WOMEN IN 19TH CENTURY RUSSIA

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WOMEN IN 19TH CENTURY RUSSIA
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WOMEN IN 19TH CENTURY RUSSIA

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

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WOMEN IN 19TH 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

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WOMEN IN 19TH CENTURY RUSSIA
WOMEN OF THE WORKING CLASSES

• Peasant household organized around authority of
  BOLSHAK
• 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

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WOMEN IN 19TH CENTURY RUSSIA
EFFECTS OF INDUSTRIALIZATION

• 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

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WOMEN IN 19TH 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

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WOMEN IN 19TH 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
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WOMEN IN 19TH CENTURY RUSSIA

• BIRTH OF THE WOMAN QUESTION
• New opportunities
• Women given chance to study at institutions of
  higher learner
• Russia produced some of modern worlds first
  female doctors, scientists, mathematicians
• Women became important members of intelligentsia
  revolutionary movements

SOFIA KOVALEVSKAIA