Russian female astronauts

[michaelwy]

In recent years it seems to me that Russia has grown into a more conservative nation, a fact which is reflected in the low number of female astronauts from Russia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_astronauts

Why do you think Russia has been so slow to promote women, whereas the US has many among their finest?

[Prof68]

In recent years it seems to me that Russia has grown into a more conservative nation, a fact which is reflected in the low number of female astronauts from Russia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_astronauts

Why do you think Russia has been so slow to promote women, whereas the US has many among their finest?

About Russian nation /society: it is not more conservative per se, but more patriarchal, which not the same thing, even if some visible effects are similar.
As to low number of women, there was | is four main reasons:
* more patriarchal society in overall
* except of the last admission of cosmonauts, admissions were organized by military aviators or at least heavily influenced by them. Almost any military is more conservative and misogynistic than society in general, and in many countries military aviators are even more misogynistic than military in general. So only woman engineers from RSC 'Energia' were among potential candidates. While up to 2000th USSR/Russia have bigger percent of women in engineering fields than West, it weren't big. Last selection of cosmonauts at least attempt to break this situation.
* far from ideal results of Tereshkova's flight leads to the prejudice of Korolev and Mishin against woman cosmonauts.
* On average, russian cosmonauts waits their first flights much longer  than astronauts. Many woman cosmonaut candidates could not wait so long and drops because they wants to have children.