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Women during the Great Patriotic War (WW2) (Women in the army (Women…
Women during the Great Patriotic War (WW2)
Women in the army
Women served in the Red Army in all roles, including the infantry and the airforce, forming around 3% of the total personnel of the army.
The majority of women in the Red Army reported that they had felt and been treated as equals to their male counterparts
Despite the general equality of women in the army, there was a significant shortage of uniform appropriately sized for women, making their service more difficult - perhaps an exemplification of equality before the law but not in reality.
Despite the apparent equality of the army, thousands of female volunteers were turned away at the outbreak of war, not being accepted until after Op. Barabarossa
Women in propaganda
The poster 'The Motherland is Calling' presented women as the symbol of the nation and celebrated the vital work carried out by women during the war
Despite this, Soviet propaganda still presented women as being in need of male protection. In 1942,
Pravda
published a series of explicit photos of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, an 18 year old woman enslaved, tortured and murdered by German soldiers. Propaganda was linked to this, linking defending the motherland to protecting women
After the war, heroic women were presented as symbols of the proclaimed absolute sexual equality the Soviet Union had acheived. Female soldiers were a feature fo top level speeches, including Khrushchev's secret speech
Propaganda relating to women over this period appears to reflects a more pervasive theme, with women's position being used more as a political instument
Women and the economy
With a huge number of men mobilised to fight in the Great Patriotic War, women were required to fill the gap this left in the economy. As such, many more women entered into industrial work
This exemplifies the continuation of the double burden, with women expected to hold both, essentially fulltime, domestic and industrial roles
Over 50% of the agricultural labour force was made up of women
With many women's husbands being killed in WW2, women became significantly more likely to become impoverished
Extent of change
Women gained a greater foothold in industrial employment
Women were, to some degree, presented as heroic and as being vital to the success of the SU
The number of women in poverty increased
Exemplified and brought to the fore a number of pre-existing issues, such as the dual burden, differential equality and the use of women as political tools