Gender Relations in Industry: Voices from the Point of Production.

With babas, there is a lot of trouble. It is not worth it to put them to work at the bench. When we raise the question of hiring women in transport, the union officials and managers refuse with every bone in their bodies and say, “We do not want women,” even though they have the same skills as men and are able to work. This shows that the old life still lives among us, that the exploitation of women by men still has not disappeared. Women workers and activists were well aware of the failure of local authorities to implement the plans generated in Moscow, but they did not attribute the failure to disorganization or inadequate statistics. To them, the single most important factor influencing women's opportunities in the workplace was male prejudice. The number of women hired, the jobs they received, their access to skilled work, and their treatment on the shop floor were all affected by male attitudes toward female labor. Women were fiercely critical of planners, union and labor-department officials, managers, local Party leaders, foremen, shop heads, brigade leaders, and even their male coworkers. In their view, these men shared powerful prejudices that shaped, and limited, the world of female labor. Prejudice against female labor was not unique to Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]