Across Women's Lives

Russian feminists paraded a 13-foot-tall model vagina down the streets of St. Petersburg on May 1, 2018, without getting arrested. It was a big win.“[Police] arrested only those who they have orders to arrest,” says Leda Garina, director of the Eve's Ribs, a social, artistic, documentary and communication project devoted to the subject of gender discrimination. “But there were no vagina orders, so they didn’t know how to react.”The giant vagina didn't spark police action in 2018, but participants were not so lucky in 2019. Six Eve's Ribs activists were detained.In a country where the concept of feminism remains at best socially neutral and at worst a “mortal sin,” activists fighting for gender equality under the banner of feminism have to take success where they can get it. And it's often fleeting. Leda Garina, director of the Eve's Ribs project in St. Petersburg  Credit: Daniel Ofman/The World “This year, one of the girls wore a vagina costume, and they made