If you were a woman living in the 1930s, which country would you want to live in… Germany, Italy or the Soviet Union? (You MUST choose one of those three; there is no fourth choice.) Give three reasons for the country you choose and one reason why you did not choose one of the other two countries. Use facts to back up your position.
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ReplyDeleteIf I were a woman living in the 1930s, I would choose to live in the Soviet Union for multiple reasons. Conditions for women in the Soviet Union had been better under Lenin than under Stalin, where women could get a divorce in an easier manner when Lenin was in power. Stalin made it so these aspects in women’s lives changes, but conditions were still worse for women in Italy and Germany in the 1930s.
ReplyDeleteIn this time period, Stalin put an emphasis on family, so divorces and abortions became very difficult to get, but in the work place, women maintained their status and they shared a sort of equality with men. Women were allowed to work in factories, and they could even do technical work alongside men. Women also received equal access to education, such as literacy classes, as men did. They did not receive much discrimination with education. Crèches were also established so that women could return to work after giving birth. The crèches allowed for their children to be looked after while women did their work.
The conditions women had to live with in Germany were worse at the time because the belief that women should stay at home was reinforced and women were not treated equally in the work force. In Italy during the 1930s, women were being pressured to have many children because Mussolini had a plan to launch the Italian population, and women were also expected to accept the fascist ideology.
Overall, women lived in better conditions in the Soviet Union during the 1930s rather than in Germany and Italy, where they were treated more equally with men in the work force, in pursuit of education, and they were benefitted with crèches so their children could be looked after while they worked.
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As a woman, I would rather live in Russia during the 1930s mostly because there I would be seen as equal. Under Stalin's communistic rule, women were essentially equal and had a lot more rights than women in Germany and Italy.
ReplyDeleteIn Russia, Stalin encouraged the traditional family and while he made divorce and abortion harder to attain, he paid child support for married couples. His reasoning for this action was not only because he wanted a larger population like Hitler and Mussolini did, but it was for the benefit of Russia. He wanted to prevent homeless children from ganging up and causing trouble.
Women not only were not forced to give birth to large amounts of children (though highly encouraged to), but were also encouraged to educate themselves by learning how to read. In other countries like Germany, schools were created for women just to learn how to take care of children and how to be proper housewives.
Unlike in Italy and Germany, women were able to work alongside men in factories or in technical work. Like in Germany for instance, women were forced to give their jobs up to men because they had to stay at home to bring up their mass amounts of children. They weren't allowed to be judges, prosecutors, or anything else in the judicial job listing because their emotions would apparently get in the way of their decisions.
In general, women had it better under Stalin's rule in comparison to countries like Italy and Germany where they insisted on them being baby-making machines.
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DeleteAlthough I do agree that women had more rights under Stalin rules but is really a place you would want to live. During this time period, equality isn’t important as the condition of living. Women in this era only had eyes for their future spouse. Their husband would support them and give them a stable life. A stable easy life was much more achievable in Germany then Russia. Women in the Soviet Union were expected to work in factories and then come home to take care of their family. Despite the fact that they worked, they still had to come home to cook and clean. In Germany, though women don’t have to work, Law for the Encouragement encouraged the women to live a suitable lifestyle. In the soviet Union you have the lack of food, more demands on the women physically and government which can’t take care of the people.
Soumya Srivastava
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If I were a woman living in the 1930s I would want to live in the Soviet Union. There are multiple reasons why I would prefer to live in the Soviet Union over living in Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany but the primary reason is equality. In both Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, birthing movements were put into effect in an attempt to maximize the number of possible soldiers, citizens, and workers. The desire to be as big as possible led to Mussolini developing the battle for births and Hitler implementing his Law for the Encouragement of Marriage. By providing benefits and privileges to those who procreated the place of the woman was in the bedroom and in the kitchen. My independence and desire for progression in life does not allow me to accept such a position in society. This leads to the Soviet Union where the woman is seen as more than a means for reproduction. In the Soviet Union a woman was given equality. Full equality between sexes could not exist at this point in time but in comparison to other nations women in the Soviet Union were given equality and more specifically men and women were offered employment opportunity equally which theoretically meant that any job that existed was open to me. And under the newly developing Soviet Union the laws of matrimony were much softer allowing for things like divorce to occur which further provided my freedom and independence as a member of society. However as time progressed these abilities were removed and motherhood began to be emphasized throughout the nation. But even though my freedoms in marriage were stolen my freedom in the workforce still remained as a means for me to progress past a housewife.
