SEX EQUALITY IN RUSSIA

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 229, 27 September 1930, Page 16 (Supplement)

SEX EQUALITY IN RUSSIA

HOW IT IS EVOLVING. WOMEN IN" THE ARMY AIHD AIR TORCE. AND THOSE "COMELY" POLICE WOMEN. ' (By VEENON McKENZIE.) It'is proving difficult to educate many millions of the older generation of Russian, women, to tlieir new and perhaps only partially understood and luke-warmly-welcomed freedom. They' would be lost without the chafing of their yoke. But a new generation is growing up, girls just getting to voting age, to whom this present Russia is the only- Russia. If they remember the war and the October revolution it is only as a vague dream. They arc taught as tots, these girls to-day, to have a pride in the equality of their sex. Brothers are neither inferior nor superior beings. Two or three of us, all newpaper men, met several girls between 18 and 20 at a sectional social gathering in one of the school houses. One girl was very outspoken in regard to her belief of the state of equality of the sexes in Russia. No Sex Jealousy. "Tliers is nothing that a man can do that I cannot do," she told us, waving her hands towards the others in the group who vigorously nodded their assent. "I can just barely remember the war. My parents and grand-par-ents have told me what Russian women, and men, too, were like a generation ago, serfs,' slaves, a little better than animals. The men fought for and won their freedom. We must go along hand in hand with them. Some of the girls get the idea that they are superior to their brothers. I don't feel that way, though. I want equality; I want freedom of action; I want to work and love and live —with all the freedom and opportunity granted my brother. And," she concluded, with a fiery flash of her eyes, "one of the great things about this marvellous movement in which we are participating to-day is that there is no jealousy between tho sexes, and the men are willing, not only to grant U3 this equality, but to aid us in our attempts." Girls are taking part in games, literally hundreds of thousands of them. This is the more remarkable when it is considered that organised athletics was rare even for Russian men a decadc and a half ago. In swimming, on the track, on the rifle range., and in other departments of sport the erstwhile "weaker" sex is even competing against thenbrothers, and occasionally scoring victories. Russia is planning to be strongly represented in women's events on the next Olympic programme. London and New York have their policewomen. Moscow has also its squads of policewomen. They are sturdy but comely. It would almost be a pleasure to be "run in", by some of the most attractive —if it were not that Russian reform has not yet . perhaps penetrated wholly into its prisons. Maternity Protection Laws. There are several qualified women pilots in the Russian air force, and charming, happy-looking, competent damsels they are, too. In fact the equality of rights even extends, since last August, to the army. The demand of the Slav feminists for equal rights in military service was then partially granted, and is expected later to be extended. The chief difference at present is that military training for women is not compulsory. But early last August it was announced that a limited number of women would be admitted to technical military schools. It was specified, in the official announcement, that such women "Would be subject to exactly the same military discipline as men. In all branches of activity women are, by law, granted a long, free period, with pay before and after child-birth. The Russian maternity protection laws in industry arc mora extensive and more generous than those of any other country. During the Great War, as well as in the Polish War and other minor embroglios, many Russian women fought side by side with the men. There are said to be some still in the ranks. But they are granted no spccial privileges, not even separate quarters, and most of them enlisted in disguise. Russia is still overwhelmingly illiterate, but this condition is being speedily remedied. Women are now granted an opportunity for education, higher as well as lower, technical as well as cultural. In Moscow thousands of young students marry before graduation, some of them several years before. Divorces arc easy to procure, but this liberty does not seem to have engendered license. Professor Albert Johnson,'- an American statistician and economist, recently working in Moscow, showed me figures to prove that there is a higher percentage of divorces in New York than in Moscow.—("Star" and Anglo-American N.S. Copyright.)