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POSTERS ON THIS SITE |
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Women’s Right to Work |
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This poster is meant to inspire women into the workplace. It was so important to the Soviets of the time that this poster was reprinted through 1950. It commemorates International Communist Women’s Day, celebrated on March 8 of every year. The woman in the poster urges, “You, working women of all countries! Get into the front lines with the fighters against the war, fascism and capitalist exploitation!” The rights of women were established by the rules of the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917, so that women were called, in posters like this one, to fill many of the jobs that had formerly been given exclusively to men. When war was developing with Germany, the USSR needed workers to replace the men gone off to war. Women were needed in the work force in many countries during those years, but in the newly formed USSR so many had been arrested or had starved during the previous decade, that the USSR was in even greater need of the support of women in the workplace. According to M Pichugina, In the 1936 book, Women in the USSR: “Women are accorded public honor for good work or the attainment of greater proficiency or skill. A number of professions which were regarded for centuries as being strictly "men's jobs" are now being "captured" by women. Before the Revolution, women were forbidden to hold positions of any importance on the railroads. Now there are over half a million women working on the railroads in the U.S.S.R., many of them occupying key positions. Among these women railroad workers there are 400 station masters, 1,400 assistant station masters, and about 10,000 railroad engineers and technicists. Any Soviet working woman or collective farmer who has the desire and who shows the necessary organizational abilities has the opportunity of becoming the manager of any Soviet enterprise. The U.S.S.R. has its women engineers, physicians, fliers, scientists and executives. There is no branch of industry, agriculture, science or art, and no phase of executive or government work in which women are not employed. There are more than 100,000 women engineers and technicists employed in large-scale industry or in the building trades in the Soviet Union, whereas in all the other countries of the world combined there are less than 10,000 women engineers.” The employment of women had much to do with the establishment of “Kindergartens”. Women were given a two month leave for child-bearing, after which time, childcare was provided by the Kindergarten. The catch was, showing up for work late more than three time, absenteeism, or a refusal to work, resulted in imprisonment. Any babies born in the women’s prison were permanently removed to “Kindergartens.” Most of the women were never reunited with their children or other loved ones. |
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ABOVE: Factory worker collection from 1939 World’s Fair from “Stalinism as a Way of Life” BELOW: Woman driving a tractor, from “Women in the USSR” M. Pichugina, 1936 |
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BELOW: Women living in overcrowded, poorly heated Gulag barracks. Courtesy of the International Memorial Society. |
