Eleonora Matveevna Ivanova Eleonora Matveevna Ivanova
President of MzhOO "Conversion and Women", Member of the Executive Committee of the Consulting Council of Non-Governmental Organizations attached to the Committee of State Duma for international affairs, Secretary of the Women's Issues Commission of the Chairman of Council of Russian Federation, Member of the American Academy of Business and Administration Leaders

"Women should be engaged in all the problems of the society and not just play the traditional role of a "nurse" although we do not reject it."

I was born on May 8, 1936 in Moscow. Perhaps this is the reason why I love spring. It arouses the stream of warm feelings and hopes for something very good, which is awaiting me in the future. My sign is Taurus and therefore I am standing firm on the ground, but I was born in the "Year of the Rat" which determines the global character of my thinking. This combination gave me one very valuable feature - to complete everything what I have planned to do. However, this feature has its reverse side as well - "I'm only dreaming of the rest". My favorite saying is " Everything is changing to the good". I am optimistic.

A few official milestones of my life. I graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute, department of engineering and electro mechanics, in 1973 graduated from the post-graduate course of the Moscow Institute of Electronic Mechanical Engineering and made my Ph.D in Technical Science. My whole life long I have stayed at the State Research Institute of Aviation Systems (GOSNIIAS), was working on mathematic modeling, aeronautics tests, took part in the preparing of interdepartmental program documents.

I am married, have two daughters and two grandchildren. I always had a wide range of interests. I love poetry, always went in for sports (volleyball, skiing), and my going away (practically carrying away) from the playground in 1989 was the result of the break of the Achilles' tendon. Now I am longing for publicism and for the problems connected with the social aspects of conversion and possibility of building of the civil society in our country. My main interest is the person, his interests, his role in the society on the non-governmental level; how to build the civil society in Russia using the great intellectual potential of its citizens and especially the potential of women, who have been mostly hurt by reforms and have been removed from the political life and decision making, both for objective reasons - they needed more time to earn their living and for subjective reasons - cancellation of all quotas. All these moments became objective factors for my joining the women's movement.

Actually I am the typical child of the war years, "thaw years" of the 60-s, I was taking up the democratic atmosphere of the scientific collective of the VPK, where only working in team produced the effect. Therefore, I can always distinguish the true democracy from the demagogical one.

As early as 15 years ago I planned after retiring to write an essay on Pushkin and already collected many books on this issue. Now I just cast a glance at them from time to time as at something far and naive from my past life. The Russian reality of the last decade exterminated all the dreams; "covered" the lyrical feelings in the soul, but it uncovered citizen's feelings. Now I have to live with it.

I am President of MzhOO "Conversion and Women" since it started its activities (reelected for this position in December 1998), Member of the Executive Committee of the Consulting Council of Non-Governmental Organizations attached to the Committee of State Duma for international affairs, Secretary of the Women's Issues Commission of the Chairman of Council of Russian Federation, Member of the American Academy of Business and Administration Leaders. Technical university degree (Moscow Aviation Institute), Ph.D. for Technical Science. Participant of the permanent working round table of women's non-governmental organizations attached to the Ministry of Labour and Social Development RF. Chief research officer of GosNII of Aviation Systems. I have more than 70 scientific publications; last 9 years my main activities are connected with women's movement. I have the Certificate of the advanced training "Management and strategic planning of NCO" (Course in the International Center of the University of California, 1996), completed the trainers' courses at the National Fund and NDI (Certificates) etc. I was working as Editor of the magazine "Vestnik" N 12 and N 13 IZNZhF (1997 and 1999), as editor-in chief of the brochures "New perspectives for women of technical professions" (1999) and "Women in Management - Security in the country and in the world (1999); more than 30 publications on conversion issues and on women's issues on the local and international level

I participated in numerous international conferences from which I would mention the following: 4th World UN Conference on Women's Status in Beijing (my group prepared and conducted the section "World Conversion - resource of planet's preservation"), two regional conferences: in Vienna in 1994 ("Beijing") and in Geneva in 2000 ("Beijing + 5"), International Peace Conference "Hague Call for Peace" (summer 1999), spoke at the section "Women and conversion".

Fields of activities: women in conversion, preservation and reasonable using of their intellectual potential, gender equality, women's role in the policy of security.

Was awarded by State.