What’s in it for me? Learn why women can have better lives under socialism.
In recent years, more and more people have been gravitating toward the idea of socialism.
Whether or not you’re one of them, it’s easy to see the appeal, especially in today’s turbulent economic climate.
According to its advocates, socialism would solve a lot of the problems that currently plague us as a society, such as unemployment and economic inequality.
They also claim it would lead to better healthcare, education, and many other things.
But better sex for women?
Even if you’re a fan of socialism, this might seem like a bit of a stretch.
What does one thing have to do with the other?
Well, that’s part of what these blinks are about – but sex is just the tip of the iceberg.
As we’ll see, socialism could make women’s lives better in a wide range of areas – from the romantic realm to the professional domain and many places in between.
In these blinks, you’ll learn why socialism leads to more equality between men and women; how capitalism benefits from the inequality of women; and why women do, in fact, have better sex under socialism.
“Socialism” can mean state socialism or democratic socialism, and we can learn from one while aiming for the other.
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word “socialism?
” Is it a nightmarish, totalitarian regime, like something out of a dystopian novel?
An imaginary utopia where everyone is free and happy?
A Cold War-era state like East Germany?
Or a present-day country like Denmark?
The word “socialism” can refer to all of these things and more, so before we dive into an argument in favor of it, let’s first clarify what we mean by it.
The key message here is: “Socialism” can mean state socialism or democratic socialism, and we can learn from one while aiming for the other.
People can dream up any society they want and call it “socialist,” but as far as real socialist societies go, these have historically come in two basic varieties.
First up, we have state socialism.
The most obvious examples are the USSR and the other Eastern and Central European countries that identified themselves as “Communist” states during the Cold War.
Collectively known as the Eastern Bloc, they included Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and East Germany.
While they differed in many ways and evolved over time, these societies shared some key traits.
Each of them was a one-party, authoritarian state that limited people’s political freedom and controlled the economy through state-run enterprises and top-down economic planning.
In contrast, there’s democratic socialism, which we can see at work in the contemporary Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland.
Unlike state socialism, these countries have democratic governments, with multiple political parties competing in free and fair elections.
Not only do they respect their citizens’ political rights, but they go even further by trying to ensure that everyone enjoys a decent standard of living.
To do that, they have generous social welfare systems, which help people meet their needs in areas such as housing, healthcare, and education.
The argument we’re going to be looking at is essentially advocating for democratic socialism, not state socialism.
That being said, there are also many lessons we can learn from the latter.
Yes, the USSR and Eastern Bloc countries had many shortcomings, and they did many horrible things: labor camps, secret police, food shortages, you name it.
But, as we’ll see, they also had some positive aspects, especially in the area of advancing women’s rights.
In designing policies for the future of our own societies, we can take the good things from state socialism while leaving behind the bad.
Under state socialism, women benefited from programs and policies that promoted their inclusion in the economy.
The idea that the USSR and Eastern Bloc did anything positive runs directly counter to the narratives most of us have grown up with.
If there’s one message we’ve received about them from our history teachers, politicians, and countless books, tv shows, and movies, it’s that state socialism was bad.
Really bad.
End of story.
But in reality, that’s only part of the story.
In this blink, we’re going to look at the other side of it: some of the good things that happened under state socialism – particularly for women.
The point isn’t to deny or excuse the bad things; it’s simply to round out the picture that most of us have formed about the USSR and Eastern Bloc.
The key message here is: Under state socialism, women benefited from programs and policies that promoted their inclusion in the economy.
To one degree or another, the USSR and Eastern Bloc governments provided their citizens with a wide range of public services and social welfare programs.
These included free health care, childcare, and higher education, along with subsidized housing, public transportation, energy, and food.
They also guaranteed employment to all their citizens, men and women alike.
In fact, they went even further.
To encourage both genders to occupy positions throughout the economy, they promoted women’s advancement in areas such as science, engineering, technology, medicine, law, and academia.
In practice, that meant providing them with access to education and opportunities for career advancement.
As a result, women often ended up dominating these fields, and they garnered some striking accomplishments.
For instance, in 1963, the Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space – 20 years before astronaut Sally Ride broke the barrier in America.
With all this in mind, put yourself in the shoes of a young mother living in East Germany.
You’d have subsidized housing, clothing, and food for your child, along with free access to childcare at a public nursery.
And that would mean you could continue pursuing your career and retain your economic independence.
Now, contrast this with what your situation would be like over in the capitalist West.
Here, motherhood is usually an expensive proposition, and it also requires a lot of unpaid caretaking labor.
