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The controversy in the Tribune’s
letters column over Gorbachev’s
remarks about Soviet women and their
“purely womanly mission” has not
passed unnoticed in this country, where
the Canadian Tribune has a
surprisingly large number of readers.

A few weeks ago Sara
Kamenschikova, a Radio Moscow
editor who was born and raised in the
U.S., phoned me with an interesting
proposal: “What if we get a
representative group of Soviet women
together to react to all of this, on the
air?” she asked.

The consequent reaction went on for
an hour and a half in the studio, and a
further hour in the Radio Moscow
cafeteria afterwards. I wish I could
offer Tribune readers more than just a
few highlights of what was, to put it
mildly, an animated discussion.

The partici-
pants were: Irina
Otchneva, 36,
deputy manager
of a used book
store in
Moscow; Mira
-Petrovskaya, 54,
senior researcher
at the Institute
for the Study of
the U.S. and
Canada, anda
member of the

‘Soviet Women’s
Committee;
Larissa Fomenko, 50, poet, journalist
and translator of foreign literature;
Sara Kamenschikova, 46; and me.

Fred: If I may summarize, the
concern expressed is that Gorbachev’s
remarks reflect an unequal social reality
in which women are now to be pushed
increasingly out of the job market and
back into a traditional role of mother
and home-maker. One Tribune reader
suggests this could be a deliberate
policy to alleviate a future
unemployment problem. Many suspect
that the Gorbachev social
program — early retirement for
women, lengthened maternity
leaves and the proposal to pay women
who wish to be full-time mothers — is
designed to validate the “double
burden,” in which women bear the
brunt of responsibility for home life,
and to enable men to
escape scrutiny

Fred Weir:

8 e Pacific Tribune, April 13, 1988

Letters touch off
debate on women

for their lack of participation. How do
you see this?

Mira: First of all, there is some
misunderstanding about the state’s
commitment here. State funding for
nurseries and education is increasing.
The numbers of these facilities is going
to grow enormously, and so is their
quality. Even so, it will cost even more
to maintain women at home, as
mothers, than to keep their children in
a nursery. So the commitment to

-women is growing .

Irina: To my mind, no matter how
much facilities increase in number, they
will not replace the mother’s presence
in the home, in the child’s life,

especially in the first years. These are

character-forming years, and many of
the problems we have with youth now
are due to our lack of attention to this
in the past.

Sara: Did you stay home with your
child?

Irina: Yes, for three years.

Larissa: I stayed home with my son
for two years. I understand why some
Canadian women might respond this
way to Gorbachev’s words. Maybe
they don’t know our reality, that we’ve
been liberated for many years to such a
great extent that now there is a certain
nostalgia for home, for motherhood. I
think my son would be a better person
if I had given more to him....

Sara: I stayed home with my
daughter for a year and a half, then
worked part-time for another eight
months. But the idea of
giving my job

Cc ild care centre (top), Moscow family, Kazakh engineering fidente (bottom):
finding a balance between child-rearing and work.

up altogether I wouldn’t seriously
consider.

Mira: I'd like to address this
question of whether this idea of “luring
women into the home” is part of a plan
to solve unemployment in the future.
We don’t have unemployment now,
and Gorbachev has categorically stated
that the guarantees of our state, to give
full security to every woman and man,
will be preserved.

We have so many discussions about
this nowadays. It seems that before the
year 2000, millions will lose their jobs,
and many plans are coming out to
make sure there will be new jobs for
them all. I see no one treating women
separately in this process or suggesting
they could lose their right to work if
they wish to ....

Larissa: When I put my son ina
nursery, I think that social atmosphere
played a role. I could have stayed
home longer, but felt social pressure to
return to work. I didn’t feel appreciated
staying at home. That is why I think
the words of Mikhail Gorbachev are
very important. They create a greater
social acceptance for staying home and
giving more to children. If you want to.

Fred: The danger with social
atmospheres is that they create trends,
which can become in a sense
compulsory. Just as Larissa felt herself
pressured to return to work, some may
now feel obliged to abandon their
careers ....

Larissa: Yes, you have to be strong.
Perhaps you are right, there is some
danger ... I’m against extremes ....

Mira: I understood immediately
when I heard Gorbachev speaking at
the Women’s Congress last year that he
would be misinterpreted by Western
feminists. People should try to
understand our historical and cultural
context.

In North America, for instance, for
many decades, women fought to gain
political and economic rights, for
equality with men. In this country, with
the revolution, women received all of
these rights in full measure. So our
picture is reversed, and most of our
current realities look different from
American ones.

For instance, American women had
a baby-boom. They were oriented to
home life, where they were treated as
dolls and servants. Of course they
struggled, quite rightly, against that.

But at the same time, it was quite a
different picture in this country. We
were all working — obliged to, in
fact — and during the years
experienced quite different problems
from those of North American women.
Many of our women have been
complaining for years that they don’t
feel like women, look like women,
receive attention as women. We were
very hurt by those images of us in the

. West, that pictured us as stout, frumpy

tractor drivers and steelworkers. We
were demoralized by this ....

Women in Western countries should
try to understand that we don’t have
the necessity to strive for economic,
social or political equal rights. We want
other things, that arise from our own
circumstances ....

Fred: But if the trend is to create
greater choice, why are these social
privileges being offered only to women?
Why not to both parents equally, and
let each family decide?

Sara: Many women say that
biological factors predominate here.
Not only the function of giving. birth,
but the fact that virtually all Soviet
women breast-feed their babies for
extended periods.

Mira: It seems to me that also,
psychologically, men are not prepared
to take a woman’s place in this
business. Maybe there are some signs
these days that a new approach to this
can work. But we have never imagined
such a thing before. We are dealing, I
guess, with tradition ....

But maybe there is a new trend, that
men will also start caring for infants. I
think it’s very progressive.

Irina: Maybe I will sound old-
fashioned, but I think with a new-born
baby, the mother must stay. Up to one ~
year. Afterwards maybe they can divide
duties.

‘Sara: As for sick leaves — caring for
a sick child — the law already allows
either parent 14 days, with pay, to care
for it, each time it eee sick. So here it’s
already equal ..

Fred: But no one is talking about
full-time fatherhood as an option.

Irina: There is a financial point here.
Usually the father’s wages are
higher. ...

Fred: It does seem that Soviet
women have been ghettoized in low-
paying professions — even though
these may involve high qualifications
and correspond to top-paying
professions.in the West — such as
doctors, teachers, engineers ....

Mira: Don’t get it wrong. There is
equal pay for the same job.

Larissa: The situation is changing
now. Doctors and teachers are being
paid much more and men are going
into these professions ..

Sara: Doesn’t this just ‘confirm the
problem?

Mira: In many of these areas wages
were low because they involved free
services —education, health.
care — and while we were building
them up we couldn’t afford high wages.
Over the years, it is true, men began to