Romanian Women During Communism

National Communism in Romania was the state ideology of Communist Romania between early 1960s and 1989. Having its origins in Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej's political emancipation, it was greatly developed by Nicolae Ceaușescu, who began in 1971, through his July Theses manifesto, a national cultural revolution.

Nevertheless the proudest boast of Communism is that it has finally emancipated the woman. Karl Marx writes: "Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity. All are instruments of labor." The assumption was that woman was free as soon as she became available for production.

In keeping with the idea that liberation means working in a factory rather than in a home, we read in a Soviet book : "Women's labor has become one of the main sources from which industry could draw fresh supplies of workers." (Shaburova, Woman is a Great Power, 1935 edition, p. 32).However, the women refused to accept what the Communists called "the emancipation for women from depressing domestic atmosphere" but they were ultimately forced into "emancipation" and began working in mines, sewers etc.

As soon as they came to power, the Communists have made Romanian women a favorite target of their campaign to modernize the country as they were seen as a social group to be emancipated and protected. The socialist society tried to encourage women because their force, determination and talents were important for the construction of communism in Romania.

Ceausescu began to glorify women in terms of its role of "mother of the nation" - a concept of gender identity. The state ideology encourage the women to perform their both functions, such as reproductive and productive. Ceausescu praised woman for her double role as mother and worker, but these requirements would only burden the woman.

Smiling woman holding a flower and a bird and flanked by Romanian flag and globe served as a symbol of world peace, of femininity and the socialist state and nation simultaneously. As...