The result is that many women drop out of the workforce to become stay-at-home parents, at least until their children are old enough to go to school.
And if they’re in a heterosexual partnership, that often means becoming economically dependent on a man.
Under capitalism, statistical discrimination leads to women being paid less than men on average.
Of course, not all women have heterosexual partnerships, and many women don’t become mothers.
As for those who fit both bills, many of them find ways of returning to work shortly after childbirth, even in the most capitalistic societies.
Some of them can afford private childcare, and others have family members who can look after their kids.
However, the fact remains that the demands of motherhood lead many women to drop out of the workforce and become economically dependent on men to one degree or another.
And due to a phenomenon called statistical discrimination, this has important consequences for all women, regardless of whether they have children or live in heterosexual relationships.
The key message here is: Under capitalism, statistical discrimination leads to women being paid less than men on average.
To see how this works, imagine you’re an employer trying to decide how much money to offer a new employee, who happens to be a woman.
Now, if you could somehow look into a crystal ball and see how dependable a worker she’d be in the future, you could base your offer on that information.
The more dependable, the higher your offer – the less dependable, the lower.
But without a crystal ball, you’ll probably end up making assumptions based on the candidate’s demographic traits.
You know that women are statistically more likely to quit their jobs than men due to childbirth.
So you end up assuming that any given woman is more likely to quit her job than any given man – regardless of whether the particular woman in question actually has any plans to have a child.
This lowers your estimate of her dependability, which in turn will tend to lower the amount of money you’ll pay her.
This then leads to a vicious cycle.
Since women are paid less than men on average, they end up more likely to quit their jobs if they do give birth.
For instance, if a woman is in a heterosexual relationship and her male partner earns more money than she does, it will make more financial sense for her to quit her job and take care of their child than him.
This further entrenches the perception that women are more likely to quit their jobs, which then leads to women being paid even less on average.
And of course, that also further entrenches women’s economic dependence on men.
Work disruptions and double burdens also contribute to women’s economic situations under capitalism.
The more you study any social phenomenon, the more you usually end up coming to the same conclusion: it’s complicated.
Reality is complex, and there’s usually not a single, simple explanation for anything.
Instead, there’s a bunch of overlapping explanations that you have to piece together.
The same is true of the economic situation of women living in capitalist societies.
To round out our account of this, let’s take a look at some more explanations as to why women get the short end of the economic stick.
The key message here is: Work disruptions and double burdens also contribute to women’s economic situations under capitalism.
Women who return to work after having kids usually do so after an extended period away.
Now, if you’ve ever had a job in a busy office, you know how hard it can be to catch up on your assignments and get back into the swing of things if you miss even a single day of work.
Multiply that by weeks or months.
And now take all of that and factor in the double burden that many working moms carry.
They finish their jobs at work and then go home to do their second, unpaid job: being the primary caregiver.
Yes, some men share the burden or even take on this role themselves, but on average, women do much more of the work of raising children than men.
But that’s not all.
If the child gets sick and has to go home from daycare, guess which parent is probably going to have to leave work and pick him up?
And if the child wakes up in the middle of the night, guess who’s probably going to be trying to work with no sleep the next day?
Yes, sometimes it will be the father, but statistically, it’s much more likely to be the mother.
Understandably, then, many mothers end up getting burned out upon returning to their jobs after having kids.
As a result, the quality of their work might suffer, and they might even quit.
And when either of those things happens, it provides employers with further reinforcement of their perception that women are less-dependable employees than men, leading to even further statistical discrimination.
Under capitalism, mothers either have to keep working, or suffer the consequences of the résumé gap.
In the previous blink, our hypothetical mother was “lucky” enough to be able to afford private daycare for her child, which enabled her to go back to work.
The word “lucky” is ironic here, because paying for private daycare can end up being a pretty raw deal for working mothers.
Unfortunately, the alternative is to stop working, which leads to yet another raw deal.
The end result is that mothers end up between a rock and a hard place after giving birth.
And the reason for this boils down to two words: résumé gap.
The key message here is: Under capitalism, mothers either have to keep working, or suffer the consequences of the résumé gap.
Consider women who quit their jobs for a year or two and then try to return to the workforce once their children are older.
During that time, three things happen.
First, they stop earning income, which can lead to economic dependence on men.
Second, they stop advancing in their careers, which further contributes to the pay gap between men and women, as well as the lack of women in positions of leadership.
And third, they stop gaining work experience, which leads to gaps in their résumés.
