UNIT 4: TO WHAT EXTENT DID THE ROLE OF WOMEN AND THE FAMILY CHANGE BETWEEN 1917 AND 1985? Flashcards
What were the traditional attitudes towards women?
Woman held a lower status than men.
an old Russian proverb that says “The more you beat your wife the better the soup will taste”
Women were to obey their husband and him for permission to do things such as work.
What were the Bolshevik attitudes towards women?
Lenin had written that marriage was a form of slavery as woman had to subject to their husband.
A woman’s role as a housewife was perceived as suppression into a life of drudgery.
What were the Bolshevik measures to improve the status of women?
Improving the position of women were driven partly by ideological considerations, communist ideas of equality between the sexes.
1917, the Bolsheviks established a women’s branch of the Central Committee, Zhenotdel, to promote the status of women.
Divorce was made easier, and abortion was legalised.
Women no longer had to obey their husband, live with him, take his name or need his permission to work.
The principle of equal pay for men and women was passed into law in December 1917 and maternity leave arrangements were granted.
What was the impact of the Bolshevik measures to improve the status of women?
Although the Soviet constitution of 1918 declared that men and women were equal, the status of women in society did not automatically improve.
The rise in the divorce rate did little to help women support children: few received financial support from the father of their child.
Feminists in the Party had hoped that easier divorce would prevent women becoming trapped in abusive relationships, but the reality was that 70% of divorces were initiated by men, often abandoning women who had become pregnant.
The laws giving women equal rights in employment and equal pay were slow to have an impact.
Attitudes of the male population were slow to change.
What was the impact of the civil war of 1918-21on the status of women?
The need for industrial workers during the civil war temporarily changed the status of women.
- More women worked: Over 70,000 women fought in the Red Army during the war, and some were recruited into factories, but few held high rank. - short lived as returning soldiers meant the unskilled (most women) lost their job.
- The government also lacked the resources to implement creches for childcare.
The famine of 1921-22 left many women homeless and reliant on prostitution.
Describe the Bolshevik attempts to change the status of Islamic women.
Muslim areas of Central Asia where polygamous, male-dominated family was well entrenched, was particularly resistant to change.
In these areas, the women were shielded from public view and denied education.
The Bolsheviks used young female activists to encourage unveiling and explain basic contraception, personal hygiene and childcare.
The campaign against the veiling of the women in 1927 was successful and the opportunities for Islamic women increased e.g. some became brigade leaders.
Despite these changes, traditional Islamic attitudes were slow to change, and resistance was often violent e.g. a Zhenotdel meeting was attacked by Muslim men with dogs and boiling water.
What was the impact of collectivisation and industrialisation on women in the countryside?
Forced collectivisation in the countryside resulted in many men migrating to the towns in search of better jobs. Some sent money back to their wives; others deserted them.
The most able-bodied men from the collectives were conscripted into the armed forces to fight in WW2 so collectivisation relied more on the labours of women and offered lower wages as agriculture was less a priority than industry.
After WW2, rural areas still lacked able bodied men because of the lives lost in the war. Even as late as 1950, it was possible to find villages entirely populated by women and children.
Conditions were made worse by the Red Army’s requisitioning of machinery and draft animals which meant women had to shackle themselves to ploughs to till the soil.
In the Khrushchev and Brezhnev years, the status of rural women improved slowly as social provision, such as health care and maternity benefits, was extended to the countryside. E.g. the internal passport system for collective workers was extended to the countryside in 1974 so it provided women more freedom to move to towns in search of better jobs.
What was the impact of collectivisation and industrialisation on women in the towns?
The five-year plans and economic hardships of the 1930s provided pressure for women to work in industry out of economic necessity. - The number of female workers rose from three million in 1928 to over 13 million in 1940.
There were better higher education prospects in the towns for women were to take advantage of which was the key if they wanted to improve their status E.g. by 1940 over 40 percent of engineering students were female.
Women dominated the workforce in light industry, e.g. textiles, but also found in occupations previously regarded as masculine e.g. construction industry -parts of the Moscow underground were built by brigades of female workers.
The number of women in skilled jobs and management remained disproportionately low but showed an increase throughout the 1930s.
Women started to make up a high percentage of jobs in areas of health care and education, although they offered low wages and the top levels of these sectors were still dominated by men.
The 1930s saw the emergence of a more privileged group of urban women, the wives of the Soviet elite or party officials were encouraged do social work such as providing classes on hygiene, and organising cultural productions in the workplace.
What was the impact of WW2 on the status of women?
The importance of women in industry continued to increase as women could improve their status by joining the red army due to heavy losses – 800,000 women served.
The line between what was considered female and male work was blurred.
By the 1950s, women were expected to work in a wide range of occupations, but they were still expected to play the key role in domestic duties. This double burden put considerable pressure on women and made career progression difficult.
Describe women in politics.
The Provisional Government of 1917 had given women the vote.
Limited number of women played an active role in politics as in the Communist Party women were severely under-represented. - In 1932, 16% of party membership were women.
Alexandra Kollontai was the first woman to become a people’s commissar, serving as Commissar for Public Welfare from 1917 to 1918.
