When growing up, she was already showing strong controversial ideologies, for instance, she refused to join the Young Communist League, for she preferred to be "a hippy".

She studied at the Faculty of Philosophy at Moscow State University, in the Dramatic Arts division of the Gorky Literary Institute, and underwent training in psychoanalysis.

After finishing her studies, Maria published some prose and poetry works, however she returned to writing drama, as she claims it is more natural expression for her than other genres.

She is the author of fourteen plays staged in Russia and abroad, twenty books, and numerous articles in newspapers and periodicals.

This apartment had once belonged to the famous singer Fyodor Chaliapin and provided Maria with her pen name of Arbatova,[2] which she took as her legal last name in 1999.

An interview she is internationally known for, is the article in which she suggests Russia starts importing Indian men, for they are much more suitable as husbands.

She discusses in an angry tone her experience of giving a birth and concludes with words : "All this happened to me seventeen years ago for the sole reason that I am a woman.

And as long as there are people who do not regard this as a suitable subject for discussion it will happen each day to other women, because being a woman in this world is not something worthy of respect, even when you are doing the only thing that men cannot do."

Her books and plays, coming from one of the first Russian woman writers with an openly feminist ideology, won the hearts of a wide audience.

[3] Despite her hippie years and literary background, Arbatova lived much the same life and shared the same problems as most Soviet women.

Her second marriage to Oleg Vitte didn't survive Arbatova's political activity and the State Duma elections she took part in.

Maria Arbatova's activities, through her books, her numerous appearances and statements in the press and her social work, have brought to the forefront the theme of discrimination against Russian women.