Abstract
In the annals of industrialisation, the scale and speed of the Soviet experience was unique.1 The changes that transformed Europe over centuries were telescoped into a mere decade. The Soviet working class grew at an unprecedented rate, changing in size and social composition. Even more striking was the critical role played by women: in no other country did women come to constitute such a significant part of the working class in so short a time. In 1930 alone, 473 000 women entered industry, followed by 587 000 more in 1931. Between 1929 and 1935, almost 4 million women began to work for wages, 1.7 million of these in industry. By 1935, 42 per cent of all industrial workers were women.2 Not only did women enter the labour force in record numbers, but they moved into industries that were traditionally dominated by men. Crossing older lines of sex segregation, they entered new industries such as machine building and electronics, as well as new and expanding branches of older industries such as mining, metallurgy and chemicals. They filled newly-created, semi-skilled jobs as well as older jobs previously held exclusively by men. Their sheer numbers and new position overwhelmed the older patterns of sex segregation that had persisted in Soviet industry through the 1920s. As the strict hierarchies of skill and gender were unexpectedly undercut, male workers were forced to re-examine their ideas about skill, ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ work and women’s role in the workplace.
* Baba means woman, and could also carry a derogatory connotation; ‘at the bench’ refers to skilled machine work.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
For further discussion of women workers in the 1930s, see W. Z. Goldman, Women at the Gates: Gender, Politics and Planning in Soviet Industrialization (Cambridge, 2002),
and M. Ilic, Women Workers in the Soviet Interwar Economy: from ‘Protection’ to ‘Equality’ (London, 1999).
R. Glickman, Russian Factory Women: Workplace and Society, 1880–1914 (London, 1984) pp. 156–218.
D. Valenze, The First Industrial Woman (Oxford, 1995) pp. 85–112.
On shop floor relations between women and men in the printing industry, see D. Koenker, ‘Men against Women on the Shop Floor in Early Soviet Russia: Gender and Class in the Soviet Workplace’, American Historical Review, vol. 100, no. 5, 1995, pp. 1438–64.
W. Goldman, ‘Industrial Politics, Peasant Rebellion and the Death of the Proletarian Women’s Movement in the USSR’, Slavic Review, vol. 55, no. 1, 1996, pp. 46–77. Elizabeth Wood offers a detailed description of these organisational struggles in ‘Class and Gender at Loggerheads in the Early Soviet State: Who Should Organize the Female Proletariat and How?’, in L. Frader and S. Rose (eds), Gender and Class in Modern Europe (Ithaca, 1996) pp. 294–310, and The Baba and the Comrade: Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia (Bloomington, Indiana, 1997) pp. 123–93.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2001 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Goldman, W. (2001). Babas at the Bench: Gender Conflict in Soviet Industry in the 1930s. In: Ilič, M. (eds) Women in the Stalin Era. Studies in Russian and East European History and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230523425_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230523425_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-41825-1
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-52342-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)