Overemancipation?
Liberation?:
Soviet Women in
the Gorbachev
Period
ESTER REITER
AND MEG LUXTON
troduction An air of excitement and optimism pervaded the USSR in the mid to late 1980s during the
early days of glasnost. In this new climate, women increasingly spoke out about their dissatisfactions and the difficulties they faced. The question of women's position
became a subject of serious public discussion, debated with
a frankness rarely seen in the western media. There was
widespread recognition that women have enormous difficulties juggling the demands of paid work and family responsibilities. There was also a conviction that the pressures
women experience generate serious social problems and
therefore, that social change must include improvements for
women.
In 1986, Gorbachev announced the creation of a unified
system of women's councils or Zhensovety. These are voluntary organizations, set up at work places and in residential
communities, at the level of town, district, region and
republic. Nationally, the Soviet Women's Committee is the
coordinating body for all women's councils. Although a top
down initiative, their establishment reflected a national
recognition of women's problems; they also now present at
least the potential for a women's movement.l In this climate,
E
Studies in Political Economy 34, Spring 1991
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new groupings have emerged, such as the LOTOS collective,
[the League for Society's Liberation from Stereotypes] a
group of academic women concerned about social stereotyping of women and interested in exploring western feminism.
However in the early 1990s, with the deepening political
and economic crises, problems confronting women have
sharpened. As conflicts intensify, it is unclear what approaches will be taken by the state, what, if anything, the
women's councils can achieve and whether a women's
movement will indeed emerge. The most recent developments don't augur well: specific attention to "women's issues" seems to have been dropped from the public agenda
as the country is rocked by grave economic and political
turmoil. In 1988 for example, Moscow News instituted a
new column entitled "She and We," which presented articles
by and about women. In late 1989, it disappeared with no
explanation. How these social, economic and political changes will shape the lives of Soviet women is an open question, but the way "the woman question" is understood is
central.
We were privileged to have the opportunity to meet with
Soviet women and engage in a dialogue with them about
women's issues. Based in part on this experience, this paper
examines contemporary discussions in the USSR about
women's situation, and explores some of the implications
of current changes for women.s
In our interviews and conversations, we were repeatedly
assured that Soviet women are emancipated: the problem
for women today, we were told, is that they are "overemancipated,' they have "too much equality." They would now
like to be "weaker" and have fewer rights. We were rather
taken aback with their conception of "overemancipation."
Their idea of emancipation is clearly very different from
ours.
Emancipation, for Western socialist feminists, means
equal access to all social resources and equal say in how
social life is arranged - something Soviet women do not
have. Striving for emancipation, for liberation, requires
questioning the divisions in society which perpetuate
women's subordination - the relations between biological
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sex differences and the social construction of certain
biological characteristics into gender differences, the sexual
division of labour, compulsory heterosexuality, the separation of subsistence from production of goods for exchange.
We do not think it is possible to be "overemancipared.'?
For us, the challenge is to assess the current discourse
about women in the USSR in a way that respects the differences in their experience, and their own understanding
of their situation. Their assumptions about gender differences preclude an analysis of gender hierarchy and male
privilege and suggest that without such an understanding
their proposed solutions are likely to flounder. Our concerns
about the way the Soviets have conceptualized
their
problems informs the critique we have of their proposed
solutions.
In Gorbachev's book, Perestroika - New Thinking for Our
Country and the World, there is not much in the way of
new thinking for women.f Gorbachev sees the
weakening of family ties, and slack attitude to family responsibilities, as a paradoxical result of our sincere and politically
justified desire to make women equal with men in everything .
....Debate [now, revolves around the] question of what we should
do to make it possible for women to return to their purely
womanly mission.s
That this goal may be in conflict with the earlier one of
giving women an opportunity to get an education, have a
career and participate in social life, is hardly noticed. The
women's councils are expected to accomplish a great deal
in taking the initiative to solve "women's" problems, which
for the most part simply means looking after "the family."
Emancipation seems to mean that women are able to fulfil
this "purely womanly mission."
