The number of women public school teachers is 27,000 (as compared with 40,000 men teachers). An attempt has been made by the women village school teachers to arouse the women agricultural laborers from their stupor. Organization of women laborers has been attempted in the cities. For the present the task seems superhuman.[99]
When graduating from the lyceum the young girl is given her teaching diploma, which permits her to teach in the four lower classes in the girls’ lyceums. Those wishing to teach in the higher classes must take a special examination in a university. The higher classes in the girls’ lyceums are taught chiefly by men teachers. When a Russian woman teacher marries she need not relinquish her position.
In Russia the women doctors have a vast field of work. For every 200,000 inhabitants there is only one doctor! However, in St. Petersburg there is one doctor for every 10,000 inhabitants. According to the most recent statistics there are 545 women doctors in Russia. Of these, 8 have ceased to practice, 245 have official positions, and 292 have a private practice. Of the 132 women doctors in St. Petersburg, 35 are employed in hospitals, 14 in the sanitary department of the city; 7 are school physicians, 5 are assistants in clinics and laboratories, 2 are superintendents of maternity hospitals, 2 have charge of foundling asylums, 5 have private hospitals, and the rest engage in private practice. Of the 413 women doctors not in St. Petersburg, 173 have official positions, the others have a private practice.
The local governments (zemstvos) have appointed 26 women doctors in the larger cities, 21 in the smaller, and 55 in the rural districts. There are 18 women doctors employed in private hospitals on country estates, 8 in hospitals for Mohammedan women, 16 in schools, 9 in factories, 4 are employed by railroads, 4 by the Red Cross Society, etc. The practice of the woman doctor in the country is naturally the most difficult and the least remunerative. Therefore, it is willingly given over to the women. Thanks to individual ability, the Russian woman doctor is highly respected.
There are 400 women druggists in Russia. Their training for the calling is received by practical work (this is true of the men druggists also). According to the last statistics (1897), there were 126,016 women engaged in the liberal professions. There are a number of women professors in the state universities.
Women engage in commercial callings. The schools of commerce for women were favored by Witte in his capacity of Minister of Finance. They have since been placed under the control of the Minister of Instruction and Religion. This will restrict the freedom of instruction. Instruction in agriculture for women has not yet been established. Commerce engages 299,403 women; agriculture and fisheries, 2,086,169.
Women have been appointed as factory inspectors since 1900. The Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Communication employ women in limited numbers, without entitling them to pensions. The government of the province of Moscow has appointed women to municipal offices, and has appointed them as fire insurance agents. The zemstvo of Kiew had done this previously; but suddenly it discharged them from the municipal offices. For the past nine years an institution founded by the Princes Liwin has trained women as managers of prisons.[100]
The names of two prominent Russian women must be mentioned: Sonja Kowalewska, the winner of a contest in mathematics, and Madame Sklodowska-Curie, the discoverer of radium. Both prove that women can excel in scientific work. It must be emphasized that the woman student in Russia must often struggle against terrible want. Whoever has studied in Swiss, German, or French universities knows the Russian-Polish students who in many cases must get along for the whole year with a couple of ten ruble bills (about ten dollars). They are wonderfully unassuming; they possess inexhaustible enthusiasm.
Many Russian women begin their university careers poorly prepared. To unfortunate, divorced, widowed, or destitute women the “University” appears to be a golden goal, a promised land. Of the privations that these women endure the people of western Europe have no conception. In Russia the facts are better known. Wealthy women endow all educational institutions for girls with relief funds and with loan and stipend funds. Restaurants and homes for university women have been established. The “Society for the Support of University Women” in Moscow has done its utmost to relieve the misery of the women students.[101]
The economic misery of the industrial and agricultural women (who are almost wholly unorganized) is somewhat worse than that of the university women. The statements concerning women’s wages in Vienna might give some idea of the misery of the Russian women. In Bialystock, which has the best socialistic organization of women, the women textile workers earn about 18 cents a day; under favorable circumstances $1.25 to $1.50 a week. A skillful woman tobacco worker will earn 32½ cents a day. The average daily wages for Russian women laborers are 18 to 20 cents.