and that we are very far from the time when key gender notions become a natural part of the public conscience. At the same time, judging from the experience of our mutual work, we cannot but note a high scientific and civil potential of the society, which unites research centers and non-governmental women organizations of CIS countries, and this fact gives hope of future changes before long.

E-mail address of the Dictionary of gender terms is http://www.owl.ru/gender/