“Kirche, Kuche und Kinder”–“Church, Kitchen, and Children”–so runs a German saying which has received great official popularity since the coming of Hitler to power in 1933. These are the three spheres of social life to which women are allotted in the Third Reich. And in the English language, too, there is the old saying, “Woman’s place is in the home,” which still finds currency in many quarters, particularly so long as the country is racked by unemployment, and able-bodied men are out of work or in constant fear of being so. In the Russian language there are a host of old proverbs degrading woman to the level of something subhuman, and it is therefore all the more striking that in the U.S.S.R. to-day there is no occupation and no position which women may not occupy on the basis of complete equality with men.
In the Constitution of the U.S.S.R. adopted in 1936 it is written: “Women in the U.S.S.R. are accorded equal rights with men in all fields of economic, Stale, cultural, social, and political life
“The realization of these rights of women is ensured by affording women equally with men the right to work, payment for work, rest, social insurance and education, state protection of the interests of mother and child, granting pregnancy leave with pay, and the provision of a wide network of maternity homes, nurseries, and kindergartens.”
As a teacher in a Soviet university I have had some opportunity of observing this equality of the sexes at first hand. As a graduate of Cambridge, I could make comparisons between the complete equality in the Soviet university lecture-room and the procedure in Cambridge by which, whenever the women students enter a room, it is the convention for the men to stamp, as if something out of the ordinary was occurring. At least, that was the convention eight years ago. I presume it still is, as things move slowly in our older universities. I also had the opportunity of seeing the amusement of Soviet women students, when I said that their counterpart in England would probably accept a job until marriage, and then retire from such employment. The idea that a job was an alternative to marriage was looked upon as some sort of archaic survival by these young Soviet women, who considered it absolutely practicable to have a career, a husband, and a family into the bargain.
Among the students themselves, on the teaching staff, and throughout the Soviet organizations that I have visited during the past five years, I have hardly ever seen or heard anything which suggests that woman is considered either an inferior or weaker sex. In one case, on the construction of the Moscow underground, when a certain job was made available only to the male workers for reasons of health, a group of young women insisted that they should also do the work, formed a woman’s brigade, and competed with the men for the best results. If, at any time or in any place in the U.S.S.R. to-day, it is suggested that any job is not suitable for women, that is all that is necessary to ensure that within a short time women will be proving that such a job can be done by them as efficiently as by men, and that’s that.
I think we in Britain find it hard to realize the extent to which the idea of woman as a “weaker sex” is a product of industrial capitalism. In any country of the world where there is a large peasant population, whatever may be said of the social inferiority of women, the term “weaker sex” is unknown, because it is so patently untrue. We in Britain tend to assume that the physical inferiority of women in our own country to-day is considerably greater than it actually is. And, where such physical inferiority does exist, we are inclined to neglect the degree to which this is due to social causes. It is unlikely that the women of feudal Britain were any weaker physically than the men; and it seems to be to a great extent the responsibility of capitalist industrialism that their physique has deteriorated. A comparison of the physique of British townswomen to-day with that of peasant women in all countries bears this out.
Capitalist industrialism has made labour such a strain on the physique that on the one hand women have had to be excluded from many occupations because of their function as mothers. Socialist industry, by organizing all occupations in such a way as to develop the health and strength of the workers, makes it no longer necessary, except in rare cases, to exclude women from occupations on the grounds of health. In this way jobs which definitely develop the physique of the worker are available to women as well as to men in the U.S.S.R. In Britain, the woman’s “inferiority” is now used as a reason for exclusion, even where health conditions are adequate to permit of women’s work.
But, on the other hand, capitalism has reduced women to the position of a cheap reserve of labour by means of low wages. In this way the employment of women has been increasingly concentrated on the worst paid jobs, which are often the most unhealthy and the most degrading. This, too, has caused deterioration in women’s physique as compared, with that of men.
Finally, by combining household drudgery with every other occupation that a woman might undertake, capitalism has added one further burden to its women-folk, with disastrous effects on the physique of the women as compared with the men. As a result of these factors, the term “weaker sex” is not a misnomer in Britain to-day, though it must have been as unreal in the Britain of two hundred years ago as it is to-day in every country of the world where there is a large peasant population and where women do a more than full share in the general physical labour of the community. It is the aim of a Socialist country to preserve this physical equality, and to prevent the deterioration of women into the position of a “weaker sex.” At the same time, however, real equality demands that woman should be relieved of all the extra burdens imposed upon her in more primitive societies. This means that while, economically, she must receive equal pay and equal opportunities with man, she must be specially cared for socially in so far as she has additional social functions to perform.
