Women in the Work Force
M. Pankratova, The Soviet Woman -- A Social Portrait. January-March, 1978
Co-author Z. Yankova
Original Source: Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia, No. 1 (1978).
Recent data shed further light on the employment of women in the USSR. The 1970 Soviet census, for example, showed that 80% of working-age women were employed and 7. 5% were students. A 1975 study by A. E. Kotliar and S. Ia. Turchaninova showed that women's average length of employment in the public sector was 28. 7 years in 1960 and 33. 5 years in 1970. The average number of nonworking years dropped from 12.3 in 1960 to 3.6 years in 1970. According to a 1971 study of reasons women gave for working, A. G. Kharchev and S. I. Golod found marked differences between semiskilled and unskilled women workers at industrial enterprises, on the one hand, and highly skilled workers, engineers and technicians, on the other. Of the women in the first group, 53.5% said they worked to supplement the family income, 21.5% cited a desire to be part of a collective, 13.6% wanted to do socially useful work, and 11.4% said they wanted to be financially independent of their husbands. As for the professional women, 58% of them cited the desire to do socially useful work as the motive that was uppermost, and 21% wanted participation in a collective; financial considerations were in last place for them. More and more women anticipate holding a job in the public sector all their working years. A study by N. G. Iurkevich found that about 95% of women were prepared to work even if their husbands were to earn as much as the two of them together.
Women comprise 51% of the work force throughout the country. In the Russian, Belorussian, Georgian and Estonian Republics they comprise 52% to 53%; in the remaining republics the figure is 41% to 50%. Of rural personnel, 51% are women. Women comprise well over half the work force in many sectors: 81% of the public health, physical culture and social security workers; 80% of the bank loan and state insurance employees; 73% of those in education and culture; 76% of those employed in trade, restaurants, supply and procurements; 68% of communications workers; and 64% of those on the staffs of state administration, cooperative and public organizations.
The number of women specialists is 15 times as great as in 1940, and 83 times as great as in 1928. The trend is countrywide. The percentage of rural women engaged in mental labor has risen from 10.5% in 1959 to nearly 18% in 1970 (as compared to 14% of the men).
The nature of industrial jobs that women hold has improved as well. According to Kotliar and Turchaninova, 22% more women performed mechanized jobs in 1972 than in 1965, 60% more did repair work, and 67% more had automated jobs. The number of women who set up automated equipment more than tripled during that period, and the number of women who were automated- machinery operators increased 2.8 times. On the farm, the number of women leaders of integrated fieldwork, tractor and livestock-raising brigades nearly doubled.
Machine building is one of the largest employers of women. Women comprise 45% to 47% of the employees of the instruments and electronics industries, for example, and 65% to 67% of those in the precision machine -building and radio industries.
Women are invaluable members of the work force. Not only are they careful, well-organized and disciplined, but their greater concern for and sensitivity toward fellow employees helps foster a supportive atmosphere on the job. Moreover, as a study by N. M. Shishkan demonstrated in Moldavia, for example, women's hourly and daily output is higher than men's, they over-fulfill production norms more often, and their turnover and absentee rates are lower.
In domestic life the imbalance between men's and women's work loads remains striking, however. Women spend 10 to 12 hours weekly on food preparation, about six hours on grocery shopping, and almost six hours doing laundry. The corresponding figures for men are 1. 5 to 2 hours, 3 hours, and 20 to 30 minutes.
A majority of rural women interviewed about their preferences as to the division of household responsibilities said that the ideal arrangement would be (a) equal sharing of tasks by all family members and heavy use of public child-care and other services. Fewer women favored (b) holding the woman responsible but making public services available to her, or (c) sharing the tasks and making little use of public services. The responses varied with the women's occupation and educational level. Data gathered in various regions of the country show that attitudes about women's roles differ conspicuously from the older to the younger generation of rural women.
Soviet rule has brought about major changes in women's lives, yet a great deal remains to be done, particularly in mechanizing and automating jobs that women traditionally have held -auxiliary work in industry (still 80% women), grading and sorting (86% women), and packing (80% women).
Source: Current Digest of the Soviet Press. Vol. XXX (1978), No. 8