Communism & Fascism

Question 1

What does Kevin Passmore note on Fascism and Gender?

Answer 1

‘although fascists wanted women to remain in the home, they politicised functions once regarded simply as ‘domestic’: reproduction, education, and consumption all became national duties. Furthermore, to teach women their domestic duties, fascists encouraged them to join organisation linked to the party - to return women to the home, fascism took them out of the home”.

Question 2

What does bell hooks note on Leni Riefenstahl’s photographs of the Nuba?

Answer 2

“she was the colonising force, seeking the fulfilment of her desire with no genuine concern for the survival of the individuals whose bodies provided her with her raw materials”.

Question 3

What fascist aesthetics did Leni Riefenstahl perpetuate throughout her protography of the Nuba?

Answer 3

muscular bodies, mythology, idealised masculinity, order, sexuality, naturalism. hooks believes she continued to celebrate the tyrant of the phallic masculine in her representations of the Nuba.

Question 4

what does Kühne note on gender as a “category of analysis”?

Answer 4

highlights how norms, ideas, and practices addressed as masculine, manly or unmanly, or as feminine, or as feminine, or womanly, are not emanations from biological givens, but that they are socially and culturally constructed, they change over time, and vary from one society to another.

Question 5

what is the ideology outlined in Marx & Engels Communist Manifesto?

Answer 5

based around class & class conflict, central ideology, carries into communist regimes that class is seen as most important identity, more so than gender/race/age/ethnicity

gender was not central.

Question 6

Engels gave some thought to gender & family in the Origin of Family, Private Property and the State in 1884, what was his solution?

Answer 6

women entering the workforce, become part of the proliferate, if not economically active they would never have power.

Question 7

what was the position of women in the early USSR?

Answer 7

• guaranteed legal equity
• 1918 Family Code: gave children born outside marriage equal rights, and secularised marriage, husbands could take wives name.
• 1920 abortion legalised.
• ambitious plans for communal childcare and housekeeping
• women seen as agents of change
• spirit of optimism - women seen to drive the revolution forward.

Question 8

What was the importance of women to industrial transformation?

Answer 8

• soviet economic policy based on rapid transition to industrial economy and collectivisation of agriculture
• importance of readily available, affordable labour.
• work seen as a means of emancipation for women, membership of the proletariat
• needed to weaponise female labour, propaganda to inspire women to get involved and become a part of the new society.

Question 9

Peter Hallama on the struggle of studying masculinity under socialism:

Answer 9

“a particular challenge in studying masculinities under socialism is to question the oft-cited ideal of the new socialist, or Soviet, man; that is, an image of virility and hyper-masculinity referring to industrial work, soldierly attributes, and bodily perfection”.

Question 10

What was Stalin’s ‘Great Retreat’ in family policy and the reasons why?

Answer 10

• declining birth rate
• failure to established communal domestic services
• turn towards more pronatalist policies
• try to turn things around - abortion difficult to access, more pronatalist policies to encourage children, propaganda around this, glorification of motherhood.

CAN COMPARE THE MOTHERLY REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN TO THE ARYAN POWERFUL GOD-LIKE MAN IN THE USSR & GERMANY.

Question 11

How many women were part of the Red Army?

Answer 11

1 million

Question 12

What does a table of activity rate of women in the age group of 40-44 highlight?

Answer 12

1985 Southern European countries relatively low rate of female employment vs Socialist countries 84+

starting point of socialist counties, Bulgaria, Romania, already had high percentages.

Hungary started at 29% 1950 but ended up with 84% 1985

Question 13

Dona Harsch 4 reasons why communism failed to achieve gender equality

Answer 13

1. strength of inherited gender norms
2. communist ideology underestimated importance of women’s work in the home and failed to transfer domestic work to men
3. communism put industrial development first, and instrumentalised women’s paid and unpaid labour.
4. communist states repressed civil society so there was no chance for an equivalent of the women’s movement to develop.

Question 14

what does Eva Fodor note on masculinity and communism?

Answer 14

’ the persistent yet flexible nature of patriarchy ‘

patriarchy powerful and adaptive ideology, difficult to change

‘while on the surface genderless, the ideal communist subject had distinctive masculine features, and women could never completely satisfy the requirements’.

Question 15

what was communism a reaction to?

Answer 15

rising industrialism in European society: attempt to replace private property and an economy based on profit with the public ownership of the means of production

Question 16

key communist historians

Answer 16

Eva Fodor, KA Johnson and Michael Cristian

Question 17

What does KA Johnson talk about?

Answer 17

Communism in China

Question 18

how did communism see women?

Answer 18

• central to communist economic transformation: work seen as a means of emancipation of women - membership of the proletariat

double/triple burden

Question 19

What were the 4 major developments that promoted change toward gender equality in China?