The inadequacies and contradictions in present policy become all too apparent when looking at policies affecting
women. For example, the universal provision of day care
services, the subsidization of children's food, clothing and
education, vacations, and full employment provide enviable
protection from the vicissitudes of life. The criticisms in
the Soviet press of how these services are provided need
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to be taken seriously, but the principle of guaranteeing all
citizens the basics of life is important, and recognizes the
fact that society as a whole has responsibility to care for
individuals. However, new policies tying wages to productivity present a problem for women when notions of productivity are limited to waged work, a category distinct and
separate from the rest of social life. Solutions based on
capitalist, male models of intensifying labour, using the
threat of unemployment to motivate workers and linking
wages to productivity at paid work have serious drawbacks.s
In Canada they have clearly contributed to the continuing
discrepancies between male and female earnings.
Soviet views on women and their problems A widespread
Soviet view was recently expressed by novelist Boguslavskaya,
Could it not be that our women have too many rights at times?
Can't we women do without some of them today? And is it
not time to exchange some of these rights for others?"
Soviet views assume women and men have quite different
natures. A woman writing to Moscow News explains:
to solve the women's problem, it would be more to the point
to speak not about equality but about the peculiarity and indispensability of each sex, about the possibility of harmonious
existence.s
The concept of women and men having different natures
fosters a celebration of femininity. Articles about women
prominent in political life hasten to remind the reader that
such women have not lost their "femininity." A typical example of one such super woman, Valentina Petrenko, the
first Secretary of the Rostov Regional Komsomol committee, is portrayed by the media as follows:
"Try these tomatoes. Nice aren't they? Preserved by our own
Don recipe I Pickled them myself." Moving about quickly in
the kitchen, Valentina set the simple supper on the table. Wearing a house-dress with a perky little apron (her own handiwork)
she is the picture of femininity and hospitality. And a strict
mother who, not quite hiding a smile, reminds little Dasha now
and then: ''Take your time, Dashenka, eat nicely ..."
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Valeria Kalmyk, Vice-Chair of the Soviet Women's Committee informed us that although her position requires her
to be strong at work, she enjoys being "weak" at home;
her husband likes it that way. This celebration of femininity
is also found in the new enthusiasm for beauty contests. to
The ideal woman is married and a mother. At Krestianka,
(The Peasant Woman) a popular monthly women's magazine
with a circulation of 19 million, the editors explained to
us:
Our women, when they see happiness, they see it through their
family life. The most successful career woman, without a happy
family life, is not considered by society to be a complete
woman. 11
Thus, current debates about women's problems are predicated on assumptions that women and men have different
natures, have different social responsibilities and that these
should be complementary. They are framed by concerns
about "overemancipation." They raise questions about a
wide range of specific issues.
Education and paid employment A priority of the Soviet
government since its beginning has always been the full
employment of women. Although initially founded on the
belief that integrating women into full employment was essential for women's emancipation, this effort was reinforced
by the need for women's labour.
Equality in employment and in pay is guaranteed by law.
Article 35 of the 1977 constitution includes equal access
with men to education and vocational and professional training, equal opportunities in employment, remuneration and
promotion. It includes equality in social and political and
cultural activities, and provides special labour and health
protection measures for women.lWomen today are, in fact, the most highly educated segment of the work force. Sixty percent of the specialists with
higher or specialised secondary education are women. Approximately 75 percent of all teachers, 69 percent of
physicians, 50 percent of agronomists, engineers and technicians, 66 percent of economists, and 40 percent of all
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judges are women.U Despite these impressive accomplishments, serious inequalities between women and men in paid
employment persist.
Most women are engaged in full-time work or study; 51
percent of the working population consists of women. Although they are well represented among technical specialists,
the average rate of pay in occupations such as teaching and
medicine is lower than for workers in skilled blue collar
employment.
Monthly earnings in construction,
a
predominantly male occupation (28 percent female) were
236.6 rubles in 1983. In public health and physical culture
(84 percent female) earnings averaged 132.8 rubles.H
The figures for industrial employment are even more discouraging. Women workers' education and skills are not
utilized nearly as often as their male counterparts. Only 11
percent of women are enterprise directors. One study in
Taganrog found that as many as 40 percent of women
workers with higher education were in low skill industrial
positions compared to 6 percent of comparable males. IS
Maslova and Novikova report that while 40 percent of male
workers in industry are in skilled jobs, the figure for women
is just 10 percent.ls As in Canada, the lowest paid, least
skilled jobs in industries such as textiles and foods are
reserved for women.
Even in those industries where women predominate, the
organization of work is not necessarily tailored to their
needs. Tereshokova, the first woman astronaut who became
a member of the Politburo noted at the 1987 All-Union
Conference of Women:
Even in the textile industry the machines operated by women
are manufactured without regard for the characteristics of the
female body ....lt is paradoxical but true that departments and
organizations responsible for creating new equipment gear their
thinking exclusively to the average male worker.t?
