Work And Family In The Soviet Union example essay topic

The Soviet Union under Tsarist rule was a grim place for women to live. Society viewed women as vastly inferior to men, such that a woman's status was below that of any adult male. Tsarist laws reflected this age-old perception and cultural mindset, whether decreeing that only men could have rights to owning property, or even explicitly permitting a husband to beat his wife. The small numbers of women in the workforce were also treated badly, suffering through long hours with low pay, appalling working conditions, and constant harassment from the male workers. There is no doubt that the overthrow of Tsarist rule and the introduction of Socialism in 1917 changed all this for women, giving them rights inconceivable to previous generations of Russians. The new government, fresh from the October Revolution, sought to level out the playing field between men and women, and attempted to do this using Marx and Engels' prescriptions.

However, as much as women's lives had improved, notions of male superiority remained in the minds of both the government and members of Soviet society, and this had a profound impact on women in the later years as Socialism started to gain ground. The idealism and enthusiasm of the pioneering Socialist government soon gave way to an autocratic ruling body that placed economic progress before the welfare of its people. The women in particular bore the brunt of this, as vestiges of the old patriarchal system surfaced and ensured the continued domination of men over women. By examining three important aspects of Soviet life - work, family and politics, I shall attempt to demonstrate that state socialism in USSR was indeed patriarchal and more than echoed the attitudes of the Tsarist era. One of the conditions of Engels' prescription for female emancipation was for women to be economically independent of men.

This could be achieved by entering into public production and obtaining paid work, and this was the part that the new Socialist government concentrated on achieving. By encouraging Soviet women to enter the workforce in droves through efforts to raise women's wages, as embodied in their introduction of the Equal Pay policy in 1917, and also improving their working conditions, they were able to increase the number of women in the workforce from 3 million to 13 million between 1928 and 1940 (Charles, Nickie Gender Divisions and Social Change Hemel Hampstead p. 111). Through the Family Code of 1918, women were also allowed to retain their earnings and property after marriage. All seemed well at first as women celebrated their new economic freedom, but events took an abrupt change when the New Economic Policy was introduced in 1921 to repair the damage wrought during the protracted civil war that followed the revolution. This is where we see clear signs that women were still considered inferior to men in the workplace, as seen by the high unemployment rate sustained (70% of initial job losses were among women) (Charles, Nickie Gender Divisions and Social Change Hemel Hampstead p. 110). The Equal Pay policy was also rendered redundant as there was still a wide disparity in wages, resulting in a woman getting as little as 1/3 of a man's pay.

Horizontal and vertical segregation of the sexes were rife, with women ending up in low-paying, menial jobs in agricultural or industrial sectors, and constantly being passed up for promotion within their sector. This was due to a general perception that men were more productive and skilled workers than women, even though the levels of education among women had risen rapidly to equal them. Biological explanations were provided, asserting that women should transfer to more 'feminine' jobs to suit their abilities and preferences, and should not hold high posts in firms as they were not aggressive enough. Studies showed that 'even among highly educated scientific personnel, both men and women express a strong preference for males in supervisory roles' (Lapidus, Gail Warshofsky ' Introduction ', Women, Work and Family In the Soviet Union, M.E. Sharpe, Inc. ). This highly patriarchal belief also created a vicious circle for women, instilling in their minds lower expectations of their jobs and doubts about their own abilities.

What exacerbated this vicious circle was the state's continued emphasis of the role of women in the family. This deviated from Marx and Engels' theory that women should be freed from the constraints of the household in order to fully concentrate on social production. They advocated state provision of childcare services to relieve the women's burden, something that the Socialist government touched on but never really committed to. This could be seen by the fact that the 'public provision of childcare closely followed the demand for female labour' (Charles, Nickie Gender Divisions and Social Change Hemel Hampstead p. 114), which proved that the government cared less for female emancipation than for their participation in the workforce.

