From Suffrage to Space: The Role of Soviet Women

From its earliest days, the Soviet Union recognized the power of women. After all, they were the ones who kickstarted the Russian Revolution. 

The state wielded the image of the "New Soviet Woman" as a powerful tool—depicting her as a tireless worker, a fearless soldier, and a devoted mother. But beneath the idealised portrayals lay a different reality. Women in the USSR navigated a society where the state’s vision of modernity clashed with deeply rooted traditional expectations.

 

The Women Who Sparked a Revolution

By March 1917, Russia was teetering on collapse. The men were off fighting World War I, leaving women to shoulder the burdens of both factory work and raising children. Wartime shortages made daily survival a struggle, and feeding their families often meant standing for hours in freezing bread lines—only to leave empty-handed. The people of Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) were starving.

On March 8, 1917, female workers at Petrograd’s M. Aivaz factory called for a strike to demand “peace and bread.” They urged male workers to join them, and word of the protest spread quickly from factory to factory. By the end of the day, more than 100,000 people were demonstrating in the streets.

Czar Nicholas II, who had survived the 1905 revolution, ordered the military to suppress the uprising. But this time, his command fell on deaf ears. Soldiers, witnessing the women's plight, were sympathetic. Women distributed flyers to soldiers, and rather than fire on them, many refused the Czar’s orders - some even joined the women's revolution. 

Within days, the demonstrations escalated into a full-scale insurrection. Support for the czar evaporated, and less than a week later, he abdicated the throne to his brother who refused to accept it. The monarchy had fallen.

In the wake of the revolution, the new Communist government became the first major power to grant women the right to vote. Lenin took it a step further, declaring March 8th an official Soviet holiday: Women’s Day. 

Other countries soon followed suit, and in 1975, the United Nations formally established International Women’s Day—though keen to distance it from its socialist origins, the UN emphasized that each country could observe it “in accordance with their historical and national traditions.”

The ‘New Soviet Woman’ and the Workforce

The USSR’s constitution promised gender equality: "Women in the USSR are accorded equal rights with men in all spheres of economic, state, cultural, social, and political life." To bring this vision to life, the Soviet government established the Zhenotdel, a women’s department, in 1919.

Tasked with mobilizing women for the workforce and public life, the Zhenotdel crafted the image of the ideal Soviet woman— self-sacrificing and dedicated to the revolutionary cause, and fully integrated into the socialist state.

To increase female participation in the workforce, the Soviet government introduced the Family Code in 1918. It secularized marriage, granted equal rights to illegitimate children, and legalized divorce. In 1920, the USSR became the first country in the world to legalize abortion. 

By 1922, marital rape was criminalized, and women were granted paid maternity leave and equal wages. These policies marked significant progress—at least on paper. In practice, many women did not receive these rights in full.

Lenin viewed women as an untapped labour force and sought to free them from domestic drudgery, famously declaring: “Petty housework crushes, strangles, stultifies, and degrades [the woman]... wasting her labor on unproductive, nerve-racking, crushing drudgery.”

Women entered the workforce in unprecedented numbers. By 1927, 44.4% of secondary school students were female, and the number of women in the workforce doubled between 1923 and 1930.

But in 1930, the Zhenotdel was disbanded—the government claimed its work was complete. By the mid-1930s, Soviet policy took a sharp conservative turn. Abortion was outlawed, divorce became difficult again, and women were once more pushed into domestic roles. State propaganda reflected this shift: the confident, factory-working Soviet woman of the 1920s gave way to images of women joyfully cradling infants at home.

 

The Hujum: A Soviet Crusade for Gender Reform

The Soviet Union’s push for women’s liberation extended beyond Russia, reaching into Muslim-majority Central Asia. In 1927, on International Women’s Day, the government launched the Hujum campaign, targeting traditional practices like polygamy, honour killings, and child marriage, which Soviet officials saw as barriers to socialism.

The Zhenotdel focused its efforts on Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan, organising symbolic public veil removal events and literacy programs, in order to empower women to become active political participants.

However, Hujum was seen by Central Asian Muslims as a campaign through which outsiders sought to force their cultural values onto them. The veil was a marker of cultural identity, and wearing it became an act of pro-Islamic political defiance as well as a sign of support for ethnic nationalism.

Removing it felt like an attack on their heritage rather than a path to liberation. Instead of fostering unity, the campaign often deepened divides. Yet, by the 1950s, literacy rates in Uzbekistan had climbed to 70-75%, and the veil had largely disappeared, replaced by loosely worn scarves.

 

Soviet Women at War: From Rejection to Recognition

When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, thousands of Soviet women volunteered to fight—but at first, they were turned away. With men called to the front, women took on critical roles in agriculture and industry. 

By 1942, they made up more than half of the agricultural workforce. As Soviet losses mounted, the government reversed its stance on women, allowing them to serve in combat. By the war’s end, 800,000 women had fought in the Soviet Armed Forces—roughly 5% of total military personnel.

Mariya Vasilyevna Oktyabrskaya embodied this wartime spirit. After her husband was killed in battle, she sold her possessions to fund a tank, naming it “Fighting Girlfriend.” She trained as a driver and mechanic, fought on the front lines, and posthumously became the first female tank driver awarded Hero of the Soviet Union—the nation’s highest combat honour.

After the war, most women left the military. Those who remained faced dwindling opportunities. Some military academies closed their doors to women, despite the supposed official policy of equality. But while postwar limitations stifled many, Soviet propaganda continued to champion female achievement.

In 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. A textile-factory worker selected from 400 applicants, she was inducted into the Soviet Air Force for the mission, becoming an icon of gender equality under communism. Yet her achievement was an anomaly rather than the norm—no woman would fly in space again for nearly two decades.

From Social Services to Survival

In the 1960s, the Soviet state worked to ease the burden on working women by expanding social services. By 1970, nearly half of urban children were enrolled in state-run daycare centers, and reforms extended fully paid maternity leave to eight weeks before and after childbirth—with an option for up to ten additional months.

Yet even with these measures, true equality was never achieved. Women were largely funneled into lower-paying sectors like education, healthcare, and light industry, while men dominated heavy industry. Although the 1966 Constitution guaranteed equal rights, wage gaps persisted; by the later Soviet era, women’s wages averaged only about 70% of men’s.

The mid‑1980s brought significant change under Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost and perestroika. With the easing of state censorship, previously silenced voices emerged and independent women’s organizations began to form.

In March 1991, the First Independent Women’s Forum in Dubna brought together hundreds of women to discuss the gap between the idealized “New Soviet Woman” and their everyday struggles. Prominent dissidents like Tatyana Velikanova and Larisa Bogoraz emerged as key figures, challenging state policies and exposing the limits of Soviet “equality.”

The fall of the USSR shattered the state’s promise of guaranteed work and extensive benefits. Unemployment soared for both men and women. Many women—who had once worked as engineers, scientists, and teachers—found themselves with few options. Some turned to prostitution to support their families, while many were relegated to low-paying secretarial roles, with job advertisements prioritising physical attractiveness.

Soviet women made undeniable contributions to the nation's development, often driven by necessity rather than true equality. Despite legal guarantees, they shouldered a "double shift" - working full-time jobs while managing households - exposing the limits of the Soviet state's claims to gender liberation.