C.I.S. (former U.S.S.R.)
Agricultural society in what is now the C.I.S. goes back thousands of years, and entails numerous distinct cultures. Slavonic-speaking societies tended to follow the general Indo-European pattern of patrilineality, passing down property and rights from father to son. In agriculture this meant land and livestock. The gender roles on the farm presumed that the farm and all its contents belonged to the father or grandfather. Uralic-speaking societies, on the other hand, had a relatively egalitarian system in which land was considered to be the domain of a larger extended family or folk group, without rigid boundaries between individual homesteads. Division of labour was not rigid, and spouses often worked alongside each other, or helped each other with various tasks.
During the Russian Empire period, Slavonic patriarchy was emphasized and promoted to a greater extent across the board. This was especially the case in southern and central Russia during the 18th and 19th centuries, where every farmer or farm labourer was considered to hold a position in the feudal hierarchy of the Empire, until this system was modified in the later 19th century. Men were the official landowners and decision-makers, though women often had a significant amount of unofficial influence in decision-making (on the free peasant farmsteads).
In the years leading up to the Revolution, as the remnants of feudalism disintegrated, many Russian farm families joined artels (артели), or cooperatives. The cooperatives practised (at least in theory) equal consideration of men's and women's opinions in making collective decisions, which was a sharp contrast to the feudal method. Moreover, as the Empire became more connected by rail and road, the rural residents of central and southern Russia gained knowledge of Uralic-based farm operation systems (which had survived in the north and east). These northern and eastern traditions contributed to the emerging cooperative modalities.
After the Revolution, the government was initially supportive toward the artel movement (since it is "collectivist"). When the Stalinist government took power, however, many of the artels were superseded by state farm units (sovkhozy or Совхоэӣ) under control of the central government. The effect on gender roles varied: workers of both sexes were assigned to do similar tasks, but managers and overseers were mostly male, though there was no fixed rule or custom that established this as absolute. Fieldworkers often worked in mixed-gender teams, though in the Caucasian and Middle Asian republics an informal segregation by sex was maintained, following local (and ultimately Islamic) traditions. Throughout the Union, state-farm administrators tended to have little regard for marital relationships: marriage was considered part of the workers' personal lives, which needed not enter into the world of economic labour. Children born or conceived on a state farm were considered "bound" to it, in a concept lent from feudalism.
Later governments, from Krushchev's onward, eased the central control of farms, though certain republics (such as Tajikistan) took up this control into their own state governments, and retain much of it even to this day.
With the 1960s loosening of central administration over agriculture, the cooperative system became once again the main system of large-scale farmland operations in much of the U.S.S.R. This condition has remained ever since, with only minor changes.
Where small and extended family farms exist in the C.I.S., consensus is often a major mode of decision-making, and cooperation a major mode of work. On collective farms as well, conjugal collaboration is a respected and encouraged part of the overall dynamic, and couples often work as units within the larger framework. Exceptions include the Chechenya/Dagestan/Naxcivan region, where all areas of life are highly sex-segregated, and marriage is often an arranged contract by the parents.
Read more about this topic: Gender Roles In Agriculture, Europe