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If I were a woman living in the 1930s I would have want to live in the Soviet Union. Under all three countries women played a role in increasing the population for future improvements. Each leader had their own plan set for having a big powerful country but with different methods. Which in this case Stalin had the most favorable plan for women.
ReplyDeleteIn the Soviet Union families were encouraged to stay together making divorce much harder. Families were also given an allowance for their children in order to promote families to have more children. Unlike the other countries here women were still allowed in the workforce. They were at an equal level with men and were even supported to work and take care of their children. Unlike in Germany and Italy were a woman’s role was focused on only increasing the population.
In Germany, Hitler’s aim was to promote motherhood and large families by having women stay at home, look, dress, cook, and behave a certain way, and brought their children up as a royal Nazi. In fascist Italy Mussolini developed the Battle for Births since he believed that Italy was too small to sustain an army or power. If I were to be living in either of these two countries I wouldn’t be allowed in the workforce and only seen as a baby making machine. Therefore I would much rather live in a place where I could be treated with more equality as men, allowed to education, and allowed in the workforce with the ability to look after my children.
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If I were a woman living in the 1930s, I would want to live in the Soviet Union. I would chose to live in the Soviet Union because women were seen as equals, instead of inferior to men and conditions improved for them.
ReplyDeleteWomen were allowed to keep their position in the workforce, and were treated as men’s equals. In Germany, Hitler believed that women should be kept at home, and were only allowed to work in factories, while in the Soviet Union; all jobs were open to women.
The conditions that women lived in improved under Stalin’s rule. They were able to get an education, and many women eventually got jobs in fields of medicine, education, and domestic services. By 1940, 40% of engineering students were women. Women were also not forced to have babies, as they were in Germany and Italy. In Germany, women were expected to have at least four children. And every year on August 12, the Motherhood Cross was awarded to women who had given birth to the largest number of children. In Italy, Mussolini enforced a plan called “The Battle for Births” where his goal was to increase the population with a vast number of births.
Before Stalin’s rise to power, women were able to get divorced and have abortion. After his rise to power, women were no longer allowed to do this. Though they were deprived of this right eventually, it was still better than living in Germany. Hitler used loans to encourage couples to stay married with his Law for the Encouragement of Marriage. It stated that that all newly married couples would get a government loan of 1000 marks, about 9 months income.
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As a woman in the 1930’s, I would prefer to live in Germany rather than the Soviet Union or Italy simply because of one major fact – guaranteed future. In Germany, women were promised an ease of marriage to a racially suitable male through the Encouragement of Marriage Law. In an age where marriage was a primary goal in a woman’s life, an easily accessible marriage was ideal. In addition, the high emphasis on physical health would not only help provide healthier births, but would help women live longer lives and have stronger bodies. In addition to this, Germany provided monetary benefits to women who gave birth to multiple children. While this could have been potentially harmful, the idea was that since women would be in good physical shape there would be less threat of death during childbirth. The funding provided by the government would be an extra income to a household where the husband worked while the wife stayed home.
ReplyDeleteI would not want to live in the Soviet Union as a 1930’s woman due to all of the pressure to work, raise children, and tend a home day to day. Working long days at factories while simultaneously raising children and working at home would be a large burden for any woman, but would be especially strenuous on families that in many cases were undernourished due to crop shortages. This would decrease the life expectancy as well as make life in the Soviet Union undesirable for a woman of any social standing.
