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A review by heathward
Revenge of the Domestic: Women, the Family, and Communism in the German Democratic Republic by Donna Harsch
5.0
Donna Harsch demonstrates how the productivist mentalities of the SED leadership in East Germany was challenged by women. The male SED (Communist-party) leadership was blissfully unaware of the problems that women working outside the home faced in dealing with the double burden of work and domestic duty. Harsch sees the push by women for state solutions to their problems as a force that remolded GDR society in a profound way. Her work thus contributes to a much more complex understanding of East German society than the old top-down model provided. Her study, which focuses mainly on the period 1945-1971, but briefly touches on the years up to 1989, is based on extensive archival research and interviews. It is filled with fascinating, vivid, first-hand accounts of women's experiences.
In the early years, women were at loggerheads with the Communist party- women were profoundly upset by the mass rapes of German women by Soviet troops, and they pressed the SED to do something about mass hunger, POW's, deportees to the Soviet Union, and restrictions on abortion. In addition, the workplace remained highly gendered. Female workers were "overwhelmed by housework, child care, and long commutes" (p. 130).
The needs of women were overlooked because of biased attitudes and distrust of women, because women were seen as a secondary labor force, and because the regime wanted to encourage births. Pronatalist policies both undermined professional equality and diminished women's reproductive autonomy. Popular resistance was minimal in the 1950's because of a widespread "conviction that a 'healthy' woman's desire for children was central to her identity as a woman" (p. 153).
Women were quick to note that it was they who bore the burden of making up for the failures of the system, for example by darning stockings. The pressure of female consumers contributed to a shift towards increased production of consumer goods. Increased production of household appliances resulted in a "minicult of domesticity" (p. 193) that reinforced traditional gender roles. Far from promoting communal living, "the SED wanted a stable, conformist, quiescent nuclear family" (p. 200)
Change came in the 1960's. In this era of economic reform, the GDR needed skilled female labor as never before. Attempts to win women's favor made officials more responsive to women's needs. Complaints from below played as much of or more of a role than the activities of anemic and often male-dominated Communist organizations and state commissions. Global developments and world opinion also had an impact.
SED attempts to make women happy consisted in part in providing better consumer goods, food and drink, clothing, and services (childcare, laundry services, vacation spots, housing, etc.). The result was "the creeping domestication of an assertively masculine, anticonsumerist political culture" (p. 283). Popular pressure also led to an abandonment of court-ordered interventions of work colleagues [End Page 257] to "save" marriages and to a professionalization of marriage counseling. Responding to cultural shifts, the SED encouraged men to help out in the household, converted homes where children were boarded on a weekly basis to daycare centers, and allowed an increasing number of women to work part-time. Abortion laws were liberalized.
All these trends intensified under Erich Honecker (in power 1971-1989), who put social welfare and consumerism first. Harsch believes that Honecker saw women as the "key mediators" (p. 307) between the socialist economic system and a changing, modernizing society. Indeed, she believes that "gender relations and domestic issues were major stimuli of the metamorphosis of the 'classic Stalinist system' into the 'welfare dictatorship' and 'consumer socialism.'" (p. 310). But that transformation bankrupted the GDR. The SED's earlier neglect of women and the family set the stage for a "revenge of the domestic" in the form of an unaffordable welfare/consumerist system.
Three major achievements of this book must be highlighted. First, Harsch has succeeded in convincingly showing gender to be a central force in GDR history. Second, she has put a nail in the coffin of totalitarianism theory by portraying the GDR as a dictatorship in which major aspects of society were renegotiated over the course of its history. And third, she has given an important twist to the idea of women's participation in the making of the modern welfare state by showing that women helped bring about a return to the traditional family, albeit with female participation in the workforce.
In the early years, women were at loggerheads with the Communist party- women were profoundly upset by the mass rapes of German women by Soviet troops, and they pressed the SED to do something about mass hunger, POW's, deportees to the Soviet Union, and restrictions on abortion. In addition, the workplace remained highly gendered. Female workers were "overwhelmed by housework, child care, and long commutes" (p. 130).
The needs of women were overlooked because of biased attitudes and distrust of women, because women were seen as a secondary labor force, and because the regime wanted to encourage births. Pronatalist policies both undermined professional equality and diminished women's reproductive autonomy. Popular resistance was minimal in the 1950's because of a widespread "conviction that a 'healthy' woman's desire for children was central to her identity as a woman" (p. 153).
Women were quick to note that it was they who bore the burden of making up for the failures of the system, for example by darning stockings. The pressure of female consumers contributed to a shift towards increased production of consumer goods. Increased production of household appliances resulted in a "minicult of domesticity" (p. 193) that reinforced traditional gender roles. Far from promoting communal living, "the SED wanted a stable, conformist, quiescent nuclear family" (p. 200)
Change came in the 1960's. In this era of economic reform, the GDR needed skilled female labor as never before. Attempts to win women's favor made officials more responsive to women's needs. Complaints from below played as much of or more of a role than the activities of anemic and often male-dominated Communist organizations and state commissions. Global developments and world opinion also had an impact.
SED attempts to make women happy consisted in part in providing better consumer goods, food and drink, clothing, and services (childcare, laundry services, vacation spots, housing, etc.). The result was "the creeping domestication of an assertively masculine, anticonsumerist political culture" (p. 283). Popular pressure also led to an abandonment of court-ordered interventions of work colleagues [End Page 257] to "save" marriages and to a professionalization of marriage counseling. Responding to cultural shifts, the SED encouraged men to help out in the household, converted homes where children were boarded on a weekly basis to daycare centers, and allowed an increasing number of women to work part-time. Abortion laws were liberalized.
All these trends intensified under Erich Honecker (in power 1971-1989), who put social welfare and consumerism first. Harsch believes that Honecker saw women as the "key mediators" (p. 307) between the socialist economic system and a changing, modernizing society. Indeed, she believes that "gender relations and domestic issues were major stimuli of the metamorphosis of the 'classic Stalinist system' into the 'welfare dictatorship' and 'consumer socialism.'" (p. 310). But that transformation bankrupted the GDR. The SED's earlier neglect of women and the family set the stage for a "revenge of the domestic" in the form of an unaffordable welfare/consumerist system.
Three major achievements of this book must be highlighted. First, Harsch has succeeded in convincingly showing gender to be a central force in GDR history. Second, she has put a nail in the coffin of totalitarianism theory by portraying the GDR as a dictatorship in which major aspects of society were renegotiated over the course of its history. And third, she has given an important twist to the idea of women's participation in the making of the modern welfare state by showing that women helped bring about a return to the traditional family, albeit with female participation in the workforce.