Gender

Question 1

Helen Boak

Answer 1

1. Weimar Germany promulgated emancipatory rhetoric of female liberation
2. however dominant views on gender relations remained conservative, even in women’s organisations

Question 2

“pronatalism” in Weimar

Answer 2

1. Weimar officials sought to separate themselves from pronatalism that characterised old imperial regime
2. attempted to encourage motherhood through social welfare programmes: tax benefits, maternity leave benefits, increased healthcare to combat high infant-mortality
3. however failed to include all women, did not extend to women in agriculture or industrial labour
4. Cornelie Usborne: exclusivity reflected social elitism, mirrored increasing tendency towards eugenics

Question 3

abortion laws in Weimar

Answer 3

1. 1871 Penal Code outlawed abortion
2. partly repealed in 1926 when court ruled legalisation of abortion in cases of grave danger to life of mother
3. repeated dissolutions of Reichstag meant draft of German General Penal Code never became law

Question 4

impact of universal suffrage Weimar

Answer 4

1. political participation of women remained marginal
2. percentage of women in parliament no higher than 8% 1919-33, dropping to 3.8% by 1933
3. conservative political parties benefitted most (Catholic Centre Party and NSDAP)

Question 5

Dominant force in German feminism during interwar years?

Answer 5

1. Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine
2. conservative middle-class membership
3. promoted maternal cliches and bourgeois responsibilities

Question 6

Patrizia Albanese

Answer 6

1. explores impact of nationalism on reproductive rights
2. tended to reinforce traditional gendered ideas of men and women
3. as result of number of differences in political and legal systems of two Germanies, lives of men and women on the two sides of wall differed considerably

Question 7

Paul Ginsborg

Answer 7

1. “linked the microcosm of a healthy family to the macrocosm of a healthy state”

Question 8

pronatalist policies under dictatorships

Answer 8

1. implemented economic incentives: marriage loans, tax deductions, penalties for unmarried, family allowances, special provisions for large families, prizes for hyperactive mothers

Question 9

Himmler’s Public Ordinance (1941)

Answer 9

outlawed production and distribution of contraceptives

Question 10

eugenics laws legalised abortion for Aryan and non-Aryan women

Answer 10

1. Aryan women obtain abortion by demonstrating either parent had hereditary defect
2. non-Aryan women “encouraged” to utilise contraction and abortion

Question 11

Nazi policy of compulsory sterilisation

Answer 11

1933-45: 400,000 women and men considered “abnormal” compulsory sterilised

Question 12

Goebbels on eugenics

Answer 12

“The goals is not children at any cost, but racially worthy, physically and mentally unaffected children of German families”

Question 13

FRG family policies

Answer 13

reinforced and supported bourgeois patriarchal family through legal and social measures

Question 14

GDR family policies

Answer 14

in principle appeared to reshaping traditional patriarchal family

Question 15

status of unmarried women in FRG

Answer 15

1. jugendamt automatically assumed official “curatorship” for every child born to unmarried woman
2. capacity to “safeguard” child’s interests

Question 16

SDP on role of women in FRG

Answer 16

“married women should be wives, wives should be mothers and mothers should not work”

Question 17

rights of women in GDR

Answer 17

1. legal and economic independence regardless of their marital status
2. gender neutral tax laws, divorce simple to obtain and inexpensive
3. shared parental responsibility
4. state childcare

Question 18

role of women in GDR

Answer 18

1. women were defined by and expected to fill two key roles: mothers and workers
2. both men and women expected to be paid labour force; however not similar expectation that both should partake in domestic work and family obligations

Question 19

Parody & Giza-Poleszczuk

Answer 19

1. “the emancipated women / brave victim”
2. considered their economic opportunities and access to social services as valuable improvements
3. however also failed promise of full equality thus neither men’s equal in workplace or home and ended up with huge workload, burdened by children and family, “brave victims” sacrificing personal happiness to families’ welfare

Question 20

differences between women in GDR and women in FRG

Answer 20

1. late 1980s +90% GDR women aged 16-60 employed, compared to 54% in FRG
2. GDR women contributed higher proportion of total household income (40%) than FRG (18%)

Question 21

Annette Warring

Answer 21

1. highlights the fundamental tension in the Sexual Revolution of 1960s: the desire for sexual liberation and the persistence of sexual inequality
2. changing modes and forms of gender and sexual identity were experienced as being at once profoundly liberating and at the same time oppressive, hurtful and constraining

Question 22

Frigga Haug on Sexual Revolution

Answer 22

1. Socialist Women’s League West Berlin
2. “we knew it was only a revolution for men and that women were supposed to be available without hesitation”
3. such understandings fuelled the impetus for women to create a separate space for themselves

Question 23

double standard for men and women in Sexual Revolution and Student Movement

Answer 23

1. women challenged familial and social convention

2. whereas men gained “easy access” to women

Question 24

Weimar Constitution on rights of men and women

Answer 24

1. “men and women have fundamentally the same civil rights and duties”
2. “marriage is based on the equality of the sexes”

Question 25

Lenin (1920)

Answer 25

1. women be liberated from "the old exhausting chores of the household, and from her subjection to men"

Question 26

Alexander Wicksteed

Answer 26

1. English traveller, author of Life Under the Soviets and Ten Years in Soviet Moscow 2. described situation in Moscow during early 1930s, large blocks of workmen’s dwellings housed around 1000 people including 300 children

Question 27

Marxist vision of family and society

Answer 27

1. envisioned society based on gender parity 2. structural economic changes would transform superstructural conditions of everyday life 3. women would become working citizens and obtain equality with men in both private and public spheres

Question 28

family policy in Bolshevik Russia

Answer 28

1. 1918 & 1926 Codes 2. increased capacity of individuals to choose in terms of family relations 3. divorce more easily obtainable, permitted abortions in state hospitals, established parity between men and women within family

Question 29

male communists on female emancipation

Answer 29

often spoke as though they viewed female emancipation as a gift men bestowed on women

Question 30

Stalinist family policies

Answer 30

1. 1935 implemented restrictions on divorce | 2. 1936 prohibited abortions