The situation is even more complex when it comes to
debates over which industrial jobs are suitable for women.
Many Soviets are troubled by the fact that women are
employed in heavy manual labour and note that when technology is introduced to make work less arduous, men often
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Women
benefit. For Boguslavskaya, it is a "national disgrace to see
women shovelling asphalt on the road with a spade and a
man sitting and operating a roller-machine to level this asphalt."18 In agriculture women do extremely heavy work,
while men move into the newly mechanized jobs.19
In an effort to protect women, they are now prohibited
access to many occupations, especially those considered
strenuous or dangerous. A list drawn up in 1980 identified
460 such occupations and there are plans to extend this list.
In addition, night work for new mothers is prohibited.20
The women's councils support such legislation and try further to persuade pregnant women, or old women, not to
take these jobs. However, when conditions of work are identified as hazardous, the pay is high, and although legally
prohibited, women are reluctant to sacrifice the prospect of
high wages and benefits in this kind of work.
The editors of Rabotnitsa (The Woman Worker), the most
popular women's magazine in the USSR with a circulation
of 22 million, founded in 1914 by Lenin's sister Olianova,
told us that:
unfortunately, we are sorry to say, we have a lot of women
who do heavy physical labour. They are working in industries
considered to be hazardous to their health, for example in the
chemical industry ... We are campaigning to not allow our women
to work at these jobs, to not let them be employed at jobs that
require heavy physical labour.21
Only rarely do Soviet writers present the position that
if work is dangerous or unhealthy or too arduous for women,
then it is for men as well:
Of course, arduous and harmful jobs are detrimental to any
organism. female as well as male, and therefore the prime objective aimed at making work for women easier and less hazardous to health should not be the replacement of women by
men but the complete elimination of such jobs and types of
production, especially their restructuring and the radical improvement of working conditions.22
Instead, most discussion revolves around consideration
of the specific features of the female organism. Moreover,
even those occupations such as textiles which are seen as
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particularly suited to women are also noted for poor and
unhealthy conditions.
Similar inequalities are found in the professions as well.
Inna Vasilkova, a journalist for Moscow News, writes:
...we have practically no women diplomats, there is not a single
woman among the ministers of Union ministries, while among
the chief specialists of enterprises and associations, women are
found in a ratio of one to twelve.
As for Soviet journalism, it's unique. Many women work in
newspapers and magazines, but there are no chief editors among
them .... For the time being, our situation looks like that in
Oriental families. where women work only in the 'kitchen',
while the men sit round the table laid with the food the womenfolk have cooked. I am sure that our international journalism
is missing out a lot by being almost completely a male domain.23
Vasilkova, attacked the problem by organizing a club for
all women journalists, Soviet and foreign living in Moscow
in 1989. Through this organization women journalists
gained access to previously unavailable information. For
example, male journalists watched with envy as the women
spent an entire day in December, 1989, interviewing the
KGB, where, incidentally, they were served champagne and
presented with flowersl24
Women are also less likely than men to participate in
formal political life. For example, in 1988, 28 percent of
all Communist Party members were women. The proportion
of women in the Central Committee of the Communist Party
has never exceeded 5 percent. In 1988, there were no women
on the thirteen member Communist Party Politburo, and
only one woman, Alexandra Biryukova, on the Party
Secretariat.25 They were, however, better represented in the
Soviets which were deliberately designed to represent a
cross section of society, guaranteeing women a certain number of seats. In 1988,33 percent of the seats in the Supreme
Soviet were held by women, but when the system was
changed in 1989 to exclusively geographic representation,
fewer women were elected.
At Rabotnitsa the editors described with pride the great
strides made by women in Soviet society. At the same time,
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Women
they commented on the difficulties women face combining
paid employment and domestic and child care responsibilities.
But you see women make excellent students. In high school
and at the institute, they are usually better than men. Then they
graduate, they marry, they have their first child, and this is the
moment when they begin to lag behind.
