"Woman Is a Negro of the World" – In the Capitalist World!

Irina Malenkov

When I was a child living under Socialism in the USSR, I heard once a song by John Lennon called "Woman is a Negro of the world". At that time I could not quite understand it: surely, Black people have it a lot worse than women? What about the apartheid in South Africa, racial discrimination in the U.S., centuries of slavery and colonial robbery? But the main reason I could not understand it was because I was judging it from the position of a SOVIET WOMEN, who was living under socialism. I could not really imagine what life for a women, is like in a capitalist world, no matter how much I read about.

My first experience, when we left the USSR after the destructive "perestroika", was in a very small Western European country where we immigrated to live. This country that we call part of a "civilized world" nowadays (simply because this is how we portray ourselves!). I remember my first impressions were that I landed somewhere in the Middle Ages! At the University that I attended, there were no women engineers, barely a few women doctors and university teachers. At this university in this Western European country, we had a woman who was happy to find a position as a faculty secretary, even though this women was far better educated than most men, who were our lecturers, and, this woman had just completed her Doctorate. Even this secretarial position she was able to get was by being a mistress to one of the professors.

The working culture at any ordinary workplace was openly hostile to women: they were simply not taken seriously, they were expected just to be there to make coffee for the men when required and to find it funny when they were subjected to men’s sleazy jokes. And – what a wonder – most of these freedom-loving, educated and so-called liberated Western women, who gladly love to protest against women’s position in other cultures, for example - in Islam - gladly accepted this. Just as they sheepishly accepted continuous women’s humiliation on TV, in the "erotic" films and in what they call "explicit" magazines that fill the shelves in any Western small shop, in full view of the children. Young girls here were taught from an early age (8-9 years) to wear "sexy" underwear and that a stripper or a prostitute is "just a job like any other" – and these are the ideas that they grew up with. Where there was occasionally talk on the pay difference between men and women – for example, like in Britain, where I live now, where gender pay gap is the biggest in Europe, 17% of full time workers - the suggestions offered for this problem seemed to be deliberately avoiding the core problems of the issue and only concentrating on minor things, like "training more women for traditional men’s jobs" (something that has already been done long before them in the Socialist countries!) while keeping silent on the fact that women here also get paid less for THE VERY SAME KIND OF WORK that the men do.

When in this Western university I wanted to study what they called "Russian Studies", I had discovered that the text books given to us were filled-up with such blatant lies about the life in the USSR, that I decided against taking up that course. According to that text book, for example, the Socialist USSR did not have any trade unions, and that our women "were working only because their husbands didn’t earn enough". To me as a Soviet woman, this was deeply insulting to think that we only worked because of our material side, and not because we, Soviet women are just as human beings as the men, who want to contribute to society with their knowledge and to continually develop ourselves in our working lives. But in any capitalist society they would not even understand what you are talking about here: wouldn’t you just want to stay home if your hubby would be bringing home enough cash? After all, this is where women really belong, isn’t it?

There, in a Socialist State, the state was supporting women, giving them the chance to combine work with motherhood – in a capitalist world - with some exceptions – like in those idiotic violent computer games, "you are on your own, cadet"

In the USSR women had 18 months paid maternity leave, and for those who wanted it, there was also additional 18 months unpaid leave with a full guarantee that you will get your job back. There were also subsidized childcare facilities, paid for according to the people’s wages, provided mainly by the state enterprises. There were summer camps for children throughout the whole summer – and not for some miserable 2 weeks only. Nobody could have been fired without the permission of the trade union, and that means, for example, that single mothers would never lose their jobs. While in the capitalist world they gladly make you redundant when you are pregnant – and in most cases – employers get away with it.

The capitalists like to point out that in the Soviet system, women were "double burdened", meaning, combination of domestic work with work outside the house. What they do not like to mention, that women in their own world are increasingly facing the same burden, without any real support from the state, - and without equality and the respect that was a normal thing for all women in the Soviet society. And even though our system was not perfect due to the external and internal enemies (perfect world does not yet exist), it was still by far much better for the majority of women than what is called the free world has to offer them today.

Most of the problems that the capitalists talk about in the West, were solved successfully in the USSR before the counter-revolution. In the Soviet Union, women doctors, engineers, teachers, professors, directors of enterprises were not an exception, like in the West. In the USSR there was no such thing as "sexual slavery" into which so many "liberated" women are now forced in order to feed their families. There was no need to sell yourself! There was no need to humiliate yourself! There was such a thing as human dignity. Women were not the first ones to lose their jobs and not have to sign as contract promising the employer that they will not become pregnant while in his employment, as they now have to do in this modern capitalist Russia!

In the Soviet Union, women were not compared to "cows who are there to be milked", like in an advertisement I heard on the radio in Western Europe in 1996. In the USSR there was no need for women to behave like men – in order to be accepted as equal. There was no need to choose between home or work. My mother was an engineer. Raised me alone after her divorce, - and managed to combine that with a fine career in a factory, becoming head of a department at the age of 36 years.

In the USSR, all the roads for women were wide open – just as they were open for all honest genuine people. In most capitalist countries women today still remain "Negroes of the world", who are expected to be very grateful for every single small concession "received" – while in the USSR those were simply your rights, natural as the air you breathe!