Social developments: Women Flashcards
Summary for women?
Women are supposed to be treated equally to men in a socialist society. This might mean that the government has to take action to change attitudes towards women, redefine their role in society, or improve their education and employment opportunities.
Employment?
Lenin
- Women’s reading rooms were set up in cities and education schemes were established for women working in factories. By 1930, 28% of university students in Russia were women, compared to only 20% in Britain at the time.
- CW, some women had filled factory jobs left vacant by men who had gone away to fight. When the war ended, these women were sacked and the jobs were given back to men.
- There were few employment opportunities for women in industry during the NEP. Only 3 million women were employed in factories at this time.
Employment?
Stalin
no. women in the labour force increased dramatically under Stalin due to the demands of the Five Year Plans. In 1928, the last years of the NEP, only 3 million women had worked in industry. By 1940, 13 million women worked in industry and 41% of workers in heavy industry were women.
- significant discrimination towards women in the workplace under Stalin. Women were only paid around 60% of the wages that men received for doing the same jobs and some men refused to work on teams with women in case they brought bad luck.
- women were forced to play an even more prominent role in industry during the Second World War, with up to 75% of the workforce being female during these years
Employment?
Khrush
1960s, approx 45% of the industrial force female. Khrushchev used this fact to claim that sexual equality in the workplace had been achieved. However, women were mostly restricted to low-skilled manual labour or production line work, often received lower wages and were rarely promoted.
- During the 1960s, administrative or clerical work opened up as another employment opportunity for women. By the end of the 1960s, 74% of clerical workers in health and education were female.
- Women working within the Virgin Lands Scheme were often forced to do the most demanding and lowest paid jobs. Most were milkmaids or haymakers, who earned 15% of what a male tractor driver made. Women were also subject to frequent sexual abuse. When this happened, managers often blamed women and forced them to marry their rapists.
Employment?
Brezhnev etc
- from the late 1970s, working women began to be criticised and blamed for various social problems, including alcoholism, juvenile delinquency and divorce.
- Women working in farming continued to occupy the lowest paid and lowest status jobs. By 1970, 72% of the lowest paid agricultural workers were women, whilst only 2% of farm managers were female.
- intentionally targeted female workers for the Baikal-Amur project. This was a new railway line. Brezhnev wanted to recruit women as he knew it would make the project more attractive to male workers.
Education?
Lenin
- Women’s reading rooms were set up in cities and education schemes were established for women working in factories. By 1930, 28% of university students in Russia were women, compared to only 20% in Britain at the time.
Education?
Stalin
- 1930s > 28% of uni students were women compared to 12% in Germany and 20% in Britain
Education?
Khrushchev
- Education for women in towns and cities remained commonplace under Khrushchev. By the 1960s, women made up half of Russian graduates.
Education?
Brezhnev etc
- result of previous schemes to improve female education, by the 1970s, women were starting to dominate certain professions. By 1985, approximately 70% of doctors were women.
Sexual violence towards women/legal rights?
Lenin
- Islamic women > Baku Muslim men with dogs + boiling water attacked Zhenotdel meeting
- ‘Honour’ killings
- Contraception etc legal. ‘postcard’ divorces
Sexual violence towards women/legal rights?
Stalin
- estimated by historians that up to 2 mil German women were raped by soldiers of Red Army during WW2.
- The historian Hitchcock also suggests that many women were the victims of repeated rapes, some as many as sixty to seventy times. In Berlin alone, 100,000 women were raped, with an estimated 10,000 of these dying, either due to their injuries, or as a result of unsuccessful abortions.
- Stalin reversed many of improvements to women’s rights introduced by Lenin = the ‘Great Retreat’. Abortion was criminalised, contraception was banned, lesbianism was treated as an illness, the price of divorce increased and sex outside of marriage was discouraged by conducting ‘medical virginity tests’ on women.
Sexual violence towards women/legal rights?
Khrushchev
- still serious problems with women’s rights. Contraception was hard to acquire, wages were often lower and there was still an expectation that women would raise children and complete housework, even if they worked.
Sexual violence towards women/legal rights?
Brezhnev etc
- Brezhnev publically declared that sexual equality had been achieved in Russia. However, he ultimately held very traditional views about the role of women.
- response to the falling birth rate, Brezhnev launched a pro-natal campaign to encourage women to have more children. This meant emphasising supposedly innate female characteristics, like being nurturing, and encouraging women to adhere to traditional gender roles. By 1982, women spent twice as much time on domestic chores as men.
Party?
Lenin
- 1919, women were given the legal right to voting
- Women were heavily under-represented in the leadership of the Communist Party. In 1918, only 5% of delegates to the Party Congress were women. The roles they did have tended to be related to traditional stereotypes and were in areas like social welfare, health care, or education.
Party?
Stalin
- remained hugely underrepresented in the Communist Party under Stalin.
- Only 12% of Party members were women by 1928. Those women that were members were expected to be ‘wife activists’ and get involved in stereotypically female activities, like charity work, supervising factory canteens and running nurseries.
