COLUMN ONE : Russia’s Equality Erosion : As the flourish of a market economy has a debilitating effect on equal rights, many Russian women see true freedom as the ability to be full-time wives and mothers.

MOSCOW —  Lyudmila Zakharevich, 16, tops her class at an elite Moscow high school, but instead of planning a career, she dreams of becoming a full-time housewife.

Lena Guzeeva, 22, on the other hand, desperately wants a professional position in one of the new private businesses in her central Russian city but worries that sexual exploitation has become so accepted that she will be jobless unless she agrees to submit to a potential employer’s advances.

And Natalya Zhdanova, 48, who was laid off from her job as a top engineer at a military-industrial plant and is working as an after-school day-care supervisor at the local school, is bitter that the career she had for 25 years under Soviet rule is now out of her reach because it is part of the men-only world of the new Russia.

By their own choice and because of mounting new social pressures, the women of Russia are less liberated, in the feminist sense, than they were when the Communist Party ruled their country. Many are being forced out of professional jobs, sexual harassment is considered business as usual and, increasingly, young women believe that freedom means enjoying traditional female roles that were largely denied them in the old Soviet Union.

During the Soviet era, most women here had no choice but to wear frumpy clothes, work full-time jobs and maintain a home with little help from the male members of the family, according to social anthropologist Irina Popova. “So, now it is considered liberation to be a sex symbol, get married early and stay home with the kids,” she said.

Russian society is going through a phase similar to that in 1950s America, when homemakers and wholesome movie stars were idealized, Popova added, but because of a rebellion against the state-decreed sexual puritanism of the Soviet era, the ideal Russian woman is more sex kitten than homecoming queen.

The images are pervasive: Penthouse-style photos in the mainstream Russian press; frequent full female nudity on both daytime and prime-time television; sexy female fashions never imagined by the average Soviet working woman, and beauty pageants where talent competitions include erotic dancing.

Under Communist rule, equality for women was legally mandated, and women as well as men were required by law to work. Although this emancipation-by-decree failed to create many female factory directors or top politicians, women made up more than half the work force and filled mid-level managerial, engineering and support positions--in addition to working as jackhammer operators.

This did not, however, change the public consciousness of a woman’s role at home, so women were still responsible for child rearing and housekeeping.

Lyudmila is one girl who has already decided that she does not want to repeat the double-duty life of her mother, who has toiled full time for 20 years in a candy factory while, like many other Russian women, being solely responsible for the household.

“She gets no satisfaction from her work,” said Lyudmila, a mature-looking teen-ager with a round face and long, sandy-blond hair. “I don’t want to work after I am married. It takes too much time from your family. Most of my girlfriends feel the same way.”

Public opinion polls show that many Russians, men and women, feel that if they could have the choice, most women would not work outside the home while raising their children.

“The majority of younger women think it’s better if women are at home,” said Valentina V. Bodrova, a sociologist at the All Russian Center of Public Opinion and Market Research, a leading polling organization. “Older women think everything is important, work and family.”

In most cases, two incomes are necessary to keep families fed in this period of economic hardship. Growing acceptance of the view that women belong at home means that the majority of Russian women who have no choice but to work are facing increasing discrimination.

Guzeeva, a senior economics student at the university in the provincial Russian city of Voronezh, decribes what it is like to interview for a job at a new private business:

“Businessmen come right out and say they don’t take girls for professional positions. . . . They say they do hire girls as secretaries, and then they look them up and down. If they don’t like the way you look, they say, ‘We don’t need a girl like you,’ and if they do, they let you know that your responsibilities may include those of a prostitute.”

Women who have made it to high positions in private business tell of being given ultimatums by their bosses such as, “Sleep with me or quit.”

There is no talk of sexual harassment suits--indeed, there is no law against that kind of behavior here--and formal protests are rare.

An American businessman tells of sitting in the office of a Russian partner while the latter was interviewing a young woman for a secretarial position. The Russian businessman suggestively asked the interviewee, “What size couch do you prefer?” The woman giggled and replied, “Any size you like.”

“What surprised me most is that these girls are not even insulted,” said Tamaz Ellis, the American businessman who emigrated from the Soviet Union 20 years ago. “There is no self-respect.”

Both mature career women and young would-be professionals complain that Russia’s new capitalist business world is like an exclusive men’s club.

