Approach/avoidance: Communists and women in East Germany, 1945-9

This article explores the shifting strategies of the German Communist party (KPD, later SED) towards the woman question in the Soviet zone of occupation. In the fluid post-war situation, the KPD/SED had to resort to heterodox experiments as it attempted, initially, to mobilize electoral support among women and, later, to organize women on the shopfloor. Women Communists played a prominent role in these efforts which included the creation of a women's league. In consequence, they enjoyed more influence in the young SED than ever before (or after) in the German Communist movement. As they proceeded, activists stumbled, however, not only against the hostility of women towards the Communist message but also against the resistance of male comrades and trade union leaders to apolitical, proto-feminist appeals. To break internal impasses, women relied on the support of the top leadership and, especially, Soviet command. If the centralization of power initially helped their cause, the tightening of the Stalinist vice in 1948-9 knocked out its foundations. Electoral politics counted for little, while women's integration in the workforce slid down the ladder of priorities. Its separatist tendencies quashed, the women's league continued only as a transmission belt of the party line to housewives.