Women were disadvantaged by the 'double burden' that was imposed on them by the patriarchal state, having duties both to their job and to their family. This was expanded to a 'triple burden' after the Soviet Union sustained losses during World War Two. With millions of Soviet men killed (i.e. a significant portion of the labour force), women were given the task to replenish this deficit by bearing children. Once again we see the patriarchal overtones in the socialist state as Stalin called for a retreat back to the family.

The 1936 decree called 'In Defence of Mother and Child' encouraged women to give birth, and promptly removed any choice they had in this matter by banning abortion and making contraceptives difficult to obtain. Generous maternity leave was provided, which made it harder for women to obtain work as employers saw it as a waste of human capital to employ them, only for them to leave halfway. Women lost out on acquiring new skills as they had to struggle for time between juggling all three roles of worker, child-bearer and housewife. It begs the question: Where were the men in all this? This issue proves to be the heart of the whole discussion on the patriarchal socialist state.

The fundamental assumption in Soviet economic and family policy that women alone were to manage the household and bring up the children is a huge barrier to the emancipation of women. The state implemented policies to ease the burden of the women, striving to help them balance their time between work and family, but not one of them involved redistribution of household chores between husband and wife. According to Soviet data, both sexes devote equal time to paid work, but women devote an extra 28 hours a week to housework, compared to 12 hours for men. As a result, men enjoy 50% more leisure time (Lapidus, Gail Warshofsky ' Introduction ', Women, Work and Family In the Soviet Union, M.E. Sharpe, Inc. ). This reinforces the patriarchal ideology that women belong at home and men belong in the world.

Such is the dominance of this ideology among the Bolsheviks that even Kollontai, a leading Soviet feminist, believed that women had a duty to bear children. The theories of Marx and Engels also bore traces of patriarchal thinking, as they did not conceive women to be 'active agents of their own liberation' (Charles, Nickie Gender Divisions and Social Change Hemel Hampstead p. 104), but instead relying on the generosity of the state. This had a considerable impact on the way women's organizations were run in the Soviet Union. The establishment of the Zhenotdel in 1919 was lauded as a huge step forward for Soviet women, placing them even higher than western societies in terms of political participation. However, this was abolished in 1929 under the pretext that the significant number of women in the workforce meant equality for women had been achieved. Instead, the Zhensektory, or women's sections, was established in 1931.

While the Zhenotdel itself lacked autonomy as it was subject to the will of the socialist party (For instance, its slogan for International Women's Day in 1928 read '100% collectivization!', which clearly showed their subordination to the economic aims of the Party) (Rosenberg, Change Women and Perestroika Bookmarks, p. 87), the Zhensektory proved too small to have any influence at all, and slowly devolved to become instruments of state control and propaganda. The quota system developed by the state also seemed to promote women's interests by having a representative number of female council members, but it soon became clear that these members were 'selected, rather than elected', and 'could be trusted to toe the Party line'. This was firstly because it was believed women were not 'civic conscious' enough, and secondly, there was a fear that bourgeois feminism would undermine support for the socialist revolution. Moreover, elected members were encouraged to stay within certain sectors of the party such as propaganda and ideology, which were considered low status by the Party elite.

Thus we can see that there is horizontal and vertical segregation of gender even within the political sphere as women were confined to their naturally 'expressive' function, and they hardly got promoted due to the low status of their jobs (Pilkington, Hilary 'Behind the Mask of Soviet Unity: Realities of Women's Lives' Corr in, Chris (ed.) Superwomen and the Double Burden Scarlet Press pp. 215-216). With such little active participation of women in the politics, it was no surprise that not much was done to reverse the trend of male domination in Soviet life. Such enduring patriarchal tendencies can simply be put down to the cultural mindset of natural male superiority over females. There was much dissent among the peasant majority over reforms in favour of women, as many of them opposed the resulting breakup of the family due to female employment. Many of them also questioned the need to pay women when they used to work for free at home. This created much tension between the Party and their proletariat supporters, which tempered much of the government's policies towards women.

As Marx said: 'The tradition of all the dead generations hangs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. ', and it was these male-favouring traditions that ensured that state socialism remained as overbearing and patriarchic as their Tsarist counterparts.