Sexual Equality--More or Less

Frustrated wives, lazy husbands and signs of change

Marx proclaimed it, Lenin insisted on it, and the Soviet constitution guarantees it: equality of the sexes, including comparable pay for comparable work. Some of the statistics are impressive: most of the doctors, three-quarters of the teachers and one-third of the engineers are women. So are half of all university and institute students and nearly 60% of those with technical or vocational training in high school or beyond.

Still, Soviet women are second-class comrades. Top jobs have a way of going to men. In medicine, a profession with much less prestige in the Soviet Union than in the West, virtually all the elite surgeons and administrators are male. Mathematics and the sciences are masculine preserves. Though a third of the Supreme Soviet and 25% of Communist Party members are women, none occupy positions of real power, including membership in the Politburo. Even in what are considered traditionally female professions --education, health, post office, telephone and telegraph operations, and shopkeeping--the majority of managers and decision makers are men. As Nikita Khrushchev once admitted to an agricultural conference, "It turns out that it is men who do the administrating and women who do the work."

The rhetoric of women's lib may be little known in the U.S.S.R., but the battle of the sexes seems to be heating up. One recent underground feminist publication issued by bitter women in Leningrad attacked the typical Soviet husband as a brutal, drunken, selfish lout. The document charged that "the male contribution in the home is almost nonexistent. Any man who even knows how to hammer a nail is considered a rarity."

The point is well taken. A Soviet survey showing that while women were spending hours in long shopping lines, arguing with bureaucratic clerks and doing household chores without the benefit of a bevy of modern appliances, husbands were lazily watching TV, reading newspapers, tippling with their cronies or otherwise being idle.

They are not very good lovers either. Many a Soviet male has never seen his wife naked, and creative lovemaking is not high on the husband's list of living priorities. Ignorance is partly to blame, and some of that is being overcome by Western influences. One Moscow woman says her "naive, inexperienced husband" has been performing heroically since she showed him a smuggled copy of The Joy of Sex. A slowly improving standard of living has had an impact too. Many couples who once made love under the covers in an apartment crowded with relatives now have their own apartments and are more relaxed about sex. Says one such wife: "Now I feel freer to tell my husband what gives me pleasure and what doesn't."

Some Soviet commentators have suggested that many of the typical husband's attitudes--which are not exactly unknown in the West--are signs of disguised aggressiveness. In effect, the man is saying, "You're so free and capable, why don't you handle the chores for both of us?" Nonetheless, reports Victor Perevedentsev, a specialist on socioeconomic affairs in Moscow, the Soviet family is slowly changing from a patriarchy into a "biarchy"--equality in the home. Says he: "Women are rebelling, and they, of course, are correct in doing so."

The real irritant, though, is that the frustrated Soviet woman faces inequality both at home and at work, yet must shoulder the responsibilities of both. On the one hand, a dreary full-time job; on the other, the problems of raising kids and keeping her marriage together. That is increasingly hard to do; divorce is rising rapidly, and one marriage in three now fails. The state gives women some help in the form of child care and maternity leaves, but that is hardly enough to ease their dual burdens. One solution being advocated by an increasing number of women: part-time jobs, and plenty of them, to lighten the load and allow a little more breathing space for self-development.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.