Women at the Gates: Gender and Industry in Stalin's Russia

by Wendy Z. Goldman

• ISBN13: 9780521780643
• ISBN10: 0521780640
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-02-25
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

In the annals of Industrialization, the Soviet experience is unique in its whirlwind rapidity. Even more striking was the critical role of women: in no country of the world did women come to constitute such a significant part of the working class in so short a time. They composed a larger percentage of the working class, filled an unprecedented share of jobs in heavy industry, and served as the first targeted 'reserve' for Soviet labour policy and recruitment. As women undercut the strict hierarchies of skill and gender within the factories, they forced male workers to re-examine their ideas about 'masculine' and 'feminine' work, and women's role in the work place. Using new Russian archival materials, Women at the Gates is the first social history of Soviet women workers in the 1930s.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
List of Illustrations	xi
List of Tables	xiii
Acronyms and Abbreviations	xv
Introduction	1	(4)
Guarding the Gates to the Working Class: Women in Industry, 1917-1929	5	(28)
The Struggle over Working-Class Feminism	33	(37)
The Gates Come Tumbling Down	70	(39)
From Exclusion to Recruitment	109	(34)
``The Five-Year Plan for Women'': Planning Above, Counterplanning Below	143	(36)
Planning and Chaos: The Struggle for Control	179	(28)
Gender Relations in Industry: Voices from the Point of Production	207	(27)
Rebuilding the Gates to the Working Class	234	(44)
Conclusion	278	(9)
Index	287