Despite criticism of the communist regime in the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc countries, many Western feminists before 1989 actually considered socialist reforms with regard to women as quite progressive by the standards of those times. After all, socialist ideologists proposed “the growth in the role of women in all aspects of life (qtd. in Aslanbeigui: 49) as one of their central aims. And, at least in the economic realm, socialist legislation and propaganda envisioned the emancipation of women and the end of gender inequality. Encouraged and, in fact, compelled by the system, women entered the labor force in large numbers and greatly increased their economic power relative to men. Egalitarianism, however, was never achieved. In spite of its support for the economic empowerment of women, the socialist state heavily stressed the values of motherhood, thus reinforcing traditional gender roles and women’s primary responsibility for the domestic sphere. This emphasis on women’s reproductive role offset the politicized productive value and capacity of women. As a result, the level of gender stratification had not perceptively changed after 40 years of communist rule.
Under the communist rule, it was women’s economic status that changed dramatically both in the Soviet Union and the other countries in the Soviet bloc. Due to the shortage of men at the end of WWII, the state needed women to enter the workforce as a substitute for male labor. The demand for women’s labor did not decrease with time since the socialist labor-intensive production techniques continued to require as much labor as possible. Consequently, the communist party actively encouraged and somewhat constrained women to join the workforce because of the low wages it paid even to men. As men were unable to win “family wages” anymore and be the sole providers for their family, women joined them in working outside the home. Moreover, the communist political agenda included many important laws regulating women’s “occupational activation”(Gal 157). The Communist party passed laws ensuring women’s equal pay for work of equal value, their rights at the workplace, as well as equality of opportunity in education and vocational training (Einhorn 230). Also, the state took the initiative in providing many facilities designed to ease the burden of children on women and thus assist mothers’ entrance in the labor force. State-run daycare centers, long paid maternity leaves, and leaves to care for sick children promoted women’s labor force participation.
The results achieved by the socialist state in a relatively short time were quite remarkable. Primarily, the female employment rates were soon quite high all over the countries in the Soviet bloc. For instance, in these countries, by the end of the communist rule in 1989, women constituted, on average, between 45 and 50 percent of the economically active population. The percentage of women who were working or studying was also very high as compared to the one in Western Europe or the United States. In 1983, about 92 percent of working-age women in Russia were either working or studying (Wejnert 2: 5) and although this was an extreme, rates were similar in most countries in the Soviet sphere. Moreover, women in these countries almost exclusively worked full time. Women’s earnings also started to approach those of men in similar positions, more than they did in Western Europe. Owing to legal provisions, women’s wages represented, on average, 65-80 percent of men’s wages, sometimes even reaching the high 90s, which was a great improvement from before.
Women’s educational prospects also considerably improved. Free and compulsory schooling was established for all citizens, regardless of sex, and women soon made tremendous inroads into education at the university level. Sometimes, they even surpassed men in educational achievement. The total ratio of female university students reached over 50 percent in 1989 in former Soviet bloc states, and even more importantly, by 1989, in the Soviet Union there was a 1:1 ratio of female and male students majoring in some of the “previously predominantly “male” specialties of science” (Wejnert 2:6).
Indeed, in addition to entering the paid labor force, women also gained access to formerly male-dominated professions. Many women still worked in “feminized” jobs, such as secretarial work, accounting, agriculture and the light industry. Nonetheless, despite some sex-related occupational segregation, women attained positions they had never been allowed to aspire to before. This was especially true of medicine and law (Einhorn 235), as in the 1980s, 70 percent of medical doctors in the Soviet Union were women, but women also became engineers or workers in the heavy industry.
All these changes did bring about significant improvements in women’s economic situation relative to men. They were no longer so economically dependent on men, because their paid work in the public sector of the economy had resulted in greater control over economic resources. Women did not only earn income, but their income was also converted into economic power by the strategic indispensability of women’s labor, by the fact that the kinship system did not particularly favor either men or women, as well as by the attempt of the communist rule to erase class, ethnic and gender differences ( Gal 5) and reduce the level of stratification in society to a minimum.
As shown by Blumberg in her general theory of gender stratification, the above-mentioned factors are essential for transforming women’s work into real economic power. In the former Soviet bloc countries, they were all present, at least to some extent. On a macro level, the degree of stratification was relatively low, or at least this was attempted by the communist rule. At the community level, the kinship system, generally bilineal and neolocal, did not favor any of the parties in particular. Most importantly, women’s productive activities were crucial for the smooth functioning of the socialist economic system. So, it was the indispensability of women’s labor, explicitly promoted by the socialist regime, that most ensured women’s gain in economic power.
