Like mother, like daughter: three generations of socialist women in the German Democratic Republic, 1949-1989
Embargo Date
2027-02-12
OA Version
Citation
Abstract
Like Mother, Like Daughter: Three Generations of Socialist Women in the German Democratic Republic, 1949-1989 examines the writings of ordinary East German women from 1949 to 1989 to argue that many working mothers articulated support for certain aspects of the socialist project, even as they identified and grappled with its contradictions and shortcomings. By highlighting women’s voices, my research moves away from previous studies that portray East German women as passive victims of an authoritarian regime or as the grateful beneficiaries of a welfare state. Rather, I analyze written sources as varied as citizen petitions, brigade books, job applications, and letters to the editor to show how women—working mothers in particular—engaged in various methods and rhetorical strategies to make demands of the East German state while upholding some of its core principles. Women embedded and marshaled their own personal understandings of socialism, sometimes in alignment with state policies, and sometimes in opposition to them, in their characterizations of the GDR. I unpack the complexities of their narratives to demonstrate how working mothers negotiated with, challenged, and even schooled the regime on what a socialist society should look like. In doing so, women leveraged their various identities—as workers, mothers, teachers, gardeners, activists, volunteers—as sources of authority to make claims about their vision of socialism and its commitment to gender equality. One of the chief claims of this dissertation is that working mothers’ expressed demands, expectations, and strategies regarding socialism evolved over time and varied by generation. While each woman wrote in a unique voice and style, my project traces distinct generational rhetorical patterns and shifts in how women conceptualized the meaning of socialism on the page, based on their past experiences, present circumstances, and future goals, as well as on their relationships with the state, their mothers, their children, and their colleagues. Through their narratives, I argue, generations of women cast themselves as cocreators of a socialist society.
Description
2024