While a woman is on maternity leave she stays at home, and
the man who is not as brilliant or as clever, is not as well
educated, has the time to benefit. You won't see many women
in leading posts, even in culture or in the textile industry where
women predominate. You won't see them at the administrative
level, where you become a boss.26
While Soviet women do have the legal right to training
on the job to improve their qualifications at the expense of
the enterprise, not only is the law not universally applied,
but more significantly, as Valeria Kalmyk of the Soviet
Women's Committee acknowledges: "Sometimes women
themselves, just refuse to be promoted because they re afraid
they won't be able to combine their duties as a working
person and a housewife.27
Childbearing In contrast to paid employment, relatively
few policies or practices exist which attempt to substantially
alter the organization of intimate interpersonal and family
relationships or of household and domestic labour. These
have become, however, increasingly problematic areas and
most debates about women's problems revolve around efforts to reconcile women's paid work with their family and
domestic responsibilities.
One of the most difficult social problems concerns
children. Culturally, children are highly valued, perhaps
especially so by the generation devastated by the Great
Patriotic War. We were repeatedly impressed by the great
respect and care given to children. Most women say they
want to have children and official government policy
promotes an increase in the birth rate in Russia and the
Baltic republics where, on average, women have only one
child.28
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We asked Nellie Kiryak, the head of the Women's Councils in Moldavia, why benefits for families with young
children were offered only to women. She replied:
The law doesn't forbid parents to decide who is going to take
the maternity leave but by tradition it is almost always the
woman who takes the right. For sick leave, the practice is both
the mother and the father. As for maternity leave, even for
myself, I am "backward." I would never let my husband stay
with the child when he was very small because men are not
biologically used to raising small children as well as mothers
can. Probably this is tradition, probably this is our opinion, but
it's difficult to find a woman who does not prefer it this way.Z9
Social conditions, however, make child bearing and rearing difficult. Sex education has only recently been offered.
It is directed to young teenagers and designed to persuade
them to control their sexual feelings and delay sexual activity until marriage. Birth control is a problem, often hard
to obtain and ineffective. Many women complain about
health care practices related to conception, pregnancy and
child birth. In fact, health care is generally regarded as poor,
with overcrowded facilities and overworked personnel.
Six and one half million abortions were performed in
the USSR in 1988; as many as 90 percent of first pregnancies end in abortion.
In Moscow News, Yekaterina
Nikolayeva recounts the experience of her abortion at a
maternity clinic in Moscow. She was treated in a humiliating
way (being addressed in the familiar second person singular), was subject to unnecessary delays, and subjected to
rude and inconsiderate behaviour. Ms. Nikolayeva was
frightened, her feelings raw, she was on the verge of tears.
The doctor, visibly irritated, dismissed her anxiety as
stupidity. Feeling acute pain, and given an anaesthetic that
was "evidently only enough to make me too weak to moan,"
she suffered through the operation.J''
Nikolayeva links this treatment to the more generalized
attitudes of men towards women:
It so happens that men see us as women only at night, our
colleagues only on International Women's Day, and everyone
else llIobably doesn't see us at all. That must be the reason
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Women
behind the lack of contraceptives, anaesthetic and elementary
knowledge on the part of young girls impatient to become
women.31
Having a baby warrants scarcely better treatment. It is
not surprising that many young women are afraid to have
their babies in maternity centres.32
Cbildrearing Once a child is born, there are a range of
social services guaranteed to mothers and children which
go far beyond anything Canadian feminists have ever
dreamed of. In some regions, food and clothing for infants
is free. By the early eighties, women could remain out of
the work force with a small monthly allowance for eighteen
months after the birth of a child. A move to increase this
period to three years is now under discussion.
However, as the editors of Rabotnitsa noted, there are
consequences for a woman who does go on pregnancy leave.
One and one half years later, she will have lost the qualifications she had before. Thus, measures for helping women
seem to operate in contradictory ways when they are
directed to women alone. If this period out of the work
force is raised to three years per child as proposed, the
disadvantage will be all the more serious. There are ways
to compensate for this: for example, in East Germany in
the mid 1980s, women were given a year's retraining following pregnancy leave. However, without widespread acknowledgement that extended maternity leave presents
problems, there will be no search for such solutions and
real choices over who cares for the child, and how this care
is provided remain limited.
Preschoolers may be cared for in nurseries until they are
three years of age, and in kindergarten until they are seven.
These centres are available twenty four hours a day, seven
days a week and fees are sufficiently low for everyone to
afford them. We were shown some very fine examples of
how children can be treated - the facilities were not particularly elaborate, but the clear attachment of the staff to
the children impressed us. However, because the social service sector is so underdeveloped, many facilities and services are unsatisfactory. Quality varies widely: the ratio of
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children to staff is very high, training of staff is poor and
wages are low. Centres are frequently located in places far
from home and work place. As a result, new mothers frequently choose to stay home for the first year.