The question thus remains. If women had acquired significantly greater economic power, then why did they not achieve true equality with men? To find an answer, one has to look at the other image of “the socialist woman” that the communist system promoted. Under communist rule, women became important objects of state policy in two ways. On the one hand, the state endorsed women’s economic emancipation, yet, on the other, it excessively focused on women’s role as mothers. Thus, while encouraging economic egalitarianism, the state perpetuated traditional gender roles, undermining the equality women had achieved in the economic sphere. The net result was that by the fall of the communist rule, women’s position showed little overall improvement.
Due to demographic concerns, women’s value as mothers was exceedingly emphasized. Measures were taken to increase the birthrate, especially after the 1960s. The state developed massive pro-natalist policies, through propaganda, and especially through legislation supporting women’s role as reproducers. State-run daycare centers and kindergartens were built so that women’s participation in the workforce would not prevent them from still having children. The paid maternity leaves established by the state could extend to a whole year after birth and ensured that women would not lose their job due to their so-called “baby year”. Families were even further stimulated to have children through credits for young couples with children and taxes for childless couples. Besides, contraception was only available on the black market and abortion was outlawed, so women found it difficult not to have children anyway. In Poland, for instance, the state overtly promoted the “2 plus 3” family model (Gal 156), and rewards for “heroic mothers” bearing more than 4 children were widespread across the other countries in the former Soviet bloc.
These measures had major implications for women’s lives both inside and outside the home, counteracting the effects of women’s economic emancipation. In the first place, within the private sphere, the excessive emphasis on motherhood perpetuated the traditional gender ideology. Women were once again invested with primary responsibility for the well-being of the family and were therefore symbolically relegated to the home. To adequately serve the communist system, a woman was supposed to have as many children as possible. In fact, her role outside the workforce was defined exclusively as mother. Interestingly, as research on women’s magazines in Poland points out, a woman’s role as mother was even extended to the relationship with her husband. Her role as wife came to somewhat resemble motherhood, since the woman, frequently portrayed as more mature than her husband, was expected to assume motherly responsibility for the “big child”, support and coach him (Gal 163). This obsessive association of women with motherhood strongly reinforced preexisting gender roles within the household. Moreover, the idea that housework was chiefly, if not exclusively, the responsibility of women was not challenged at all under communism. Consequently, the glorification of motherhood placed even more strain on women already burdened by “the second shift” of domestic chores.
The “double burden” of women thus increased for two reasons. Not only were women now working outside the home, but their household chores and responsibilities had also increased due to having more children. In the public sphere, the benefits women reaped from joining the labor force were in fact severely affected by this. The glorification of motherhood and the state’s control of fertility, which is considered a woman’s most important life option, reduced career opportunities for women. And essentially, reduced chances at work for women meant less gender equality overall.
Despite statutory equal rights for men and women at the workplace, many employers engaged in discriminatory hiring practices against the latter. This happened because of the prevailing view that, given much absenteeism on maternity and sick leave to care for children, the female labor force was “unreliable” (Einhorn 234). Men were thus preferred when jobs required stable time commitment or when women’s maternal duties interfered too much with their activity at the workplace. In these cases, women had to settle for jobs that often did not fully utilize their skills and training.
Sometimes, it was women themselves who opted for less demanding jobs that allowed them to combine full-time employment with childrearing and other family responsibilities (Aslanbeigui 19). Such choices did not fully exploit women’s capacity as producers and hindered professional advancement. They also brought women lower status and income than more demanding and inconvenient jobs. Still, for many working women this was the only available strategy that allowed them to combine their conflicting roles as workers and mothers. Another reason why women sometimes opted out of male-dominated professions was that men were resentful when women had to take time off from work and had to “bridge the gap since no other provision for this contingency was made”( Aslanbeigui 19). Instead of putting up with their male colleagues’ resentfulness, many women preferred to simply get another job. At other times, although according to labor codes women had equal rights to work, women were not permitted to enter certain jobs, because they were deemed dangerous to their reproductive health (Corrin 82).
It is important to notice that, in all these cases, women’s access to true equality at the workplace was undermined by the state’s emphasis on their role as mothers. The provisions that were supposed to make childcare easier for women actually hindered female access to jobs that would have brought them even more economic power, as well as higher status. This is not to say that, as already shown, economic relations between men and women did not significantly change. Nonetheless, pro-natalist policies diminished women’s chances of further economic emancipation outside the home. Simultaneously, they reinforced women’s established prime responsibility for the family within the private sphere. On both planes, they worked against women achieving full equality with men.
Gender egalitarianism, though eagerly advocated in theory by the socialist state, was unfortunately not attained. Changing economic relations contributed towards less gender stratification. But “the politics of motherhood” annulled these achievements, so that the patriarchal model of the family was never truly challenged.
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