Author: GRAY, FRANCINE DU PLESSIX
Title: Soviet Women
Description: Doubleday. 1990. (ISBN: 9780385400909). Hardcover. Hardback with dustjacket - 1990 - good condition - - used books, secondhand books, for sale, out of print books, hard to find books, second-hand books, college books, student books, nonfiction, first editions, exlibrary books sold, signed copies, non-fiction books delivered world wide. 0-385-40090-X. Isbn 038540090X. Soviet women, Gray reports, are expected to hold full-time jobs, yet they are also bombarded by government propaganda exhorting them to have large families. This, combined with a "cult of femininity," induces them to marry early. Traveling widely throughout the U.S.S.R. Gray, who is of Russian-French descent, found gender stereotyping rampant, the Soviet family extremely fragile, sexual frigidity widespread and knowledge or use of birth control appallingly limited. Though the government enforces strict taboos on any women's movement operating outside party control, Gray ( World Without End ) found signs of hope as she talked with feminists, factory workers, a newspaper editor, psychologists, actors, a sexologist, married couples, a hotel maid. Her series of sharply focused, brilliantly incisive vignettes add up to a remarkably revealing, often surprising profile of Soviet women under glasnost. First serial to the New Yorker. The subtitle reflects the attitudes of Soviet women, who are constitutionally guaranteed full equality with men, but who after decades of working harder than most members of the opposite sex are willing to be a little less equal and have a lot less work to do. The geographically, culturally, and economically diverse group of women interviewed herein are bound by the recurring theme of lack of time and often lack of energy to accomplish all the tasks expected of them. Working women have essentially two jobs-the one they go to and the one they return to. The women interviewed are interesting and often individualistic. The problems addressed are diverse: intense disagreements usually centered around the lack of support from the family; anxiety over the quality of child-care centers; the difficulty of purchasing often even the simplest necessities; and the horrors of abortion, a common form of birth control. Used: Acceptable.

Keywords: 9780385400909


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