ABSTRACT
Two of the most striking historical cases of deviation in the gender pattern are those of Finland and Russia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In each case, the most plausible explanation for unusually high levels of female recruitment to political elites is the effect on women’s status of an unusual emphasis on education, relative to other resources. In one case, a whole nation was carried away by its esteem for education; in the other, it was an intellectual minority which set itself against established values. In both, however, the end of a period of political transition brought the stabilisation of a new socio-economic and political order and with it, an end to the unusual progress which women had made. The establishment of, in the one, a democratic and, in the other, a state socialist system serves as a laboratory in which to demonstrate the reasons for these setbacks and their bearing on the problems facing feminists today. Since the Soviet case involved the conscious attempt to transform society itself, as well as women’s situation, it is dealt with here at greater length.
