Women - Stalin

Question 1

higher education spaces stat

Answer 1

1929 = gov reserved 20% of HE places for women, increase from 14% already occupied

Question 2

engineering students stat

Answer 2

1940 = over 40% were women

Question 3

what helped improve the status of female individuals?

Answer 3

• gaining HE
• becoming a party activist

Question 4

what jobs did women begin to take up a high % of?

Answer 4

healthcare & education, but these were lower wage jobs

Question 5

reinforcing social divisions among women

Answer 5

• a more privileged group of urban women emerged
• wives of the soviet elite who didn’t have to enter the workforce & were instead encouraged to do ‘social work’ (curtains in dorms & classes on hygiene)
• magazine aimed for them = ‘the socially active woman’ subtly reinforced divisions

Question 6

war awards

Answer 6

89 women received highest military award during the war, hero of the soviet union

Question 7

famous ballerina

Answer 7

natalia bessmertnova

Question 8

famous actress and her film

Answer 8

• ludmila savelyeva
• war & peace

Question 9

first women in space & when?

Answer 9

valentina tereshkova in 1963

Question 10

what happened to zhenotdel?

Answer 10

• closed in 1930
• party claimed that women’s issues had been solved
• reflection of the attitudes of the male-dominated party

Question 11

moving for work

Answer 11

• many abandoned by their husbands to work in the cities
• agri work = low wages
• post-war = rural areas lacked able-bodied men, some villages were full of women & children only

Question 12

internal passport

Answer 12

• extension allowed them to leave for city jobs
• BUT positions often filled by young men

Question 13

what was work to women?

Answer 13

no longer a symbol of female liberation & instead one of socialist duty

Question 14

double burden

Answer 14

expected to work & look after the family making career progression difficult

Question 15

women in politics

Answer 15

• seriously underrepresented & limited at all levels
• 7 women in CC pre WW2
• no women would reach the politburo until 1957

Question 16

in propaganda

Answer 16

• male = industrial worker
• female = peasant
• backwards attitude

Question 17

UNDER KHRUSHCHEV & BREZHNEV

Answer 17

• women’s status increased slowly as healthcare & benefits was extended to the country
• extension of internal passports allowed freedom for women to move to towns for better wages but men did this too which forced women to stay in the countryside