Answer 19

1. the Collectivisation drives of the 1950s
2. the Cultural Revolution from 1966-70
3. Period surrounding the Anti-Confucian campaign in 1970s
4. Increasingly urgent family planning and population control since the mid 1970s.

Question 20

what was Engels two pronged approach in the origins of the family, private property and the state?

Answer 20

• abolish private property and bring women into public production - central to parties view to build a socialist society with equality for men and women

“the decline of the family as an economic unit”

Question 21

who was Lu Yu-lan?

Answer 21

central committee member and national labour heroine from hopei

Question 22

what views did Lu You-lan express?

Answer 22

Chairman Mao says about women’s emancipation “genuine equality between man and woman can be realised only in the process of socialist transformation of a society as a whole”

It was realised that after women take their position in society, changes in family relations will follow, and men and women can be equal

Question 23

what was china’s goal for women?

Answer 23

goal was to increase women’s “social labour” while improving services to relieve them of their domestic labour

Question 24

what challenges did china have in reaching their goal for women?

Answer 24

double burden
lack of local facilities & concrete state aid
difficult for women to fully participate in the labour force while maintaining their domestic duties.

Question 25

what effect did the Cultural Revolution and Anti-Confucian Campaign have on women?

Answer 25

• efforts to increase the political recruitment of women and promote free-choice marriages
• % Of women working in collective labour gradually increased
• improvements in collective services (childcare, healthcare)
• shift in marriage patterns: more women remaining in native villages, implication for participation in public community life.

Question 26

overall how did the role of women change in Mao’s China?

Answer 26

their role evolved, they were more involved in public roles and identities

significant structural and social obstacles persisted, hindering full participation in the labour force and public life.

government’s approach failed to address the traditional values and attitudes that hindered women’s equal participation in society.

Question 27

what is Michael Christian’s overarching argument?

Answer 27

communist regimes opened women’s way towards activism, political positions, and paid employment. also perpetuated pre-existing gender relations by limiting the role of women or by marginalising certain sectors.

Question 28

Michael Christian cool quote to remember

Answer 28

these (communist) regimes enabled the development of a kind of “feminism without feminists”

Question 29

communist ideology according to Michael Christian

Answer 29

• men and women neutral subjects
• masculine domination reduced to variant of economic domination

Question 30

what did communist regimes reproduce?

Answer 30

reproduction of traditional gender relations joined by the failure of communist regimes to implement genuine management of domestic tasks by the community

Question 31

how was childcare time split in the USSR during the 1970s?

Answer 31

remained unequal when both parties were working

27 hours per week for women
10 hours per week for men

Question 32

how were gender categories reaffirmed in the USSR?

Answer 32

• hardening on the law of divorce
• end of access to contraception and abortion
• dissolution of the Central Committee’s “Women’s Sector” tasked with women’s issues.

Question 33

how did iconography reaffirm gender categories?

Answer 33

dramatised men as labourers, soldiers, and managers

women were personified mothers, representing peace after WW2 and peasants.

Question 34

Who talks about Mussolini?

Answer 34

Luisa Passerini

Question 35

what (according to Passerini) does the adoption of gender as a category of analysis or methodological tool allow one to ask of fascism that might otherwise be ignored?

Answer 35

symbolic - the feminine was appropriated in the construction of the image of the dictator, which recruited the figure of the mother to the leader’s strategies of legitimation.

Question 36

Luisa Passerini on Mussolini’s obsessive coupling with his mother:

Answer 36

forging together a femininity reduced to motherhood and masculinity reduced to aggressiveness.

only he had the prerogative of uniting the two spheres, being “mother” to the nation and yet standing as the epitome of virility

make the figure ‘sacred’ in some way.

Question 37

m. Dalton

Answer 37

what happened to women’s rights when democracy backslides

Question 38

anne wingenter

Answer 38

(in italy) women’s rights, even a women’s purpose, was narrowed to one goal: advancing the greatness of the state.

in italy, there is an attempt to promote traditional patriarchal values, motherhood, especially prolific motherhood.

Question 39

Mussolini quote about women:

Answer 39

‘war is to man, as maternity is to women’

ideal woman in fascist italy was wife and mother of many children - attempt to nationalise motherhood, subservient to men, ideal place is at home raising children, but those children are for the state, not for the family, not for the church, but for the state. (wingenter)

Question 40

how was fascism in Italy a contradictory experience for women?

Answer 40

told to go home and have children, but also mobilised to come to rallies, they have roles in public parades

bought to Rome if they have more children than anyone else in their province.

Question 41

what were some of the pronatalist policies Mussolini put through?

Answer 41

1. information about birth control, and giving it, became a criminal offence
2. abortion become criminalised (5 years penal labour for consent)
3. marriage loans to encourage early marriage
4. tax on bachelorhood (jobs given to married men)
5. quotas placed on women’s employment, believed women in education/work was a barrier to fertility
6. further legal restriction to women’s access to higher education