The health of Soviet female workers: Experts' debates and state interests in 1923–1933

This article explores the evolution of medical discourse on women's industrial labour and health in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and early 1930s. Using a transnational and comparative approach, it situates Soviet debates within broader international discussions, focusing on German developments. The study examines how Soviet medical professionals investigated the impact of industrial work on women's physical and mental health, influenced by institutional frameworks and political agendas. In the 1920s, labour protection institutes, occupational physicians, and the People's Commissariat of Labour collaborated to collect data on women's working and living conditions, as part of an endeavour to integrate women into industry. This involved an analysis of how production affected health, influenced by German social hygiene and occupational medicine. However, by the late 1920s, political priorities shifted. With forced industrialisation and healthcare restructuring in 1930, the focus moved to labour productivity and economic efficiency. Soviet experts were increasingly expected to prove that women's labour was compatible with industrial demands. Earlier studies highlighting risks – domestic or foreign – were criticised, and medical discourse emphasised industrial work's benefits. The article pays special attention to the exchange of knowledge on women's occupational pathology between Soviet and German specialists, and its reshaping by political and institutional change. It provides new insight into the entanglement of gender, medicine, and labour policy within domestic and transnational contexts during the early Soviet period.