Economic equality between women and men must be provided in two main ways. First, equality of opportunity and of wages must be provided. Secondly, women must be equally able with men to have a career. But this means that they must be relieved of certain burdens which they have to bear in capitalist countries, such as housework and the care of children. And, since only women can fulfil the function of bearing children, and since this necessitates an interruption of every woman’s work, special provision must be made for women in this respect. Once children have been born, it is essential to ensure that any economic burden connected with the upbringing of such children shall be as far as possible equally shared by the two parents.
In order to make equality of opportunity effective in the U.S.S.R., a great deal has already been done to provide socially those services which, in other countries, women must perform themselves as their regular household duties. Most important is the matter of feeding, and in the U.S.S.R. to-day a vast network of restaurants makes it possible for the people to feed at or near their places of work, and the communal kitchen replaces the work of the housewife.
But, in addition to cooking meals, the housewife under capitalism spends endless time on the care of her children. In this respect the Soviet Union has provided various means of relief. By a vast development of nurseries and kindergartens, by providing playgrounds for children in every public square or park, by providing out-of-school activities for children in the school buildings and children’s rooms in blocks of flats, the Soviet authorities have already to a great extent removed the burden of the care of children from the shoulders of the mothers. Recently, returning to London from Moscow, I was impressed by the number of dirty children playing in the streets, and by the number of infants seen in the care of children just a few years older than themselves. These sights are symptoms of the utter failure of the British community to cope with the problems of the working-class mother. Such problems in the U.S.S.R. are already solved in principle, and the detailed solution is being further worked out in practice from year to year.
It is sometimes suggested that the vast development of nurseries and kindergartens is likely to break down family affections. Such a view, in my experience, is absolutely unjustified. Is a working mother going to be less affectionate towards her child if she can have it fed and washed in a well-run nursery while she is occupied on other things? Is she going to love her child less if she has it with her only during those hours when she is free from other activities? It is an ironic fact, but well worthy of mention, that those who are most insistent in this country on the joys of family life are usually those who, owing to their fortunate economic position, can afford to pay trained nurses to look after their children for twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four, and who, during the remaining hour, are able to enjoy to the full the blessing of parentage without its labour!
While it is possible for society to relieve women of housework, and of the burden of the care of children, it is physically impossible to relieve women of the function of bearing children. Therefore, in this respect, equality of the sexes necessitates special privileges for the women. In the U.S.S.R. to-day the woman who is having a child is relieved from work on full pay for a period of four months. If the doctor considers it advisable, she may be put on lighter work, or completely relieved of work, without reduction of pay, at any time during pregnancy. The nursing mother, after returning to work, is allowed a special reduction in her working day. All medical attention and a layette for the child are provided free of charge.
The question of family relations arises in a particularly acute form in the case of responsibility for children. Right from the early years of the Revolution the State put an end to all distinction between the married and the unmarried mother. In this way the age-long distinction between ethical standards for men and for women was brought to an end. Also, no child started out in life with the social stigma of illegitimacy.
The Soviet State took further steps to ensure that marriage should be a voluntary contract, and the family a voluntary social unit. Whereas a marriage and a family based on mutual love and respect has always been encouraged in the U.S.S.R., the holding of people unwillingly together, by force of law or by economic compulsion, has always been opposed. Divorce has been made easy, subject to one condition—that there is equal parental responsibility for the upbringing of every child. Whether marriage is registered or not, according to Soviet law every parent has an economic responsibility for his or her children. As a rule it is the mother who brings up a child if parents are living separately, and therefore, as a rule, it is the father who is bound to meet his responsibilities financially. And these responsibilities are not small. For, to ensure that a Soviet woman shall not have to bear the economic burden of bringing up children alone, every father, if not living with the mother of his children, must pay to her 30 percent of his earnings for one, 40 percent for two, and 50 percent for three children or more until they are of working age. In this way real economic equality of the sexes is established with regard to parental responsibility, while, at the same time, people are not forced to live together if they have no longer any further natural affection for one another.
