Soviet Gender Policy of the 1920s: Zaporizhzhia Dimension
Abstract
The purpose of the research paper is to highlight the Soviet gender policy regarding women in Zaporizhzhia region in the 1920s and to uncover its main tasks, tools, means of implementation, and results.
The scientific novelty of the study is in the comprehensive disclosure of the tasks and line of effort for implementing of the Soviet gender policy in Zaporizhzhia region in the 1920s; special attention is paid to highlighting the peculiarities of involving women in production processes, membership in the Bilshovyk Party, and conducting of the eradication of illiteracy campaign. The results of the practical experience of emancipation based on the material of Zaporizhzhia region are highlighted as well.
Conclusions. The gender policy of the 1920s in Zaporizhzhia region had a typical list of tasks, the main goal of which should have been the Soviet emancipation of women: increasing the role of women in production processes, reducing employment in household activities, increasing their educational level and representation in the Bilshovyk Party. The leading role in emancipation activities was assigned to the delegate movement, which, by reaching a wider range of participants, was supposed to accelerate the Sovietization of women. However, due to the stalwart devotion to traditional gender relations and the gender division of labor in the region, implementing of emancipatory tasks had limited success. The quantitative indicators of the delegate movement were growing, but the real interest of women in it was declining in the second half of the 1920s.
‘Involvement’ of women in production processes, despite the increase in their number at some large enterprises, did not change the structure of gender distribution of employment in the industry of the region. At the large industrial enterprises of the city of Zaporizhzhia, where the activities of the Okruha Women’s Department (Zhenotdel) were the most consistent, the number of women among workers at the end of the 1920s did not reach even 9%. At the same time, women got wider opportunities to work on the construction of the DniproHES.
The declarative importance of the problem of expanding the representation of women in the Bilshovyk Party caused, along with established actions (such as the admission of women to the party on March 8), the search for tools for their ‘recruitment’ in the early 1920s. However, by the end of the 1920s, the number of women in the Bilshovyk Party remained practically unchanged (according to the data on Zaporizhzhia okruha – 10%). Success in eradicating female illiteracy and developing social infrastructure was limited as well. However, all those activities on Soviet emancipation incentivized the activity of women and provided additional opportunities for their personal potential realization.
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