In this important book, Donna Harsch explores how the policies of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED) affected women and the family, and how concerns of women in turn informed the actions of party functionaries. With a masterful command of every relevant statistical detail, Harsch demonstrates that the party needed to be mindful of women not just as consumers and workers, but also as politically active citizens composing sixty percent of the voting population in 1946. And yet, the party had clear priorities. Leading communists were ideologically committed to the primacy of class, and economically committed to bring women into the workforce. The party was much less inclined to think of women as mothers and consumers, with functionaries being particularly disinterested in women engaging in household labor, which they deemed economically unproductive.

Given the persistent absence of women in the higher echelons of the party, women had few advocates for their specific concerns. Evidently, despite the legally and constitutionally prescribed equality of the sexes, women continued to be discriminated against. The drive toward heavy industry reinforced the income gap between men and women, who tended to work in lower-paid services. Collectivization reinforced the low status of women as agricultural workers. The class bias in higher education also advantaged men, as working-class families were much more likely to send their male offspring to university. The party did launch several initiatives to better the lives of women. Divorce became a routine procedure from 1949, even if throughout the 1950s many legal verdicts were profoundly gender-biased. The controversial abortion law of the Weimar Republic (§218) was abolished, though restrictive practices in the granting of abortion requests were maintained. Indeed, the state even sought to ease some of the everyday burdens of mothers, such as the (completely inadequate) provision of childcare or the institution of a household day. In a society characterized by unprecedented numbers of single mothers and a relatively high birthrate, however, such measures were insufficient to attract women into the workforce. For these reasons, despite the considerable pressure exerted for women to work in paid employment, the number of mothers entering the workforce remained far below that for other women at working age.

The situation for working women changed beginning in the late 1950s. A growing emphasis on consumer goods, the gradually increasing availability of household appliances, and the creation of daycare centers and crèches enticed more women into the workforce. For the first time, women were brought into the labor market not just by pressure, but also through positive inducements. With this came the growing recognition of women in the workplace. As women became a common sight in the workplace, instances of misogyny became less common. Conditions of everyday life undoubtedly improved for women during the 1960s.

Donna Harsch convincingly argues that the 1950s, the period on which her book centers, was characterized by relatively conservative attitudes and unresponsive policies toward women. In the “revenge of the domestic,” however, women as citizens, consumers, and workers forced the party to respond to women's concerns so that by the 1960s the party, the state, and the law developed much more positive policies toward child care, birth control, and divorce. Honecker's policies from 1971 on thus did not represent a sea change but a culmination of developments that had evolved from the late 1940s. In support of her argument, Harsch presents far less evidence on the 1960s than the 1950s. In light of the economic, social, and cultural shifts from 1958 that she points to, the analysis of the 1960s might have deserved more attention. This is already a long book, however, and Harsch's overall argument of the first twenty years of the GDR's existence is important and convincing as it is. Much less plausible is her attempt, in the introduction and in a short conclusion, to link this “revenge of the domestic” to the demise of the GDR in 1989. For this argument to hold, we would need another study of this quality for the 1970s and 1980s, a period in which the conditions of everyday life were markedly different from what they had been in the first two decades of the GDR's existence. The GDR spans a period of forty years, and just as it is legitimate to write a monographic study on Bismarckian Germany without linking it to Germany's slide into World War I, so it surely is legitimate to present a fine monograph such as this on the Ulbricht era without needing to point to the revolution of 1989.

This criticism should not detract from the achievements of this book. Over the past ten years, scholars have presented innovative work on gender, consumer behavior, class, and politics in the GDR, but this book ranks among the best at bringing these approaches together. This is gender history at its finest, a nuanced study that explores the complex interplay among gender, culture, class, and generational change. Although this is a book about the GDR, Harsch also impresses by her acute awareness of social and cultural trends outside socialist Germany, both in western and in eastern Europe. Moreover, Harsch can, and does, build on a rich literature on consumer behavior, showing with particular clarity how this behavior impacted politics, culture, and society. Donna Harsch has produced an argument that not only transforms our understanding of the early period of the GDR, but that is also well written and a joy to read. This is one of the best monographs on the GDR, and certainly on the 1950s. It will benefit historians of Germany, and historians of gender on any country.