Only seven women were members of the Central Committee before the Second World War including Kollontai and Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife.
Ekaterina Furtseva became the first female member of the presidium in 1957 due to Khrushchev and consequently her career declined when he was dismissed in 1964.
How could the female role models show women’s improvement of status?
Propaganda material presented images of the ideal socialist woman playing her part in the development of socialism to encourage women to play an active part in the Soviet state.
Role models of individual women who excelled in their field were also available to the female population.
famous ballerinas, including Natalia Bessmertnova.
The actress Ludmila Savelyeva became famous for her role in the Soviet film War and Peace (1967).
Sport was given high status by the Soviet government, e.g. figure skater, Irina Rodnina, who with different partners won three successive Olympic titles. In gymnastics, Ludmilla Tourischeva won nine Olympic medals.
Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space in 1963.
Describe the changing government attitudes towards the family as a social unit.
To more radical Bolsheviks, the family was an outdated institution that deserved to be swept away. - although there were attacks on the family, the complete destruction of the traditional family was never a serious policy.
Youth groups were encouraged to attack the ‘capitalist tyranny of parents’.
Party sections were set up to educate women members to become more assertive and independent.
Wives were encouraged to refuse obedience to their husbands e.g. Alexandra Kollontai led the calls for greater sexual freedom for women through the ‘new proletarian morality’ in place of ‘bourgeois marriage’: sexual intercourse should not be based on marriage but on a union of free love. To young, radical Bolsheviks, ‘free love’ was taken to mean casual sex and many considered it to be a right to which they were entitled. These attitudes were shocking to older, more traditional Bolsheviks, including Lenin, and attempts were made to impose a more restrained attitude.
Some of these radical ideas influenced the Family Code drawn up by the Bolsheviks after taking power.
Describe the Family code 1918.
Kollontai = ‘the family ceases to be necessary’ as the state could take over the role of bringing up children and providing social services.
Women given new rights and freedoms, including rights within marriage. The Bolshevik’s Family Code of 1918 allowed a marriage to be dissolved at the request of either the husband or the wife, without the need to give grounds, such as adultery or cruelty.
Abortion was made legal and crèches were encouraged.
Reforms were driven partly by a need to get more women into work during the civil war, but also attacked the traditional oppression and maltreatment of women through the family. They reduced the hold of the Russian Orthodox Church on family life.
The traditional institution of marriage was weakened further in 1927 by the new marriage law - gave equal status to registered and unregistered marriages. These measures had some success amongst the urban population - by the mid-1920s, Russia’s divorce rate was the highest in Europe and when the Family code was revised 1926, it led to so-called ‘postcard divorces, where a partner could simply notify their wife or husband of divorce by sending them a postcard. By 1926, 50 percent of all marriages in Moscow ended in divorce.
Abortion became commonplace in the cities: contraception were in very short supply. In Moscow, abortions outnumbered live births by 3:1 and the birth rate remained low. The break-up of families led to an increase in orphans who roamed the streets of towns, to the concern of the authorities. The government was put under pressure by critics, often from poorer sections of society, to revert to more conservative policies.
Describe the “The Great Retreat 1936”
By the mid-1930s, the government’s measures caused detrimental effects of family breakdowns so introduced measures to raise the status of marriage.
Led to the ‘Great Retreat’ of 1936, when Stalin issued a series of more conservative laws that went some way to restoring the importance of the traditional family.
The main changes included the following.
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Divorce was made more expensive, increasing from 4 roubles to 50.
Free marriages lost their legal status and the government stated that family responsibilities were to be taken seriously.
Male homosexuality was declared illegal.
Abortion was outlawed except in cases where the life of the mother was at risk.
Pregnant women were guaranteed job security and the right to be given lighter work. Maternity leave was extended to 16 weeks.
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Gold wedding rings, which had been discouraged as being ‘bourgeois, started to reappear in shops.
More resources were devoted to building crèches and day-care centres. The number of nursery places doubled between 1928 and 1930 and continued to grow during the Second Five-Year Plan. Two-year prison sentences were brought in for fathers who did not pay towards the upkeep of their children, but most local authorities viewed chasing such cases as a low priority. During this ‘Great Retreat’ on social policy the idea of the family as an unnecessary ‘bourgeois’ concept was replaced by the view that the family was a necessary unit of socialist society. Traditional values were reasserted. Further strengthening of the family took place in July 1944.
* As an attempt to raise the status of the family, the government introduced awards for ‘mother- heroines’ who had ten or more children.
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A tax on single people was introduced to encourage marriage.
Divorce was made more complicated and couples could be forced to go to a District Court to attempt reconciliation.
Conclude deck
The Soviet propaganda image of the industrial worker and peasant created a false image of the representativeness of the status of women when the industrial worker was always male, and it was the peasant who was female.
Despite gaining equality under the law as early as 1918, the status of women in Soviet society were not equal to men.
Improvements in employment and social provision had helped raise the status of women, especially in towns, but they were expected to do the majority of domestic work.
Their influence in politics remained low and policies affecting women were largely decided by men in the Party.
