Why Can't Russian Women Drive Buses?

MOSCOW, March 25, 2010 — -- Generations of American children have grown up with their parents telling them they can do whatever they want when they grow up, that anything is possible. Women have fought for decades to be treated the same as men, to be paid equally, to have the same opportunities.

So, if women in the U.S. were told that there was a list of over 450 jobs off-limits to them, chances are marches, speeches and nonstop debate in the media would soon follow.

Yet, all is quiet in Russia as women go about their lives, seemingly indifferent to the fact that their country's labor code lists 456 jobs they're not allowed to do.

They include firefighter, blacksmith, bus driver, train operator and ship's captain, to name a few. The vast majority of the jobs on the list are industrial, such as construction, metallurgy and mining.

In May, a 22-year-old law student in St. Petersburg named Anna Klevets applied to be an assistant operator in her city's metro system but was denied because of her gender, according to her lawyer. A discrimination suit filed in the District Court was rejected and Russia's Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling.

"The slightest possibility of risk for a woman herself or other people, must be excluded," a representative for the Health and Social Development Ministry said at the time.

The list originated in the early days of the Soviet Union when the regime was looking to empower women by getting them out of the home but wanted to ensure work conditions wouldn't put them in any danger that would affect their health and consequently the health of the family.

Keep up with news about Russia by following Alex Marquardt on Twitter

Lest anyone think the list was a holdover from a bygone era, in 2000 President Vladimir Putin modified and re-certified the list in its current form, but made it more lax than its predecessor. For example, women can hold a listed position if the employer proves that work conditions are safe. In fact, the Moscow metro was going to appeal the ban on female drivers a year ago because, for a time, there weren't enough healthy male applicants.

The governmental decree states that the goal is to keep modifying the list and to eventually abolish it completely. There are more pressing issues, however, labor experts say, like making the conditions safer overall and encouraging equality in society as a whole.

"I'm actually happy with the court decision from the St. Petersburg case," labor lawyer Oskana Sinyavskaya told ABC News. "The more cases [like Anna Klevets'] that we have, the better would be the discussion and the more attention society will put to the issue of gender equality."

"Of course, it's not totally clarified why certain jobs are in this list," she said, "some of them are really dangerous, but the danger of working on the others are questionable."