«All traffic control in women’ hands…»: to the issue of feminization of the traffic service of Belgorod branch of the Southern railway of people's commissariat for lines of communications of the USSR in 1920s – 1940s (based on materials of primary party o

Исследование выполнено при поддержке Российского фонда фундаментальных исследований (РФФИ), проект № 19-09-00359/20.

Abstract

On the basis of documents of the primary party organizations of railway workers the article
reconstructs the history of the process of feminization (in quantitative and qualitative measurement) of the traffic service of the Belgorod branch of the Southern Railway of the People's Commissariat for Lines of Communications of USSR in 1920s – 1940s. The historical circumstances of women's involvement in the railway transport in the post-revolutionary period are characterized. The conditions and spheres of professional activity of railway workers in the 1920s, employed mainly in the «service» segment of the traffic service, are described. The railway attracted women with high wages, social benefits: free travel on
trains, getting official housing, fuel, uniforms. The factors (the main of which were raising the level of education of the country’s population as a whole and women specifically, as well as the Great Patriotic War) of women's acquisition of motitor railway professions like train dispatchers, station chiefs, station attendants in the 1930–1940s, are revealed.