Chapter 5 - The Turn to Production

Summary

The country’s “turn to production” in the late 1920s rendered “nonproductive” domestic labor irrelevant for socialism. Domestic workers were encouraged to participate in the Five-Year Plan by subscribing to state loans, agitating their friends and family in the countryside for collectivization, or by participating in state campaigns. The focus on activities outside domestic workers’ professional responsibilities signaled that intensification of domestic workers’ labor would not increase production. As the country was heading full speed toward socialism, there was renewed optimism about socialization of housework and disappearance of domestic labor, paid or unpaid. To facilitate the transition process, the labor union developed special programs that aimed to transfer domestic workers into the industries that were suffering from labor shortages. On the one hand, the new policy of mobilization of domestic workers into industry and the service sector created new opportunities for women employed in domestic service. On the other hand, it left housework without formal economic meaning for the socialist project and marginalized those women who remained in service.