Of course, potential employers don’t look kindly on these gaps; they want to see job candidates with a steady stream of work experience, which they perceive as the mark of a dependable employee.
So if a woman does end up getting hired, she’ll probably get a lower position or salary than she would have if she hadn’t given birth.
And this will further contribute to the pay gap and the lack of women in positions of leadership.
To avoid the consequences of having a résumé gap, many women send their children to private daycares so they can continue working.
Now, we’ve already seen how this isn’t a panacea, since many mothers continue to be their children’s primary caretaker during their off-work hours.
But that’s not the only problem.
The other one is that private daycare can be very expensive and end up eating up most of a working mother’s paycheck.
Consider Leslie, the pseudonym of a professor at an American university.
After Leslie gave birth, she put her child in a private daycare so she could continue working.
Guess how much money she made at the end of each month, after deducting her taxes, health insurance, and daycare payments?
70 cents.
That might sound hardly worth it – but the alternative was to get knocked off her career track.
Neoliberalism forces people to fend for themselves, which puts women at a disadvantage.
What would you do if you were Leslie?
Work for 70 cents of take-home pay per month?
Or quit your job and suffer the consequences of losing momentum in your career, having a gap in your résumé, and perhaps becoming economically dependent on your partner?
It’s a pretty tough choice.
Both of the options are unfair.
And that’s precisely the point: this isn’t a choice that women should have to make.
But under capitalism, it’s one that women routinely face.
And this time, the reason boils down to one word: neoliberalism.
The key message here is: Neoliberalism forces people to fend for themselves, which puts women at a disadvantage.
Basically, neoliberalism is like free-market capitalism on steroids.
Under neoliberalism, the government tries to put as much of the economy under the control of private enterprises as possible.
In practice, this means privatizing state-run industries, reducing regulations, cutting back on funding to public services and social welfare programs, completely shutting down those services and programs, or simply not creating them in the first place.
Usually, a neoliberal government will do some combination of these things.
For instance, it might turn its energy industry over to private oil companies, remove regulations from the financial sector, reduce its funding to public education, and avoid creating a public healthcare system.
The end result is that people are left at the mercy of private employers and market forces.
For women, this has many negative consequences.
For instance, let’s say you’re an American woman who works for a company that doesn’t provide paid maternity leave.
That’s perfectly legal and often the case in the highly neoliberal US.
Meanwhile, you probably won’t have access to government-subsidized, let alone fully-paid-for, daycare.
Now you’re in Leslie’s dilemma.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Without strong government intervention in the economy, problems like the pay gap and statistical discrimination continue to make women less equal to men.
This, in turn, makes many of them economically dependent on male partners, since it tends to make men the primary income-earners in heterosexual relationships.
In the next blink, we’ll take a closer look at how the absence of government intervention contributes to these problems under neoliberalism.
Leaving people vulnerable to market forces makes women vulnerable to gender discrimination.
If you remember anything from your high school or college economics classes, one phrase is probably lodged in your brain more than any other: the law of supply and demand.
As advocates of capitalism never get tired of telling us, this is one of the central features of a free-market economy.
Now, when we’re talking about everyday commodities, the law of supply and demand can seem rather innocuous.
For example, if the demand for hats goes down and the supply stays constant, the price of hats will tend to go down as well, leading to a decrease in supply.
The market adjusts, and everyone lives happily ever after.
But when we turn from things like hats to the supply and demand for women’s labor, these market forces take on a darker dimension.
The key message here is: Leaving people vulnerable to market forces makes women vulnerable to gender discrimination.
On average, women’s labor is in less demand than men’s under capitalism.
One reason for this is statistical discrimination.
Given a choice between a man and a woman, employers will tend to favor the man, since he’s guaranteed not to give birth and probably won’t quit his job if his partner has a child.
Another reason is good ol’ fashioned sexism.
On average, people tend to view women’s labor as being less valuable than men’s.
The reasons for this perception are complicated, but the upshot is as simple as it is unfortunate.
If women’s labor is seen as less dependable and valuable than men’s, employers’ demand for it will be lower.
And if their demand for it is lower, women will tend to receive fewer jobs and lower pay.
Meanwhile, because of neoliberalism, the government isn’t there to intervene and fix these problems.
For instance, there’s no government-guaranteed employment for women via state-run industries, as was the case under state socialism.
And there aren’t any strong laws or enforcement mechanisms to compel private enterprises to hire and pay women at the same rate as men, as can be the case under democratic socialism.
In 2018, Iceland took a step in this direction by instituting an equal-pay law with strong enforcement provisions.
