Chicagoland, exchange ideas

CHICAGO (AP) – Women from the Soviet Union and this midwestern U.S. city will exchange notes this week on their jobs, families and their countries and hopefully, one local planner said Sunday, get some new business contacts and friendships out of the exercise.

Five female Soviet government leaders, including a doctor, architect and broadcast editor, are planning to spend a week touring hospitals, a sewer project, a housing project, private firms, government offices and other Chicago sites, including a McDonald’s restaurant and a Toys R Us store.

“It could have an impact on international trade,” said Anne Markowitch, president of the Jane Addams Conference, sponsor of the exchange.

The Soviets were scheduled to arrive Sunday night and begin touring Monday.

Also on their itinerary is a forum in which an American and a Soviet woman will each answer identical questions.

Questions will touch on such issues as women’s wages and working conditions in each country, a review of the professions in which women have leadership roles and to what extent and why women have the major responsibility for taking care of children, aging parents and other domestic chores.

“I can tell you from conversations I’ve had with Soviet women that it’s pretty much the same as it is here,” said Ms. Markowitch.

“They all work outside the home and when they come back they do exactly what happens here – take care of the children, buy the groceries, do the cooking.

“That seems to be a universal problem. They have two jobs, ” she said, “Though they have better day care.”

The exchange of ideas is part of the celebration this year of the fifth anniversary of the founding of the Jane Addams Conference, a women’s leadership program in international relations which is named for the Illinois sociologist whose international efforts won her the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize. The Chicago-based group, with some national membership, is hoping to make a trip to the Soviet Union in a year or two.

The five-woman Soviet delegation includes Lubov Oborkina, who chairs the Executive committee of the Babushkin District of Moscow, and Irine Tkochenki, editor of the North American Service of Moscow Radio, Ms. Markowitch said.

She said it’s hoped that the Soviet women and the U.S. businessmen and women they meet will be convinced to try to work on joint enterprises in the future.

“Not everything has to be in large numbers,” said Ms. Markowitch.

“An architect in this city who knows an architect in Moscow could have a major impact on building that is going on in either country. A food distributor or merchant in this country who knows a woman entrepreneur in the Soviet Union can have a major impact on international trade.

“And we hope these things will be done with more ease, because we have made friends,” she said.

Ms. Markowitch said a break in the business part of the trip is planned Tuesday when the women will be taken shopping at a supermarket, a K Mart discount store and a Toys R Us children’s store.

“That part’s just for fun,” she said.