Another concern raised frequently in our interviews was
a change in the way women now care for their children.
There is increasing awareness that some young women (lS20 years of age) are having babies and abandoning them
to the state to raise, especially in urban areas. Moscow News
reports that there are 21 homes in Moscow raising 2,500
children under three.33 Most references to this problem
blamed either inadequate moral education for young women
or the demands of paid employment which leave too little
time for good mothering. A minority identified inadequate
housing and money, and the puritan intolerance of the older
generation.
Marriage Heterosexual marriage is considered the most
desirable way for people to live. To reinforce this, homosexuality is illegal and both homosexuality and lesbianism
are considered illnesses or degeneracies. High divorce rates
are considered to be a major social problem and are seen
as the result of the unwillingness of women to carry the
full responsibility for domestic labour. Journalist Ludmila
Eniutina described the "problem":
Probably she marries a boy, but to have a boy means not only
to love each other, it's also necessary to cook, to clean .... Some
of them divorced their husbands or just kicked them out - I
don't want to look after another baby in my home .... She will
get rid of that husband who is interfering with her life and she
will live alone ... We began to have more single women who
made these tragic mistakes in their lives.34
Svetlana Markovich, director of Moscow Family and
Marriage Consulting Service, and deputy of the district
Soviet where she heads the department which deals with
family and marital problems, concluded that the source of
many marital problems lies in the education system. In the
past, the education system treated both sexes equally, and
this, she said, was a mistake. The result was the "masculinization" of girls and the "feminization" of boys. In64
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Women
stead, says Markovich, girls should be prepared for their
roles as wives and mothers, while boys should be taught
to take responsibility, to help their wives. When boys and
girls are treated equally, girls lose their femininity. How
can a girl play soccer, she asked, and still expect a man to
help her? She needs to be taught to be careful, not to lift
heavy things because there will come a time when she will
have a baby.
Such a commitment to gender difference and complementarity, to heterosexuality and to marriage makes incomprehensible any systematic discussion of the ways in which
the sexual division of labour reinforces women's subordination.
Housework It is now generally acknowledged that Soviet
women work too hard and have too much to do. Two
hundred and seventy five billion hours (equal to 90 percent
of the time spent on paid work in the national economy as
a whole) are spent on work in the home each year. This
work is done mostly by women.35 Wives and mothers devote
about 2 to 2.5 times as long to domestic work as husbands
and fathers (28 hours a week compared to 12 hours for
men).36 This leaves the average man with approximately
50 percent more leisure hours than his wife.
A study reported in Moscow News concluded that a
woman purchases on average 2.4 tons of food a year for
her family of four, that she covers roughly 12-13 kilometers
a day performing domestic housework.t? In an earlier study
reported in Pravda, the estimated time women spent shopping (looking for purchases and standing in queues) was
37,000 million hours.38 No doubt this figure is currently
rising. Shortages have added searching for food to the time
previously spent in long queues.
While Soviet Women Today may still celebrate superwomen such as Petrenko, (the Soviet official who manages
to pickle, embroider, and feed her child while meeting her
Komsomol responsibilities) the reality is that most women
find it very difficult to cope with their responsibilities:
After work 1 have to go shopping, cook, wash and do other
hard and dull work about the house. When asked what I would
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like to have in this life, I answer
The rest I can do myself.39
>
help in household drudgery.
It is widely acknowledged that the demands of paid
employment, domestic labour and especially child care create too much work for women. They pay a heavy price for
this and the social consequences are grave.
These difficulties are common to women in all parts of
the Soviet Union. In rural Moldavia, we participated in discussions with leaders of five women's councils from villages
and the Romanesti district. Although Moldavia, part of the
Baltics, is one of the richest areas of the country, there.
too, the women's councils concern themselves with helping
women to cope while continuing to encourage large
families. Mothers of large families with seven or eight
children are honoured. The councils have struggled for special queuing privileges to reduce shopping time for these
women. They have arranged for infant foods to be distributed free to mothers with babies under one year of age.
