Protection of Women and Children in Soviet Russia
1. In case of public crises, everyone must take part in work required by the government, but pregnant women are not required to mobilize (or pay working tax during floods, storms, disaster, civil war). Women who have been pregnant for seven months or women still feeding children at the breast and women with children under eight years of age who have no one to care for their offspring when they are gone are exempt from conscription.
2. If after four months away from work because of pregnancy the woman is still ill she can get four more months without losing her job and her insurance pays her expenses.
3. All workers can be ill and away from work for two months without losing their jobs. Social insurance keeps them on full salaries. Permanent invalid workers are cared for during life by Commissariat of Public Relief and receive a stipend from the Social Insurance Company.
4. A woman cannot lose her job because she is pregnant, and she must be re-accepted to her work after she has given birth.
5. Each person in Moscow can have only eight square meters of space in a house without paying triple rent. However, women pregnant for four months or longer can have more space at the regulation rents. 6. Pregnant women after five months cannot be transferred from one factory to another town or factory, but must be allowed to work where they are. No overtime work, paid or unpaid, is allowed for pregnant and nursing mothers.
7. After a miscarriage or abortion the working woman gets from a two to a three week rest. (There is a clause in the Trade Union laws saying a woman worker can have time off during menstruation, but this prerogative is seldom used. However, in peasant farms they are more careful and do not assign heavy work to women during their menstrual periods.)
