Dzagurova, Natal’ya Kh.
Kavkaz Forum. 2024. Issue 20.

Abstract:
This article examines the life strategies of female students from the North Caucasus
Federal District receiving higher education in the Russian megacities – Moscow and
St. Petersburg. The results of a survey of 142 respondents aged 18 to 25, unmarried, are
presented. The methodological basis of this study is the method of system analysis, which
made it possible to consider the life strategy of an individual as a system of mutually
influencing elements that determine the totality of an individual’s life values. In the course
of the study, the characteristics of the life strategy were determined based on the length and
direction of the time perspective and the structuring of the planned life path. Judgments
characterizing the attitude of respondents to the process of obtaining higher education,
judgments determining the degree of readiness of young girls to implement the received
higher education in the long term were used as indicators of the analysis of life strategies.
Based on the analysis of the empirical base of the study, a conclusion is made that the
rapid development of the largest Russian cities – Moscow and St. Petersburg – contains
high technological and human potential that is attractive to North Caucasian youth. The
desire to receive good education leads to a transformation of the hierarchy of values of
female students – when the realization of a professional career and family and marital
attitudes come into conflict. Returning after receiving education to the North Caucasus – a
region where patriarchal features of society determine the presence of gender imbalances
in the sphere of labor and management, they potentially become a social group capable of
overcoming the “glass ceiling” in their future careers.

Keywords: North Caucasus, megapolis, female students, higher education, life strategies, career growth, financial independence, marital and family views.

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