Some villages have arranged for free meals for the children
in school. One of the members of the women's committee
at a Moldavian rug factory described their purpose:
First of all, to create necessary conditions for the factory life
of women, not so much at the production site but at home ... If
a woman knows that her children, whatever their age are very
well looked after, then she is much better at her work place.40
Another woman on the committee added:
If the shopping centres, different kinds of services worked
properly and were sufficient then the life of women would be
much better. Our primary concern is to ensure that conditions
are such that women can have an easier life outside the
enterprise. One extremely important problem is living conditions. Each Soviet family should have a flat, spacious enough
for the whole family, and comfortable, with all the conveniences.41
In each village or work place, the concerns are different.
Councils will ensure that working mothers receive the legal
benefits they are entitled to. In one village in Moldavia
where animals are raised for veal, the women's committee
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Women
fought for a centre with a canteen, a sauna, a place for
laundry and dry cleaning. "We must make the administrators
understand that children are future workers. If a woman
fails as a mother, then that is not in the interest of the
enterprise. "42
Kalmyk, of the Soviet Women's Committee described the
complexity of these problems:
....you can tell us why we have such long lines near the shops
and why it takes women a lot of time to buy the most necessary
things. We are not satisfied with the way our public services
function ... such as dry cleaners, shoe makers and laundry. We
are dissatisfied with the (poor quality) of our household gadgets.
If we are able to solve these problems, then it would give women
a lot of time that she might spend on herself, on bringing up
children and her education .
...[T]hese problems can't be solved by themselves because they
are connected with the general social and economic development
of the country
Then there is the question in what way
household duties are shared by men and women - who goes
shopping, who takes care of the children, who goes to the
laundry and so on.43
Dilemmas for women: keeping women in their natural
places? Thus, the women's councils, women's magazines,
the trade unions, the Soviet women's committee - indeed
everyone we spoke to recognizes the critical need to find
ways to ease women's "double burden." The measures
proposed, however, are all designed to keep women in harness - married and primarily responsible for the family.
One such solution suggests that women give up paid
work. This is highly unlikely even in those situations where
the principal concern is not financial need. Seven out of
ten women interviewed in a country-wide survey said they
wanted to keep their paid jobs.44 While many people believe
that women should have the right to be full time housewives
if they so choose, no one has argued that men should have
the same choice. Part time work is also proposed as a means
to ease the burden of women with children. This is not
new: such a proposal was drafted by the Twenty Fifth Party
Congress under Brezhnev, Here, too, the experiences of the
capitalist countries, where part time work provides short67
Studies in Political Economy
term relief for women at the long-term cost of career advancement, are not addressed.
The object of perestroika was to make the entire
economic system more efficient. The lack of adequate consumer goods and services created an impossible situation;
it is widely accepted that improving the consumer sector
would especially benefit women, as they are primarily
responsible for maintaining life. Despite a situation where
women make up 51 percent of the work force, they continue
to be defined in terms of their responsibilities outside of
paid work. Thus proposals for restructuring don't seem to
take into consideration the impact on women's employment.
According to the editors of Rabotnitsa:
The simple idea is to have less personnel who will be more
highly qualified in order to get the same job done more efficiently. That way the workers would get more. We have such
a shortage of labour that it will take some time, but probably
after that, what will happen? Who will be the rust to be fired
or be sent away? Those who have sick children or have poor
health and things like that. Women, especially those who have
children, would be the first candidates to be rued, and that
would be absolutely unjust.4S
Contemporary debates focus on the need to improve existing practices with little thought given to the drawbacks
of market solutions to problems of distribution and no consideration whatsoever of alternative family or household
forms. In many parts of the Soviet Union, extended
households are common and are appreciated with great affection adding an emotional depth to human relationships
between generations. Yet the extended family household,
despite the strong tradition, is not considered as a serious
alternative to the nuclear family household.
The division of women into workers and homemakers
and the fact that men are given little responsibility for the
maintenance of social life, has led to contradictory tendencies. On the one hand, there is official recognition that
women are underrepresented in important positions and that
promoting women to administrative posts is desirable. On
the other hand, despite a high rate of alcoholism (primarily
a male problem), it is women who officially bear the moral
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Women
burden for the breakdown of family life. Provisions such
as increased child care leave, part time work, and shorter
work days when applied only to women offer short term
relief. However, the cost of this relief is to perpetuate a
division of labour which led to women's heavy workload
in the first place.
