As an ethnographer, I have been studying the lives of ordinary women in socialist and post-socialist countries in Eastern Europe for over twenty-five years. I have always been fascinated by the differences in women’s life options in the presence or absence of robust social safety nets. As a scholar, I’ve spent decades working in archives and interviewing people across the region, and I have written eight books about the various gendered experiences of everyday life in Eastern Europe. As a professor, I have taught a course called “Sex and Socialism,” almost every year for eighteen years and I am always reading widely in this field to look for new material for my syllabi.
I wrote...
Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence
By
Kristen R. Ghodsee
What is my book about?
Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism explores the expansive empirical research showing that women living in socialist countries experienced certain forms of gender emancipation well before women living in the West. By examining women’s roles as mothers, workers, leaders, citizens, and yes, even lovers, this book synthesizes decades worth of studies to show that “lean in” or #girlboss feminism has not been enough to undermine the persistence of sexism embedded in competitive labor markets.
Instead of blaming themselves for not being able to “have it all,” women need to take a long hard look at our economic system and understand how the unpaid labor of caregivers in the home subsidizes the profits of the business leaders who rely on families to bear and raise the next generation of consumers and taxpayers for free. The problem is with capitalism, not with us.
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The Books I Picked & Why
Woman Under Socialism
By
August Bebel
Why this book?
Written while August Bebel was serving a jail term under Germany’s anti-socialist laws, Woman and Socialismwas published in over fifty editions and in more than twenty languages between 1879 and 1914. The first English edition was published in 1908 and became something of a sensation in the United Kingdom and the United States. Unlike other men in the labor movement at the time, Bebel believed that women were the full equals of men and should have the same economic, social, and political rights. More importantly, he argued that socialism would give women economic independence, and that this would allow them more freedom in their personal lives, including in their choice of a sexual partner. The book sometimes feels as radical today as it was 150 years ago.
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The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
By
Friedrich Engels
Why this book?
Engels provides the canonical theoretical framework for understanding how capitalism uniquely impacts women’s lives and how a more collectivized economy lays the foundation for women’s full emancipation. While many subsequent feminist and socialist scholars have disagreed with this book, The Origin of the Family is a classic that has inspired countless generations of theorists and activists.
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Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917 1936
By
Wendy Z. Goldman
Why this book?
This deeply researched book explores the massive upheavals that followed the Bolshevik Revolution in the young Soviet Union. By mining a rich body of archival research, Goldman reveals just how radical Soviet policies to emancipate women really were in their historical context. More importantly, she uncovers the heated debates that characterized this early period of Soviet history before the rigidity and paranoia of Stalinism takes over and he reverses many of the early gains.
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Love in the Time of Communism: Intimacy and Sexuality in the GDR
By
Josie McLellan
Why this book?
McLellan’s book does a wonderful job of exploring the reconfiguration of romantic relationships that occurred in the former Eastern Germany. In addition to excellent sex education and access to birth control, the East German government radically expanded the availability of childcare and job-protected, paid maternity leaves to help women combine their work and family responsibilities. The socialist state also promoted a uniquely sex positive outlook on life that rejected the commodification of sexuality in favor of a more natural and free form of relations between citizens. A fascinating read with lots of rich historical details.
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Sexual Liberation, Socialist Style: Communist Czechoslovakia and the Science of Desire, 1945-1989
By
Kateřina Lisková
Why this book?
Katerina Liskova’s intriguing sociological and historical study provides a deep dive into the creation of “expert knowledge” by progressive sexologists in the former socialist state of Czechoslovakia. She argues convincingly that while American housewives pottered around their kitchens in the 1950s, Czechoslovak women experienced a sexual revolution after abortion was legalized, same sex love was decriminalized, and scientists focused on how to improve women’s sex lives. State efforts to promote the ideal of full gender equality within romantic relations gave women new opportunities for education and professional advancement that their mothers and grandmothers could scarcely have dreamed of.
