Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism

Kristen Ghodsee's Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism explains why capitalism is uniquely bad for women. Through surprising economic lessons from twentieth-century history, it shows that if we adopt some ideas from socialism, women's lives will be better - at work, at home and even in the bedroom. A survey conducted in 1988 revealed that East German women living under socialism enjoyed sex more and reported a higher rate of orgasm than their Western counterparts.

The horrors and deprivations of Communism are infamous. Less well known is that the socialist insistence in many Eastern and Northern European countries on bringing women out of the home and into the work force - through state provision of education, maternity leave, childcare and domestic support - transformed their lives for the better. Releasing them from financial dependence on marriages and men, they were free to escape unfulfilling or abusive relationships and to choose partners on their own terms in a way that generations of women before them had been unable to.

Drawing on decades of research and fascinating personal testimony, Kristen Ghodsee conveys what this was like for women at the time and shows how women in capitalist societies today are experiencing the opposite: with their access to well-paid work and to child support systematically restricted, they face an impossible choice, and for the majority who become mothers marriage is their primary financial resource. Little wonder that sex is not so great when it's your only way of paying rent or feeding your kids. Indeed, since the advent of capitalism-on-steroids in post-Soviet countries, women there have become conspicuously commodified, whether as domestic servants, sex workers or mail-order brides.

This expert, witty and empowering book shows how things can be different. It provides in enjoyable and accessible form all of the history, economics and argument you need to reclaim your time, emotional energy and self-worth from the reductive logics of capitalism - and shows how collectively young women have the power to re-shape society in their favour.