Ideas about sexual differences generally operate to male
advantage. The absence of women in positions of power,
and their disproportionately heavy burden reflect the ubiquity of gender hierarchy in every social sphere. A wide
range of scholarship has demonstrated that the separation
between waged work and personal life, with the latter assigned to women's sphere, is not of benefit to women. In
practice, Soviet women themselves, confident, proud and
independent, disprove notions of women's inherent submissiveness and self effacement. Yet those Soviet women critics,
who call for a strong and independent women's movement,
formulate its objectives in terms of helping individual
women in their individual families. Kuznetsova, for example, criticizes the women's councils for their failure to
promote social change: ••..all that women's councils do at
present is attempt to help women come to terms with the
present situation, rather than make serious efforts to change
anything."46 Yet she too looks to a women's movement that
will "rise in defence of families and take care of men's
family virtues."47
Conclusion Foregoing the comforts of an intimate personal
life or the joys of watching children grow up are not, as
is so widely maintained by Soviets, simply "psychological"
or "moral" problems. They are a practical response to an
existing situation. Women's individualized responses to
their situation on such a large scale - be it having only one
child or initiating divorce or even abandoning children indicate that there are serious problems with the way in
which personal life is socially organized.
Rather than revert to ideological treatises on "women's
nature," this is an opportune time to ask some basic questions about how the institutions of daily life are structured.
If women are reluctant to take part in a particular institution
69
Studies in Political Economy
such as marriage, motherhood and family, perhaps it is the
institution which needs to be changed, not the women. Glasnost has opened the way for democratic practices such as
women's councils and more workers' control in paid work
places. However, a notion of work place democracy that
rests predominantly on the services of women at home, is
a limited form of democracy. Encouraging women's entry
into powerful and privileged political domains is not the
answer either.
We have spent much of this paper criticizing the
biologism in Soviet thinking regarding women's issues, but
it is very important to bear in mind that the context of the
debate in the Soviet Union is indeed very different from
similar concerns in North America, where it is the new right
which has been the strongest advocate for maintaining
separate and distinct spheres for men and women. This has
been assisted by a neoconservative social policy intent on
undermining many of the social supports we have come to
take for granted. In the Soviet Union, there is no evidence
of such an alignment. Quite the contrary. In a country which
is plagued by deepening economic and political crisis, there
is still a commitment to improve social benefits for the
family and for women. The problems created by male gender
privilege are recognized and discussed. The focus must,
however, shift from easing the effects of these problems to
identifying and tackling the causes.
The full extension of glasnost and perestroika must include a different approach to questions of gender, sexuality
and family. Western feminism • especially socialist
feminism - is not well known or understood in the Soviet
Union. To the extent it is, it is usually identified with either
liberal or radical feminism and appears irrelevant to Soviet
women. Feminism, to many Soviets, seems to embody either
demands for legal changes long enshrined in Soviet law
such as access to abortion, and/or hostility to men. Tatyana
Tolstoya, a leading woman author in the USSR today writes:
"In the West, it is now fashionable to fight men to the death.
Nothing has been heard about this yet in our country. Thank
God."48 The commitment of Western feminism to women's
liberation, to gaining access to real social power, and to
70
Reiter & Luxton/Soviet
Women
redefining work to include household and childrearing were
issues Soviet women neither knew about nor could relate
to.
Given the depth of the current crisis in the USSR, one
cannot predict what, if any. answers will emerge on the
woman question in the near future. Given the way in which
the issue is currently debated, it is possible that the preoccupation with the question of "overemancipation" will reinforce gender divisions, and thus gender hierarchies.
However, the newly emerging women's groups such as
LOTOS and the founders of an institute for the study of
gender analysis - tiny, scattered and isolated at present are beginning to think about such issues.t? Whether this
marks the beginning of a widespread grassroots women's
movement remains to be seen. What is certain is that the
lives of Soviet women remain difficult and that those women
are demanding relief.
Notes
We would like to thank Janet Hyer, Margie Mendell, Barbara Neis, David
Mandel and Jane Jenson for their comments on an earlier version of this
paper.
1.
2.
3.
Genia Browning, Women and Politics in the USSR: Consciousness
Raising and Soviet Women's Groups (New York: Wheatsheaf Books,
1987).
The research for this paper is based on a review of: English language
studies of women in the USSR, translations of Russian materials,
several regular Soviet English language publications including the
weekly Moscow News and of the Russian language monthlies, Rabotnitsa and Krestianka. The authors have each made two short research
trips to the USSR, and Ester Reiter has participated in several exchanges with Soviet scholars. The interviews reported in this paper
were made in June 1988 when the authors, with Shelagh Wilkinson,
spent two weeks under the auspices of Novosti, the Soviet Press
agency, collecting material for the special issue of Canadian Woman
Studieslles cahiers de la femme 'Soviet Women', 10/4 (Winter 1989).
