Hannah's+IA+Page


 * __IA topic: Gender equality in the USSR in the 1930s

Research question: ?__**

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. //Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extrordinary Times:// //Soviet Russia in the 1930s//. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc, 1999. Print.

Notes: I'm still in the process of reading this, but I think there will be a lot of useful information in it.

Evans, David. //Teach Yourself Stalin's Russia//. London: Hodder Education, 2005. Print.

Notes:

tsarist russia- women had limited legal rights marx: marraige is a bourgeois institution, exploits and oppresses women

possible primary sources to explore: "Family Code"-- Marxist-based, made marriage a civil ceremony, easy divorce "Code on Marriage, Family, and Guardianship"- Stalin's, 1927, reversed the Family Code "Russian Constitution"-- guaranteed female workers equality in theory

Interesting articles and papers which I've found online but still need to read further into. The starred ones look especially promising!


 * "Political Attitudes and the Gender Gap in the USSR" http://www.jstor.org/pss/ 421970

Study of wages in russian town in 1989: http://cje.oxfordjournals.org/ cgi/content/abstract/21/4/431


 * men against women in the soviet workplace: http://www.jstor.org/pss/ 2169865


 * gender and power shown in 1930s Soviet art: http://www.jstor.org/pss/ 2502056

http://www.le.ac.uk/ulmc/doc/ suhomlinova_redistribution.pdf

So far my research has consisted mainly of finding appropriate sources.

I am planning to finish a first draft of my IA this summer. While traveling in Belgium, I will finish reading Everyday Stalinism (it's slow going). Back in Shanghai, I will print out the articles listed above, and comb through each of them to determine what, if any, is useful and usable, relating to gender equality in the 1930s. If Ifeel that more sources are still necessary at this point, I will research any other possible texts to order from Amazon, which I would have shipped to my grandparent's house in the US-- and then while I am there, I will hopefully have finished all my research. The way I plan to organize this is to write main points from my sources of notecards, with page numbers etc; when I have all my notecards, I will shuffle them around and reorganize them and group them so as to best support a thesis (at this point I will be coming up with my thesis-- I am still undecided whether it will be more on "gender equality" or "status of women"). With the evidence lined up, I will write a bulleted outline, and then, inshallah, will crank out my IA.

booyah.

Hey Hannah! Looks like you've got your plan down, but you should get some more notes and research done before the summer :) as well as a research question. For your research question, what aspect of gender inequality in the USSR do you want to focus on? The broad view of gender inequality that it existed or like women movements? It sounds like an extremely interesting topic, can't wait to see your draft.

Wendy Z. Goldman’s “Women at the Gates: Gender and Industry in Stalin’s Russia”

Chapter 1: Women in Industry, 1917-1929 Russian industry has always been gendered vertically, by branch, and horizontally, by skill and wage level During WWI and the civil war, women filled the spots in industries left by men After the wars, this flipped as women were let go to make room for the men again NEP’s economic policies encouraged sex segregation of workers, and women’s opportunities for employment decreased, esp. in the traditionally male industries that they had entered during the war. By end of NEP, women were concentrated in light industry, and at the bottom of that. The start of the first 5 year plan had little effect on women’s presence in the work force The labor exchanges were full of women, who were a large percentage of the unemployed Main reasons that so many women were unemployed: then they said it was lack of skills, but examination shows that women suffered discrimination at every skill level; also, it was really hard for women to gain skills in the first place because no one wanted to train them. The Party was sympathetic in theory, but its labor policies focused on keeping the working class ranks pure, with the old school proletariats—it was nearly impossible to get a job unless one had prior work experience. This was to keep out the peasants, but it worked against women who wanted to enter the work force too.

Chapter 2: Zhenotdel= Women’s Department, created in 1919 by the Central Committee Liquidated, saying “women’s work” should be done everywhere in general, rather than specifically by one group.

Chapter 3: First 5 year plan à collectivizationà food shortages, not much to buy, so prices skyrocketedàprices rising, purchasing power of wages fallingà women started getting jobs to maintain family’s standards of living by supplementing wages and access to higher rations à a LOT of women in the workforce by the end of the 5 years

Chapter 4: Labor shortages in some areas, while unemployment in others-- no more sympathy or help for the unemployed, because there WERE jobs available, however undesirable they were. Government actively recruits workers, including women, unlike in the 1920s where they were barred out. Lots of short-term policies to deal with the labor shortage, finally the government declares that unemployment had been eliminated and replaced by a labor shortage. Sees women as a relatively untapped labor reserve, tells men to “bring their wives to work.”

Chapter 5: “The Five Year Plan for Women” – came to be throughout the spring and summer of 1930, from the many meetings of the NKT, Gosplan, KUTB, and other departments. The plan was based on intensive research into Soviet industry, and “set target figures and training quotas for women throughout the economy, specifying their numbers and placement in various sectors, industries.” (143) The idea was to resegregate the entire economy by gender, which promoted an overall increase of women’s share in the workforce, but still drew a line between men’s work and women’s work, as specially designed areas and jobs would be available only for women or only for men. This plan was never passed as legislation, but it became the basis for the Party’s consequent strategy towards female labor. The plan’s main goal was to meet the demands of industry, not to liberate women. Fact-finding brigades sent into the factories to uncover the state of women in industry discovered that prejudice against women, not their lack of skills, was the main barrier preventing them from entering workforce or getting good jobs. Regendering helped move lots of women into the workforce, but didn’t help much with gender equality, because it kept the workforce even more segregated.

Chapter 6: Because of the labor shortage, women were being hired willy-nilly, resegregation of the industry or no. The Party had all these plans, but the managers and local authorities weren’t implementing them. Good summary on page 204.

Chapter 7: From the mouths of actual Soviet women workers: sexual harassment, prejudice, mental abuse, etc, was rife in the factories.

Chapter 8: Second Five-Year Plan (1933-37)

TBC