Navena Bagaeva, 24, who graduated from Moscow University’s prestigious economics department, has seen her male ex-classmates start their own businesses and zoom up the ladder at private firms and international joint ventures. Although she was able to get a decent job as chief accountant at a joint venture, she fears that she has reached what her American sisters would call “the glass ceiling”--two years after graduation.

“The men in my office do not treat me as an equal,” she complained. “Despite my title, I’m the one who makes and serves coffee when the secretary is away.”

Although she is single and her salary is the primary support for herself and her two aging parents, her male colleagues never let her forget that they think she belongs at home.

“The traditional idea that men should earn money and women keep house is still very strong here,” she said with a disappointed shrug.

In the Soviet era, men rarely voiced such views, both because the law left women no choice about working, and because--in a work situation where practically no one was ever fired--men did not feel their jobs threatened by women.

Today, at state agencies and state-run factories, established women employees are the main victims of layoffs as directors try to make their businesses competitive in Russia’s new market economy.

Through 20 years at a military-industrial plant on the outskirts of Moscow, Zhdanova pushed her way up the hierarchy for engineers. She also managed to save enough money to buy an apartment--a rare achievement before recent economic reforms were enacted--so that she and her two sons could move out of their communal flat into their own home. But when layoffs were announced, she and other professional women were the first to go. The rationale was that men need their jobs more than women; but for Zhdanova, a single mother, that excuse rings hollow.

“I was at the top of one of the most prestigious fields in our country,” she said with an edge of bitterness in her voice. “Now I’m in one of the lowest positions in one of the least respected fields.”

She took a job teaching drawing classes and supervising day-care groups at the local elementary school, just to keep money coming in. “Now I worry about how to feed my sons,” she added.

The legal provisions set up to help protect families as the country goes through a painful transition from a centrally controlled economy to one based on market forces have ended up heightening employers’ bias against women. The government ordered that mothers, not fathers, receive subsidies to aid children. Although the money is supposed to come from a separate state coffer, employers often have to pay it themselves, and they resent it. Also, bosses are required to give women 120 days’ paid maternity leave and a total of three years off with each child, with a guarantee of getting their job back afterward.

“All of this makes it less advantageous for an enterprise to hire a woman,” said Marina Gordeyeva, spokeswoman for the Women’s Union of Russia. “As a result, 80% of the unemployed in Moscow--and similar percentages in other areas--are women.”

Mikhail Rudyak, 33, the general director of an engineering and foreign trade association with about 2,500 employees, is one entrepreneur who claims to be an equal-opportunity employer. His financial director, for instance, is a woman.

“When I’m out of town, Nelli is the one who takes over,” Rudyak said. “I have four deputies, but she’s the one who runs things.”

Despite Rudyak’s boast, however, a promotional photo of his management staff shows 15 men--and Nelli.

Most women fear that the discrimination will continue to increase, especially since women have almost no voice in the 90%-male Parliament. Already it has omitted the legal guarantees of equality for women in the workplace from the Soviet-era constitution, which is still in use. The draft Russian constitution has no such provisions.

Many feel that President Boris N. Yeltsin and his team encourage sexism by supporting, through both word and example, the view that women belong at home.

Former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev publicly encouraged his wife, Raisa, to pursue professional goals and took obvious pride in her achievements. Yeltsin, in contrast, rarely mentions his wife, Naina, who is self-effacing and has been quoted as saying that she has never had any views of her own.

In a rare television program about their home life, Naina Yeltsin was shown preparing food and serving her husband in their kitchen.

Women say one reason Soviet-era gains in equality have been lost so quickly is that, unlike in America and Western Europe, no grass-roots women’s movement has developed here; since equality was mandated from the Kremlin, it was felt that there was no need for such a movement.

It is still rare to see women drive cars, and men regularly open doors for women and insist on paying for their meals.

And now, with the Soviet facade of equality between the sexes removed, men feel free to make sexist statements and proudly treat women as sex objects--and many women seem to like it.

When asked if having two cars was one of his financial goals, a 19-year-old biology student responded that one car will be enough because “no wife of mine is ever going to drive a car.” And when asked whether any of the brokers working for his firm are women, a 24-year-old executive said indignantly, “I will never have a female broker working for my firm.”

Meanwhile, Russians are exposed to more images of the new woman, including explicit advertisements for prostitutes in the press; baseball-card-sized pictures of mostly naked models on dashboards of taxis, and popular fashion styles that include stiletto heels and skintight miniskirts that barely reach the upper thigh.

“But this will pass,” said Popova, the social anthropologist. “In about 10 years, a battle for real equality will start.”