When a Russian army recruitment office ordered a photoshoot to celebrate International Women's Day, it didn't feature any of the 45,000 women currently serving in the country's armed forces. Instead, the photos showed ballerinas in floaty white dresses posing with active servicemen in combats and machine guns.

While International Women's Day is marked Friday across many countries with calls for gender equality, in Russia it is still a holiday largely focused on celebrating outdated gender roles. President Vladimir Putin makes an annual speech thanking women for their patience, good grace and support.

Women in Russia may hold prominent positions in the government — including the influential chief of the Central Bank and speaker of the upper chamber of parliament — but traditional gender roles still hold sway, and efforts to address problems like the gender pay gap, domestic violence and sexual harassment have hardly scratched the surface.