Hacker News Reader

Comment by nadezhda18 | Hacker News Reader

all this did not make a woman equal to a man unfortunately

as a female dev who started her career in Russia about 15 years ago and whose mother was also a dev programming aviation radars, I can tell there was a he-e-ell of sexism and predjudice against women in the society back then, despite all these pretty numbers.

Collapse of the USSR opened up huge opportunities for discrimination and I still remember the job ads for devs where it was explicitly specified "men only" :( I was a subject of sexism, my mom was a subject of sexism.

(there is even more sexism in the modern Rusian society but we are not talking about the modern days)

View on HN

This is interesting... So the government forcing "equality" was artificial then. People's hearts and minds hadn't changed. I would suggest that forcing solutions on people like equality of outcome are not actually solutions, but mere short sighted illusions. Once the balance of power changes to another group (as it inevitably has throughout history) the smoke and mirrors fade away and the society is left with the original problem, if not and exacerbated one. Now we have bitterness and grudges on both sides and worse relations than before. When I look at history, and then I look at many of today's social justice warriors, I don't have much hope that their methods are going to an actual net positive for either side in the long run. If there is any permanent change, what permanent damage will also be left on the society as a whole. This is not something that is easy to predict and as such is dangerous. Division is growing. Any society throughout history who have had ideologies forced on them have inevitably fought back en mass. Tribalism to this type of stimulus is inherent in humans. The only effective and lasting change that I have witnessed when studying history has been though discourse and discussion (two thing which are being suppressed today). Healthy and respectful discourse leads to concessions and increased empathy on both sides. Opposing enemies become humans to each other, deserving of respect and consideration. Disrespectfully ridiculing the other side's views with blanket classifications meant to silence and discredit the opposition's credibility (and humanity) are far too common today and will only serve to divide further.

The big problem in USSR specifically (I can't speak for other Sovbloc countries) was that the messaging was never consistent. Early revolutionary period was very heavy on gender equality, and very sincere. But under Stalin, there was a big reversal towards "traditional family" and all that stuff, largely to encourage rapid population growth - so they banned abortions, for example.

After that, it was some weird state in the middle - for example, in my mother's time, abortions were not banned in the USSR, but they were heavily discouraged and socially shunned. For another example, conscription was always all-male. In general, it was accepted that some jobs are just "male jobs"; e.g. Soviets had a token female cosmonaut in Tereshkova and later in Savistkaya, but overall the space program was a blatant sausage fest.

I do wonder sometimes what would have happened if the original revolutionary message of gender equality was never reversed or diluted, and lasted at full strength long enough that there was at least one generation growing up without seeing anything else.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com