[Hereinafter CWSllcf] We interviewed representatives of the Soviet
Women's Committee, the AUCCTU (All Union Central Committee
of Trade Unions), the media, women's councils, and workers in child
care centres, factories, collective farms. A short version of this paper
appeared in that issue.
For example see Lynn Segal, Is the Future Female? (London: Verso,
1988); Sheila Rowbotham, Women's Consciousness, Men's World
71
Studies in Political Economy
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
72
(London: Penguin, 1973); Alison Jaggar, Feminist Politics and
Human Nature (New Jersey: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983); Heather
Jon Maroney and Meg Luxton, Feminism and Political Economy
(Toronto: Methuen, 1987).
M. Gorbachev, Perestroika: New Thinking lor Our COUTItryand the
World (New York: Harper & Row, 1987).
Ibid. p. 117.
See, for example, David Mandel, "Perestroika and women workers,"
CWSllc/10/4 (1989).
Novosti Press Agency and Zoya Boguslavskaya, "Zoya Boguslavskaya on Soviet Women," in CWSllc/10/4 (1989) p, 59.
Moscow News No. 33, (1988).
Soviet Women Today April 1988.
Soviet Union April 1989.
Interview, Moscow, 1988.
Constitutions 0/ the Union 0/ Soviet Socialist Republics (Moscow:
Novosti, 1988).
Yevgeniya Chemiak, "The Soviet Family Mirrored in Statistics,"
CWSllc/10/4 (1989).
Gail Lapidus, Women, Work and Family in the Soviet Union (New
York: M.E. Sharpe, 1982) p. xix.
Ibid.
New Times April 1988.
Izvestia Feb. I, 1987; translated in Current Digest 0/ the Soviet
Press No.5 (1987).
Boguslavskaya, "Boguslavskaya on Soviet Women," CWSllc/10/4
(1989).
M. Federova, "The Utilization of Female Labor in Agriculture" in
Lapidus, Women, Work and Family in the Soviet Union.
Vera Tolkunova, "The Working Woman in the USSR" in Women in
the USSR (Moscow: Progress Publishers), 1985.
Interview, Moscow, 1988.
L. Azhanitsyna, "Current Problems of Female Labour in the USSR"
in Lapidus, Women, Work and Family in the Soviet Union.
Moscow News No. 44, (1988).
Personal communication with Kate Clark, correspondent for the
British newspaper, Morningstar, 1989.
"Soviet women demand greater role," Globe and Mail 15 Sept 1988.
Interview, Moscow, 1988.
Interview, Moscow, 1988.
Interview with Svetlana Markovich, Moscow, 1988.
Interview with Kishinev, Moscow, June 1988.
Moscow News No.4, (1989).
Ibid. No. 13 (1989).
New Times March 1989.
Moscow News No. 44 (1989).
Interview, Moscow, 1988.
Elvira Madova and Ninel Novikova "Give the lady a hand," orig.
New Times; reprinted in Soviet New and Views No.6 (1988) p, 9.
M(Jsc(Jw News No. 47 (1989).
Reiter & Luxton/Soviet
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
Women
Pravda June 9, 1984; reprinted in Angus Roxburgh, Pravda (New
York: 1987).
Bogus1avskaya, "Boguslavskaya on Soviet Women," CWSllc/10/4
(1989).
Interview, Riga, June 1988.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid. Education is another priority of the Zhensovety in this region.
They undertake literacy campaigns and make sure that all young
people in their area have access to high school and higher education.
Family concerns are a major theme for activities. They offer
programs to convince young people of the seriousness of family
life. The women's council in one village organised a club for young
engaged couples, where specialists are invited to encourage the planning of large families. The high divorce rate is also a worry. In
grape rich Moldavia, alcoholism is a problem and one of the primary
reasons for divorce. To combat this, fathers' clubs have been established where men are encouraged to discuss their children and to
hear from men considered to be good fathers.
Lapidus, Women, Work and Family in the Soviet Union p. 17:
Interview, Moscow, 1988.
Moscow News No. 46 (1988).
Ibid.
Moscow News No. 38, (1989).
Natalya Pavlova, "Stereotypes and Reality," Moscow News No. 24
(1989).
73