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ReplyDeleteIf I was a women living in the 1930’s, I would want to live in Germany for these reasons:
ReplyDelete1. No need for work
2. Law for the encouragement of marriage
3. No need of schooling
German women in the 1930’s didn’t need to work at all, much less the longer hours that men would have to work to raise money for their families. All women had to do was stay at home and maintain their house while taking care of their children. This meant that they would have plenty of free time.
There was also the Law for the Encouragement of Marriage that Hitler passed, which made life as a German woman even more appealing. By getting married, I’d be able to get a huge loan of 1000 marks And if I had enough kids following the reception of this loan, I would only have to pay part of it back, if any at all.
German woman didn’t really need to go to school. They were taught that all that was required of them was to maintain a home and raise as many kids as possible. Since I’m a male, having as many kids as possible doesn’t sound appealing, but it does some like a relatively easy way to live when the other option would be back breaking labor in a factory or field for many hours.
I wouldn’t want to be a Russian woman because of the famine that followed collectivization (1930’s), women suffered from the shortages of food, which posed a direct threat to their traditional role as family providers. The hardships of rapid industrialization and urbanization, including shortages of housing, lack of services, and other difficulties, were borne disproportionately by women even as they also coped with increased demands and requirements in their employment.
David Kassir
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Alejandra Perez
ReplyDeleteIf I were a woman living during the 1930s, I would choose to live in the Soviet Union instead of Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany due to Russia’s communistic view of gender equality. Although ideals such as easy abortion have been stripped away during Stalin’s reign, women still had more civil liberties and were allowed to keep their positions in the workforce.
Unlike the Western European nations, Russia did not force women to cultivate large families.Although Italy, Germany, and Russia all encouraged the traditional family unit and large families, Russia viewed women more than just mothers and reproductive units. Women were allowed to enter any field of workplace. Although the practice of reproducing was highly encouraged, other aspects in need of improvement such as literacy rates and attaining an education or position in the workforce was also valued by the State. Women were on an equal standing with men and were encouraged to work. If they had families, the idea of working and taking care of children was common practice. These characteristics were non-existent in other totalitarian countries in which women were promoted the idea of motherhood, house work, and increasing the population.
In Germany, women were forced to give birth and keep up with serving the patriarchal system. They were expected to have at least four children and a variety of awards were given to women with the most children. Hitler promoted not only motherhood but how to behave a certain way. In Italy, Mussolini implemented laws that increased the population because he felt that the population was too small to sustain actual power. Mussolini also controlled a woman’s beliefs and societal roles.
In essence, living in the Soviet Union during the 1930s would have been preferable due to its views of women in education and work fields.
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Andrea Mackey
ReplyDeleteIf I were a women living in the 1930s I would want to live in Soviet Russia. In all three of the countries (Italy, Soviet Russia, and Germany) women played a huge part in the civilian life. The three leaders all had their own vision of what they wanted their country to be. In Soviet Russia women were viewed as equal instead of inferior to men.
Unlike most countries in Soviet Russia women were allowed hold positions in the work force. They were also allowed to get an education which to me I find very important because it gives women an opportunity to provide for themselves if anything were to happen to their husbands. When Stalin came into power he applied many of these rules. He also was very family oriented; he made divorce something very hard to do. Stalin to populate Russia so he gave families allowances for their children, this made families want to have more and more kids.
In the other two countries women were not allowed to play a part in the workforce and were manly good for being stay at home moms who produced a lot of children. In Germany women were expected to look and act a certain way and to raise their children in the Royal Nazi way. In Italy Mussolini believed that Italy was too small to be able to keep power or let alone be viewed as a threatening country. He developed the Battle of Births to increase the population number.
Germany and Italy were countries that treated women as inferior to men and basically only need them to produce babies. I do not want to leave in a country where I have to depend on someone else and that’s just not me.
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