The limited and inadequate social services have created a daily struggle for women. A typical day starts with women taking their children to day care, a trip which often takes up to an hour on public transportation. Few day care centers are near places of employment, requiring many women to board children during the week. Moreover, most parents agree that good care is scarce and they would prefer not to leave children. From the day care center, a woman goes to her job where, although she technically has equal employment, conditions are not truly equal.
Women work mostly in service and low-skilled jobs for less pay than men earn.
After work, women must find time do the shopping, which can take hours given the continued scarcity of consumer goods, and return home to cramped apartments to assume their second job taking care of the housework and family, in which most men are unwilling to participate. The realities of inadequate health services for giving birth and abortions, which are legal and often the only reliable form of available birth control, continue to plague women as well. Given all of the stresses placed on women by the double burden of work and family in a society where neither the government nor men provide adequate support, considering that Russians are still recovering from Soviet ideology and many want a return to the traditional values of the pre-Soviet Union era, it is not surprising that life in Russia is very unsatisfactory for many women. In 1996, Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, legislation intent on promoting self-sufficiency among families receiving public assistance. This legislation places a time limit on benefits, requires recipients to work, and gives states the responsibility of designing and administering individual programs.