By contrast, the US has a relatively weak Equal Pay Act, which requires women to prove pay discrimination in court.
That’s a difficult thing to do, especially since it requires a woman to file a lawsuit – another thing that costs money in the US.
Quotas have enabled democratic socialist countries to ensure that women are equally represented in positions of power.
Whatever else you want to say about them, you can’t deny that the USSR and Eastern Bloc countries made a lot of progress in terms of integrating women into their workforces.
The statistics speak for themselves.
In 1975, for example, women accounted for 49.
7 percent of the Soviet workforce.
By contrast, in North America, that percentage was only 37.
4.
Drilling down into specific industries, the numbers get even more impressive.
For instance, by 1989, 50 percent of all engineering and technical specialists in the USSR were women.
But when we turn to higher positions of power, we come to one of the many places where state socialism failed and democratic socialism has succeeded.
And the reason boils down to a single word: quotas.
Here’s the key message: Quotas have enabled democratic socialist countries to ensure that women are equally represented in positions of power.
In the democratic socialist countries of Scandinavia, there are mandatory quotas for the percentage of seats that must be reserved for women on the executive boards of corporations and public enterprises.
In large Norwegian firms, for example, the quota is set at 40 percent.
As a result, women held 42 percent of the country’s corporate board seats in 2016.
Other European countries have tried voluntary quotas, but the results are less stellar.
In Germany, for example, the percentage of women occupying board seats in large publicly traded companies was only 26 percent in 2016.
The difference comes down to mandatory versus voluntary compliance, and it brings up a larger point.
We can’t just sit around and hope that private enterprises will “do the right thing.
” Once again, the statistics speak for themselves: on average, private enterprises don’t fix the problems of gender inequality and discrimination when left to their own devices.
Whether it’s the pay gap or the lack of women in positions of leadership, all of these issues persist until government intervenes.
However, this requires a government that’s willing to intervene.
The USSR and Eastern Bloc countries lacked this when it came to putting women in higher positions of power.
Their elite Political Bureaus, or Politburos, were dominated by men.
But before neoliberals do a victory dance about this, they should remember that things aren’t much better in their countries.
In the US, for example, women held only 21 percent of corporate board seats in 2016, and 19 percent of seats in the US Congress in 2015.
Compare that to the parliaments of Scandinavia, where the percentages ranged from 37 to 48 percent in the same year.
Neoliberal capitalism benefits from women doing unpaid care-work.
Imagine living in a democratic socialist society where all your basic needs are guaranteed to be met.
Your government makes sure you have access to things like healthcare, higher education, and decently paid jobs.
It can also help you out with things like housing, transportation, and food.
And if you have a child, you can enjoy paid parental leave or state-funded childcare.
Now take all of those things away.
Welcome to neoliberalism.
Unless you’re rich, it stinks in a lot of ways – especially if you’re a woman, and particularly if you’re a mother.
And unfortunately, this is a feature of the system, not a bug.
The key message here is: Neoliberal capitalism benefits from women doing unpaid care-work.
Let’s start by going back to childcare.
Even from a neoliberal standpoint, this is an absolutely essential form of labor.
After all, the children of today are the labor force of tomorrow.
To keep producing things and making money, private enterprises need a steady supply of workers.
And that means they need a steady supply of children who survive until adulthood.
Of course, kids don’t magically do that on their own, so some form of childcare needs to be provided for them.
Now, the government could help with this by mandating that companies provide their employees with well-paid parental leave.
Or it could pay for that leave itself.
Or it could provide state-funded or publicly subsidized childcare services.
But from a neoliberal perspective, the problem with all of these options is that they cost a lot of money and might require state intervention in the economy.
The better option?
Well, from a neoliberal perspective, it’s obvious: don’t provide or mandate paid parental leave, get rid of state-subsidized childcare, and thereby force parents to provide childcare for themselves.
If they have enough money, they’ll be able to pay for private childcare.
In that case, great!
More money for private enterprises!
But otherwise, someone – usually a woman – will have to stay at home and provide it for free.
And in that case, great again!
The neoliberal system gets the benefit of millions of women doing the difficult care-work of raising children and thereby providing it with its future workforce – all without that system having to shell out a single dime.
Similar arguments can be made about care of the elderly and the chronically ill.
These things are expensive for government to provide.
It’s cheaper to let family members do them for free.
And surprise, surprise – those family members tend to be women.
“Wait a minute,” you might be thinking.
Women’s unequal status under neoliberal capitalism has a negative impact on their relationships with heterosexual partners.
