Press release, 12.03.2015

Yegor Kholmogorov, publicist and co-Chair of the Conservative press-club, won the top prize of the Sexist of the Year-2014 award. He was determined by online voting. The awarding ceremony took place in the House of Journalists (Dom Zhurnalista) in Moscow on March 11. The event was organized by For Feminism initiative group with the support of YABLOKO’s Gender Faction.

Natalia Bitten

According to the founder of For Feminism initiative group, journalist Natalia Bitten, Kholmogorov won the top prize with a significant breakaway. Ivan Urgant, TV presenter, nominated for systematic sexist remarks belittling social values and intellectual abilities of women and politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky – for open call for physical violence against women, lost to Kholmogorov.

Yegor Kholmogorov was nominated for open calls for physical violence against women and sparkling hatred against women. “I think when we occupy America we’ll adopt a secret law allowing the American man to hit [a woman] on the face with a fist when hearing the word “sexism”. And we’ll watch the best videos,” he wrote on his Facebook page.

The Samara regional Duma won in the nomination the “Anti-women policy” for an initiative to ban free abortions. This bill breaks women’s right for solving maternity issue themselves and restricts their access to free medical care guaranteed by the Constitution.

The Krasnodar city department for youth issues won in the nomination for sexism in advertisement. They placed a banner saying “A smoking young lady is a stinker”. According to the organizers of the award, such an advertisement aims at controlling women’s behavior on behalf of the society. The accent of the advertisement is not on the damage which smoking does but on the possibility to offend those women who don’t fit into someone’s expectations.

Pavel Chernishyov, journalist from the Izvestia newspaper, was awarded with the prize for sexism in mass media. In his article “Economical Russian women will present men with intimate impressions” he claimed that women are interested in positioning and promoting themselves as cheap goods.

Lawyer Ludmila Ayvar won in the nomination “Women against women” for accusing and discrediting victims of collective rape. Within a TV programme on NTV channel she claimed that there are women who can not raped in connection with the fact that they’ve had sexual contacts with several men or acting in porn films and also if they didn’t call for help.

Diplomas and symbolic gifts will be sent to the winners via post office.

Nadezhda Azhgikhina

The Sexist of the Year award was founded in 2010. Its aim is to attract public attention to the problem of sexism and initiating a special law guaranteeing eradication of hate speech against women in the mass media.

Olga Radayeva