Kristen R. Ghodsee, Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence (New York: Nation Books 2018)

Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence is an extension of Kristen R. Ghodsee’s popular 2017 New York Times article of the same name. Ghodsee claims that the main argument of Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism can be simply stated as “unregulated capitalism is bad for women, and if we adopt some ideas from socialism, women will have better lives.” (1) Ghodsee supports this argument through a succession of chapters that explore separate topics, including motherhood, leadership, citizenship, work, and, of course, sex.

Writing for a primarily American (and Canadian) audience, one of the most effective outcomes of Ghodsee’s prose is to challenge ingrained, often negative, assumptions that Westerners have about Eastern Europe and socialism more generally. As a scholar of Russian and East European studies, Ghodsee’s examples come primarily from this region’s history. Ghodsee argues that before the transition from state socialism to capitalism in Eastern Europe, women enjoyed a level of social and economic freedom and equality that Western women have yet to experience. Ghodsee’s goal is not to present the history of state socialism in East Europe as utopic, but rather to point out that there were some aspects that were positive and could serve as inspiration for building a better, more equitable society. Although the most cynical writer may point to Ghodsee’s rose-tinted glasses, for the most part she is clear about and successful at this goal.

The base on which gender equality – at the political, economic, and social level – in Eastern European socialist states rested was the need for women to be full participants in the labour force. This incorporation into the labour force, Ghodsee demonstrates, necessitated a number of measures that increased gender equality. One of the most significant outcomes of women in the labour force was the need for generous maternity leaves and free childcare. Earning a wage outside of the home also enabled women to more easily become self-sufficient and, Ghodsee argues, seek domestic companionship with men out of desire, rather than necessity. In the West, women living in a capitalist system were actively discouraged to work and forced to rely on the institution of marriage, and subsequently men, for their economic well-being.

The confining of women in the institution of marriage and the search thereof leads to Ghodsee’s attention-grabbing title claim that women in state-socialist societies had better sex. This claim is also coincidentally the weakest of the factors that support Ghodsee’s main argument. It is unclear exactly what Ghodsee means by better sex. Sexual pleasure, after all, is a highly individualized and subjective concept. The sources, Ghodsee claims, show that socialist women had more sex and more orgasms; women under capitalism have less sex and are less satisfied. It is in this discussion of sexual economics that the heteronormativity of this argument is most blatant. What about queer women? What about non-monogamous and polyamorous people? What about sexual experiences that are not defined by penetration? What defines sex? These are questions that are not sufficiently examined in Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism and lead to a second troubling aspect of this book, which is Ghodsee’s treatment of sex work. Ghodsee weakly suggests that she is not anti-sex work, but statements such as “women in Eastern Europe are once again commodities to bought and sold – their price determined by the fickle fluctuations of supply and demand” (11) leave very little room for acknowledging that sex work is work. Ghodsee’s argument relies on the idea that women cannot be empowered in an economic system in which they have to trade their sexuality for economic security and gain. Ghodsee does not grapple with the fact that sex workers have historically been some of the most economically independent individuals in capitalist systems, and that sex work is ultimately an industry that deals in pleasure and intimacy, the desire for which does not disappear in a socialist state. As Sophie Lewis notes in The New Inquiry, Ghodsee’s discussion of sexual liberation and gender equality under the social welfare programs of Denmark conspicuously fails to mention the country’s thriving sex industry.

Although Ghodsee’s argument stumbles a bit in the realm of the intimate, Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism does successfully establish the centrality of state regulation in both establishing public services that increased women’s independence and ensuring that these policies benefitted women from all spectrums of society equally. Ghodsee contends convincingly that a society can only strive for social equality if every level of government enforces policies that demand this equality; otherwise, the most privileged in society will inevitably benefit over all others. Concepts that centered collectivity, rather than individualism, in socialist states also served to positively affect the lives of women in these countries.

Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism is an accessible introduction to this era of eastern European history and the social and political policies that affected gender and labour relations in these socialist states that would engross both the academic and casual reader. In the undergraduate gender studies or political science classroom, this book could serve as a potentially effective source for informed debate. As Ghodsee establishes, the improvement of gender and labour conditions requires increased engagement and participation amongst the populace, especially women; widespread change occurs not at the individual level, but rather, as Ghodsee shows, when the collective acts.

Jessica M. DeWitt

Network in Canadian History and Environment