What were Stalin’s Domestic Policies Regarding the Position of Women ?

Noel Dube

The Working-Class Woman

1926: Family code introduced SOCIALISM-common law marriages same rights as registered-raised minimum age of marriage-khudzhum-equal education-opposition to traditional practices-nurseries & canteens to allow mothers to work

Women employees in the Industrial Workforce

1928= 2,795,0001939= 13,000,000

Industrial workforce1933: women made up 33%1940: women made up 43%

Benefits V.S Problems• Establishment of Gender Equality• Women had better education• There was more cultural freedom• mothers were able to hold jobs

• Cultural Outrage• Decline in Population growth• Increase in crime• failure of family values• restricted from highest jobs

Benefits V.S Problems• Women had more chances to make their own decisions

• Readily available abortions

• Freedom from polygamy

(continued)• 37% of Marriages

ended in Divorce• 150,000 abortions for every 57,000 live births in Moscow• Women faced a double burden of family work and their jobs

The New Family Code (backtracking…)

-Stalin seeked refuge in traditionalism

-restored “family” within society-divorce made difficult and expensive-Pro-Family, Pro-Discipline, Anti-Abortion

Year Births (per thousand of population)

Abortions (per thousand of population)

1930 21.3 33.91931 21.3 36.31932 20.7 34.01933 17.0 36.71934 15.9 42.0

Because of this...-Homosexuality & prostitution were criminalised

-illegitimate children stigmatised

-Birthrate rise from 2.5% (1935) to 3.1% (1940)

-Mothers of many children received benefits

-Divorce rates declined (but so did marriage rates)

“Abortion was pronounced ‘an evil

holdover from the order whereby an individual

lived according to narrow personal interests…’”

“...Strengthening the Soviet family we mean the fight against the

wrong attitudes towards marriage, women, and children. Free love and disorderly sex life have nothing in common with

socialist principles…”pravda, 1936

S. Kotin, 1995

~Sources~

Basically...1926: Women get equality in the workforce & traditional practices opposed

1936: New Family code: encourage bigger families to increase population growth1939: 79% doctors were Women (Women continue to grow within the workforce)

-13 million women in the workforce1944: Only registered marriages were recognised