Note: Several months ago, I wrote about Soviet Woman on ARPLAN. I just did not expect to learn that the Russian culture and lifestyle publication Russia Beyond featured an article on the same subject yesterday.
Women in the Soviet Union worked on par with men. Every citizen – no matter the gender – was obligated to contribute to society. The Criminal Code had an article about “parasitism” – aka citizens who didn’t work. But were all Soviet women forced to work?
Women in the USSR, ironically, had more opportunities than, for example, American women. They received their right to vote in 1924. They had the right to work and receive payment on par with men. They became ministers, factory directors, academics, university rectors and party leaders. They had a common duty to the state – to contribute to it. The state declared: there’s no differentiating between women’s or men’s work, everyone has to work.
Sounds like gender equality? On paper, maybe. But, in reality, not at all.
Why did the Bolsheviks do this?
Today researchers state: Soviet authorities used the topic of gender freedoms to solve their economic matters.
“The Bolshevik Party, as any other party, by involving women in politics and nation-building, solved certain practical objectives. It’s not a coincidence that active mobilization policy began during the Civil War, when Soviet authorities were hanging by a thread and had to leverage absolutely all resources, including working women,” Olga Shnyrova, a gender researcher, says.
And even when, by the 1930s, Soviet authorities had somewhat solidified their positions, they still required a powerful labor pool for mass industrialization and collectivization. The country needed working women. By that time, talks about the role of women in the public and political spheres had fizzled out a bit, but the propaganda of female labor was at its peak.
Could Soviet women be regular housewives?
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