Russia is suffering from shortage of men for over a century

In many parts of the world, men still dominate the population compared to women. However, the same cannot be said for Russia where women outnumber men by 10 million!

According to the 2018 Russian Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat), there are about 78.8 million of women in Russia compared to men whose population is millions fewer than women — 68.1 million.

The statistics also estimates that Russian women will almost outnumber the men by 2036 in all of the regions except in Chukotka, a region located in the Far East part of Russia



While the number may be surprising, the gender imbalance is unfortunately not a new issue in the country as it has started since a century ago in 1897.

Apparently, a census in 1897 recorded that were 33.8 million women and 32.1 million men in Russia and the gap has been widening ever since

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However, unlike in some Asian countries where sex selection is what causes gender imbalance to occur, the gender imbalance in Russia happens because of wars and infectious diseases which affect more men than women.

The population of women in Russia started to rise at the beginning of WWI where there were 91.9 men for every 100 women in Russia.

As the country went through major catastrophic events like the Russian civil war, famine and the “Great Terror” in the Soviet Union, the number of men kept falling.

During WWII alone, Russia lost over 25 million soldiers, all of whom were men!

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The war caused the ratio of male to female in the Soviet Union to become even more unbalanced with 81.9 men for every 100 women.

While more newborn boys are born each year compared to girls, baby boys are more susceptible to infectious diseases and fatal health complications.

According to Pass Blue, female-heavy populations are typically attributed to factors related to fertility, migration and mortality, said Jens-Hagen Eschenbaecher, a regional communications adviser at the UN Population Fund office for Eastern Europe and Central Asia. But in many of the former Soviet nations, the predominant factor is men’s propensity to die young, especially at age 40 and older, from widespread alcohol use, smoking, suicide, cardiovascular and circulatory diseases and accidents often linked to alcohol.

• At the moment, Russia has already seen more women in the workforce with 72 percent of them working as civil servants, making the country is technically run by women!