A matter which has raised considerable doubts in the minds of many protagonists of sex-equality in this country is the law, passed in 1936, making abortion illegal except in cases where it is justified by consideration for a woman’s health or the danger of hereditary disease. This change in the law has been treated as an attack on sex-equality.
It is of the greatest importance, in this connection, to refer back to the text of the original law which legalized abortion in Soviet Russia in 1921. It is important to note that in this law not a word was said about sex-equality, and the right to have an abortion was never put forward as a fundamental right of the Soviet woman. On the contrary, abortion was treated as a social evil, but an evil which was likely to be less harmful when practised legally than when carried out under conditions of secrecy. Here is part of the text of the original law permitting abortion:
“During the past decades the number of women resorting to artificial discontinuation of pregnancy has grown both in the West and in this country. The legislation of all countries combats this evil by punishing the woman who chooses to have an abortion and the doctor who performs it. Without leading to favourable results, this method of combating abortion has driven the operation underground and made the woman a victim of mercenary and often ignorant quacks who make a profession of secret operations. As a result, up to 50 percent of such women are infected in the course of the operation, and up to 4 percent of them die.
“The Workers’ and Peasants’ Government is conscious of this serious evil to the community. It combats this evil by propaganda against abortions among working women. By working for Socialism, and by introducing the protection of maternity and infancy on an extensive scale, it feels assured of achieving the gradual disappearance of this evil. But as moral survivals of the past and the difficult economic conditions of the present still compel many women to resort to this operation . . .” it is allowed in State hospitals.
The essential feature of this law is that it was based on “difficult economic conditions,” and was of a temporary nature. The right to abortion was never introduced as one of the rights of Soviet women, to be enjoyed in all circumstances. It was considered an “evil,” and was introduced as a makeshift to combat the serious mortality rate from illegal abortions carried out under unsatisfactory conditions. There is evidence that, at the present time, owing to the increased knowledge of contraceptives on the one hand and the growing sense of economic security on the other, women will not now practice abortion in this way, and that therefore the permissive law is no longer necessary in the interests of health. Abortion in Soviet legislation has always been regarded primarily as a question of health, not of equality. Since thousands of women have been neglecting the use of contraceptives because they could obtain an abortion, the legality of the less satisfactory method of discontinuing pregnancy has actually to some extent prevented more satisfactory methods from being used of avoiding pregnancy altogether.
A fact that must be fully realized in this connection is that the whole formulation of sex-equality in the U.S.S.R. has always tended to be different from its formulation among feminists in capitalist countries. The stress in the U.S.S.R. has always been; Equal economic and social rights and opportunities, with special privileges to compensate for any burden arising from the bearing of children. On the other hand, in countries such as Britain, where years of unemployment have given rise to all sorts of theories of “over-population,” the emphasis is usually placed on the right of women not to have children as an essential aspect of sex-equality. In the U.S.S.R., where there is no illegitimacy and where unemployment was finally wiped out in 1931 and shows no signs of ever again recurring, “over-population” is an impossibility, since the whole of the economic planning of the country is based on the number of workers available, and the more workers there are the better for the welfare of all.
In such a community there is no social reason for artificially limiting population. Therefore the formulation of sex-equality will have a different emphasis: instead of pressing the right of women not to have children because men do not have to bear children, the whole emphasis will be on providing such conditions that every woman may bear as many children as is consistent with her health without at the same time suffering any greater economic or social burden than men as a result. This is the emphasis given in Soviet society to this matter, and is, I think, the likely formulation for every progressive Socialist community once unemployment has been finally abolished.
In the U.S.S.R., then, the woman’s place is not in the home. But this does not mean disrespect either for maternity or for the family, so long as the latter is in no way a unit preserved by force and economic compulsion as opposed to the free will of the parties to a marriage. By giving equal opportunities to workers of both sexes, by making social insurance cover all incapacity for work due to pregnancy and childbirth, by ensuring the equal responsibility of both parents for their children whether they are married or not, and, finally, by socializing those services which, under capitalism, have to be performed by the energy of the individual housewife, the Soviet Union has gone a long way towards the freeing of women as citizens from bondage as housewives, wives, and mothers. But this does not mean that the role of women as wives and mothers is abolished; it means that wife and husband, mother and father, are equal citizens in every respect, with equal opportunities for a career, with effective equality of rights in every sphere of social, economic, and political life, and with equal moral, social, and economic responsibilities to society, to each other, and to their children.