WOMEN’S RIGTH IN THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

Abstract

Before the Russian Revolution, soviet women relied heavily on their families and had low literacy levels. However, the haste to find places for women in the job market and the need to consolidate the 1917 revolution, militants for the cause started bringing the industry awareness about the importance of women’s emancipation. From then, the beginning of the revolution was marked by a mobilization by women’s workers to strike, which was backed by soldiers and other workers, eventually evolving into a big enough movement to overthrow czarism. With Lenin in charge of the Soviet Union, Bolshevik thinking shifts when it comes to their ideas about women, and several instances of public policy which benefited women and granted them essential rights to reach gender equality were implemented, including new labor laws and workers rights. However, the evolution of those rights brought on a significant impasse in the USSR, considering men were returning from war, which made Lenin adopt backthinking measures, jeopardizing women’s rights. This article’s goal is to compare the rights of women in the Russian Revolution, past and present, and to highlight which rights were afforded and what changes were made to those.