“I thought these blinks were going to be about women having better sex.
But now we’re on the second-to-last blink, and I haven’t heard anything about it yet.
What’s all of this stuff got to do with sex?
” Well, a lot.
In a healthy relationship, partners meet each other as equals.
But under neoliberalism, that’s a hard thing to do if you’re a heterosexual woman in a relationship with a man.
Chances are, you won’t be equals.
And that will have negative consequences on many aspects of your relationship, including your sex life.
The key message here is: Women’s unequal status under neoliberal capitalism has a negative impact on their relationships with heterosexual partners.
Let’s say you live in a highly neoliberal society and you’re a woman in a relationship with a man.
On average, you’ll be doing more care-work than him, and your labor in general will be seen as less valuable than his.
As a result, you’ll probably earn less money than he does.
And if you have a child together, there’s a high chance that you’ll be economically dependent on him, to one degree or another.
Now let’s say you quit your job or went to part-time work to take care of your child, and he’s the main or only source of income in your family.
Raising a child without any government support is expensive, so that makes you even more dependent on him.
The amount of money you’d have to make to get by on your own is higher than it would be if you were single – or if you lived under socialism and had things like generously subsidized housing.
Finally, let’s say your partner turns out to be a lousy one – uncaring, unkind, unsatisfying in bed, whatever the case might be.
What are you going to do?
Leave him?
Well, if you’ve been out of the workforce for a while, you’re going to be hard-pressed to find a good-paying job to enable yourself to do that.
And once again, under neoliberalism, the government isn’t going to be of much help.
So you’re probably going to stay in the relationship out of necessity.
And that means your partner can get away with treating you in all sorts of bad ways: not pulling his own weight with domestic responsibilities, not caring about your sexual needs, and even engaging in abuse.
You’re trapped, so you’ll tend to let him get away with these behaviors.
Studies show that women had better sex in socialist East Germany than capitalist West Germany.
Okay, that was just a hypothetical example that we analyzed in the previous blink.
But for many women, it’s a real experience.
And there’s empirical data to back up the basic claim at issue, which is that inequality between men and women has negative impacts on their romantic relationships.
Some of this data comes from some surprising sources – and, as you’ll see, they’re a fitting topic on which to end these blinks.
The key message here is: Studies show that women had better sex in socialist East Germany than capitalist West Germany.
While it was a cause and consequence of many historical tragedies, the division of Germany into socialist East Germany and capitalist West Germany during the Cold War provides us with a fascinating natural experiment in the way in which inequality affects women’s romantic lives.
The division essentially took two demographically similar populations and put them under very different social circumstances.
In socialist East Germany, women were far less economically dependent on men than their West German counterparts.
They were more integrated into the East German economy, and they had access to things like government-funded childcare and subsidized housing.
As a result, they felt a lot more free to leave their husbands and find new ones if they were unsatisfied with their relationships.
Both the marriage and the divorce rates were much higher in East Germany than West Germany – and the majority of divorce proceedings were initiated by women.
Now, put yourself in the shoes of an East German husband living in this social context.
If you know your wife can easily leave you, you’re probably going to be more attentive to her personal, emotional, and sexual needs and desires.
It should come as no surprise, then, that multiple studies conducted between 1988 and 1992 showed that East German women felt more sexually satisfied in their relationships than their West German counterparts.
In one study, 82 percent of East German women reported being happy after having sex, whereas only 52 percent of West German women said the same.
In two other studies, East German women also reported having orgasms more frequently than West German women – 80 percent versus 63 percent, in one study.
So there you have it: women do have better sex under socialism.
Final summary
The key message in these blinks: Neoliberal capitalism contributes to and benefits from women’s economic inequality, unpaid care-work, experiences of gender discrimination, and economic dependence on men.
This negatively affects women’s lives by taking away their freedom to pursue careers, reach higher levels of power, and be equal partners with men.
Democratic socialism can help solve these problems through a variety of policies and programs, such as mandating paid parental leave, providing subsidized childcare, and instituting quotas.
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What to read next: Socialism, by Michael Newman Want to learn more about socialism?
Well, what better place to start than a book-in-blinks that’s literally called Socialism?
In these blinks, you’ll learn about the history of socialist ideas and the various implementations of them that have been tried in countries around the world.
From the theories of Karl Marx to socialist experiments as different as Cuba and Sweden, you’ll be taken on a whirlwind tour through some of the key developments of the modern world.
Ready to go?
Then head on over to our blinks to Socialism, by Michael Newman.