This article aims to examine how forms of patriarchal authority persisted, in spite of Bolshevik slogans about women’s liberation, by looking at the specific position of women on the shop floor and their relations with factory committees, trade unions ...

This article aims to examine how forms of patriarchal authority persisted, in spite of Bolshevik slogans about women’s liberation, by looking at the specific position of women on the shop floor and their relations with factory committees, trade unions and other labour institutions in Petrograd in the early years of Soviet rule. During the Civil War the proportion of female workers in factory workforce grew more and more, and yet many women workers tended to be unruly on the shop floor. Such a phenomenon provoked the apprehensions about their slack labour discipline and the criticism for their “backwardness.” In practice, however, the recalcitrance of female workers had something to do with male-chauvinism prevailing in male workers and the formal institutions in factories. The persisting male-chauvinism stripped women workers of chances to be represented in the formal institutions such as general meeting of workers, factory committees, and organs of trade unions. As a result the female workers remained vulnerable to the abuses on the part of male counterparts or supervisory personnel. Under the circumstances where the women workers suffer the unfair treatment on the factory floor, they chose not to appeal to the formal channels in factories but to defy the authority of shop floor, supervisory personnel for themselves. Therefore, the unruliness of women workers on the shop floor should be interpreted not as the manifestation of their “backwardness”, but as a sort of their self-protective activities against male-chauvinism prevailing amongst male workforce and the formal organs in industrial enterprises.