Putin Revives Mother Heroine Title: What Does It Mean And How Will It Impact?

Mother Heroine Title is an honorary title awarded to the women of the Soviet Union for bearing and raising a large family. The award was established in 1994 and died with the fall of the USSR in 1991, until recently when Putin signed a decree to revive the title in August this year. 

Currently, Putin has handed out this award to two women in the Russian Federation. The first is Medni Kadyrova, wife of the head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, and the second woman’s identity is yet to be sought out. The second woman is from the Artic Yamalo-Nenents region. 

Awarding the Mother Heroine title has worked out well for Putin as Ramzan Kadyrov has promised to send his teenage sons to aid Russia in its war against Ukraine. 

The Mother Heroine Title was established by the Soviets to increase awareness around health and to financially aid women and single mothers with large families. The Soviets made it a practice to award the mother on the first birthday of the last child provided all her children were alive. However, exceptions were made for the death of a child who died under honorary circumstances or occupational diseases. The awardee received a retirement pension, food supply, and payment toward any public utility charges. 

Putin’s decision to revive an award prevalent in the old days is also implicative of his desire to revive the former Soviet glory by annexing Ukraine and being seen as an indomitable superpower in international politics. 

Suggested Reading: Vladimir Putin Hands Out ‘Mother Heroine’ Award To Women With Over 10 Children

Implications Of The Mother Heroine Title

An award seemingly established for the welfare of women ironically goes against its very principle. 

Putin handing out one million rubles to Mother Heroines puts unnecessary pressure on women to bear many children to receive the lump sum amount. Now that Russia’s ongoing state of war with Ukraine has affected economies worldwide, Russian women may feel pressured to bear multiple children as a way to receive financial assistance for their families. 

Pregnancies do not come with the guarantee of being safe and healthy. Some pregnancies endanger the life of the mother and the child, some end in miscarriages, and some when seen to their end might bear children with birth defects. These risks are always looming when a woman decides to bear a child. Such risks only get multiplied when we consider multiple pregnancies for women. 

Data from the WHO predicts that childbirth and pregnancies are the leading causes of death of women across the world. There is data from the University of Texas puts forward that the arteries of a woman thicken post-childbirth thereby increasing the risks of heart attacks in the future. It sets the safe limit on the number of children a woman can bear as three, beyond which the mother might be endangering her life. A woman may also suffer from anaemia and give birth to premature babies as a result of it. 

Other than the health hazards that cause nary a worry to Putin’s temple, one might beg an evaluation of the standards the Mother Heroine award sets for women. 

The Mother Heroine award is dismissive of women who raise fewer children. Women who raise fewer children also support their families the same way that women bearing multiple children might. 

The Mother Heroine award reductively celebrates a single-faceted woman by solely placing value on their childbearing abilities when in reality women perform multiple roles outside of their caregiving roles. When women are celebrated for a choice this personal such as childbearing, it is insulting to women who support families without choosing to mother and women who mother without bearing children. 

The views expressed are the author's own.