WOMEN IN 19 TH CENTURY RUSSIA

ROLES & VIEWS  Strictly defined behaviors  Sexual division of labor  Social status very important  New opportunities & new demands  Old restrictions & old perceptions

WOMEN IN 19 TH CENTURY RUSSIA WOMEN OF THE NOBILITY  Strict division of spheres  Women relegated to domestic realm  But had much control within it  Childrearing was main concern  Mothers had near complete control over daughters  Sons transferred to male oversight after age 7  Increasing engagement in public sphere: charity, education, nursing

WOMEN IN 19 TH CENTURY RUSSIA  Peasant household organized around authority of BOL’SHAK  Corresponding vertical line of authority from dominant woman  Women had some control over domestic sphere, but none in public realm  Women continued to engage in heavy physical labor  But did not mean gender equality  Health, life expectancy, child mortality remained problems WOMEN OF THE WORKING CLASSES

WOMEN IN 19 TH CENTURY RUSSIA  Peasant women went to work in factories & industries  Gained new freedoms  But lost protections  Life in cities & factory work very difficult, dangerous, unhealthy  Married women faced double burden of domestic work + wage work  Distinct sexual division of labor  Women given lower paid, lower skilled jobs EFFECTS OF INDUSTRIALIZATION

WOMEN IN 19 TH CENTURY RUSSIA LEGAL & POLITICAL STATUS  Regardless of social status, near complete lack of rights  All subject to domination by male authority figures  Generally excluded from public life  Only men had citizenship: based on service to state or taxes  Only men could hold passports

WOMEN IN 19 TH CENTURY RUSSIA BIRTH OF THE “WOMAN QUESTION”  Advocacy of greater freedom & opportunity for women began in 1850s  Society subordinated women, not innate weakness  Mentally, women equal to men, just denied opportunity for education  Men, not women, in perpetual heat  Women should be given greater access to education & professions Nikolai Piragov

WOMEN IN 19 TH CENTURY RUSSIA BIRTH OF THE “WOMAN QUESTION”  New opportunities  Women given chance to study at institutions of higher learner  Russia produced some of modern world’s first female doctors, scientists, mathematicians  Women became important members of intelligentsia & revolutionary movements SOFIA KOVALEVSKAIA