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Women

Women. and the. Family. In the Soviet Union. Ann Yip. Aims. Economic independence women should have a job outside of the pressures of a family End economic and sexual exploitation Lenin regarded traditional bourgeois marriage as slavery to women

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Women

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  1. Women and the • Family In the Soviet Union Ann Yip

  2. Aims • Economic independence • women should have a job outside of the pressures of a family • End economic and sexual exploitation • Lenin regarded traditional bourgeois marriage as slavery to women • “for centuries peasants had claimed the right to beat their wives. Russian peasant proverbs were full of advice on the wisdom of such beatings: ‘The more you beat the old women, the tastier the soup will be’.” Stated by O. Figes • socialization of domestic services • Freeing women from domestic role required large-scale provision of facilities (e.g. canteens, laundries, kindergartens and creches) • Improve relationship between man and women – people freer to choose partners

  3. Successes • 1917, Laws passed by People’s commissar for social welfare • Paid maternity leave for 2 months before and after the birth • Nursing mothers allowed to work shorter hours and take time off to breastfeed • Women excused from heavy work or night work • Set up a commission for the protection of mothers and infants, which made plans for maternity clinics, milk points and nurseries • Laws to make divorce easier • by the mid 20s the highest divoce rate in Europe, 25x higher than in Britain • 1919, USSR had highest marriage rate • 1920 abortion was allowed under medical supervision.

  4. Downsides • With divorce, women abandoned • there were reports of young men registering over 15 short-lived marriages • End of 20s, one survey found 70% of cases divorces initiated by men and only 7% by mutual consent • 1927, 2/3 marriages in Moscow ended in divorce. Across the country, the figure was one-half • due to housing shortages, couples still lived together. Domestic violence and rape was common • ‘in principle we destroyed the family hearth…The woman remains tied with chains to the destroyed family hearth. The man, happily whistling, can leave it, abandoning the women and children.’ – B. Williams

  5. government not able or willing to fund enough crèches or public canteens to free women from childcare and housework • in 1922, the idea of state provision for crèches, kitchens and laundries added to more than the entire national budget • Russian children weren’t in socialist kindergartens but in gangs that survived by begging, scrounging, stealing and prostitution • Hundreds and thousands were orphans by war and civil war • Malcolm Muggeridge, journalist, reported seeing orphans ‘going around in packs, barely articulate and recognizably human, with pinched faces, tangled hair and empty eyes…like a pack of wild monkeys, and scattering and disappearing’ • Contemporaries estimated in the 20s there were 7-9 million orphans, most were under 13

  6. ‘It was a macho world for all the talk of equality…. Men built socialism. The iconography of the new state showed women with children or represented as peasants. The high-status proletarian was male, a metal worker or a blacksmith’ – B. Williams

  7. End

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