SHARING THE HOUSEWORK

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29170, 2 April 1960, Page 10

SHARING THE HOUSEWORK

Controversy In Russia (By a Reuter Correspondent) MOSCOW. Just how much housework should a man, particularly an Army officer, do in the Soviet Union, a country which boasts the equality of women and where half of the working population are women? Men and women here are taking sides in an argument in which same say that the men should roll up their sleeves in the home and others say that housework, at least for an Army officer, reflects slightly "on the glory of a soldier’s greatcoat.” A Mrs Kurilov, wife of an Army officer, wrote to the newspaper “Red Star” complaining that a neighbour, also an Army officer, had scolded her husband for drawing water from the well, working the washing machine and hanging out the washing. The neighbour said that this help around the home violated the dignity of an officer and Army traditions. Mfs Kurilov irately complained that this attitude was unfair since both she and her husband worked, shared the housework and were then able to spend the evening together at the cinema or out for a walk. Her complaint sparked off a spate of letters to the paper, the Red Army paper. Opposing any kind of slavery to the sink, another officer wrote supporting the neighbour up to the hilt. “Nothing must be allowed to reflect slightingly on the glory of a soldier’s greatcoat,” he declared, adding that he was sure that no real wife wished to see her husband in the position in which Mr Kurilov apparently found himself.

In support of Mr and Mrs Kurilov, a first lieutenant wrote: “I have met this kind of neighbour in garrisons. They divide housework into ’clean’ and ‘dirty’ and make sure that their wives do all the ‘dirty.’ But in our country all work is honourable.”

Other readers emphasised the fact that too much housework for women in the evening prevented them from visiting theatres and cinemas and caused them to “lag

behind their husbands in their mental development.” A captain in the engineers looked at the argument from another angle. “Too many officers carrying shopping bags \ fail to acknowledge salutes,” he wrote. “This is not right” The papers’ postbag so far has shown 68 readers in favour of Mrs Kurilov and eight for the neighbour.