Woman in the Soviet Union

"It is of interest to woman in the Arab world to be informed of the conditions of women in other countries. In the last issue we gave a glimpse of woman in Iraq, and today we publish this piece on woman in the Soviet Union."

World public opinion takes an ever-growing interest in Soviet affairs, because the Soviet Union is a human laboratory in which "soviet" experiments are being conducted in the various fields of public and private life, and new foundations are being laid for a new human society. I should like to present to the women readers of The Woman's Voice, in this brief article, the most important information I have been able to gather concerning the Soviet woman—an impartial presentation, stripped of all political and party purposes—so that our women may become correctly acquainted with the conditions of the Soviet woman, her ways of living, and the role she plays in her new surroundings.

Article 122 of the Soviet Constitution says: "Woman has rights equal to those of man in all fields of economic, cultural, social, and political life." The Communists declare that in their society woman is not "a second-class citizen," as she is in other societies, but enjoys all the rights of the citizen, complete and undiminished. Perhaps the most striking manifestation of this equality is that the door of work and earning stands wide open before woman, and that the wage a woman receives is equal to the wage a man receives for the same work—which, in the eyes of the Soviet legislator, guarantees her complete personal independence and frees her from the necessity of having recourse to man. This "economic" equality has removed the chief cause of prostitution, for it has freed woman from "bondage" to man and done away with all the material methods of "exploitation."

Yet granting woman the right to work does not compel her to work; it leaves her the freedom to choose the work that suits her competence and her aptitude, and she may, if she wishes, confine her care to her home under the wing of her husband, her father, or her son—for that is her right.

The Soviet citizen—man or woman—enjoys the right to rest, as Article 119 of the Constitution provides. Enjoyment of this right is guaranteed by the legal limitation of the daily hours of work, by the establishment of a weekly holiday for all, and by the granting of an annual paid vacation to workers and employees, together with the placing of a wide network of rest homes, clubs, and sanatoria at their disposal to provide for their needs. The Soviet citizen enjoys the right to material security in old age and in the event of sickness and incapacity for work; and this right is guaranteed, as Article 120 of the Constitution says, by the broad development of social insurance for workers and employees at the expense of the state, by free medical treatment, and by the placing of a wide network of sanatoria at the disposal of the workers. Woman's rights in this domain are wider than man's, and her privileges greater than his, because her need of them is greater.

The Soviet citizen enjoys the right to education, as Article 121 of the Constitution provides. Elementary schooling is compulsory, and education is free at all its levels; and students in the upper classes and in the institutes are granted, in addition, financial subsidies that help them devote themselves wholly to their studies.

Nor are woman's privileges confined to the rights she enjoys directly. The state's care for her children from their birth until the completion of their studies; the free hospitals and sanatoria the state places at the citizens' disposal; the social guarantees and material insurance it grants them in the event of old age and incapacity for work; and what it grants the wife and children upon the death of husband and father... all these privileges, though not reserved to woman alone, offer her a great help, raise the level of her life, and free her from cares for the morrow and from perpetual anxiety over the future of her children and her family.

Soviet writers hold that these measures freed woman from the heavy inheritance of the past, so that she threw herself into life, working in all its fields. Only a few years passed before she revealed the great talents she harbored within her, which she had had no opportunity to display in the past. The Soviets boast that in their Council of Ministers there are twelve women ministers; that in the Supreme Soviet there are 189 women, in the Supreme Soviets of the union republics many hundreds of women, and tens of thousands in the local soviets; that the number of educated women is constantly growing—women engineers, for example, make up 36 percent of all engineers, and women doctors 60 percent of all doctors; that a hundred thousand women hold degrees from the institutes of engineering and mechanics; that the number of women teachers in the universities, secondary schools, and elementary schools is nearly a million; and that woman plays an important role in intellectual, literary, and artistic life. Here is a statistical table showing the importance of this role in cultural life between 1928 and 1938:

(The figures represent percentages)

1928 1938
Percentage of women in universities and higher schools: 28.1 43.1
Percentage of women in technical schools: 37.6 51.6
Percentage of women in workers' institutes: 15.6 35.2
Percentage of women in advanced scientific studies: 22.8 34.1

In the light of this information and these figures we may say that the Soviet woman has advanced, in the past thirty years, with a rapidity that has no precedent. And whatever our own opinion of the Soviet system and of Soviet policy, we cannot but acknowledge what the Soviets have achieved in this field.