A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

1140 Ch. 27 • Rebuilding Divided Europe

by one generation could be genetically inherited. Stalin’s particular interest

in this theory was that it suggested that party members who learned official

orthodoxy and experienced conformity in social behavior would pass on the

same characteristics to their offspring.

Advances for Women

In the decades following World War II, the status of women gradually

improved, although their situation varied across the continent. While

women lost some skilled jobs to men returning from service after the war,

economic expansion and the creation of more white-collar jobs provided

new employment possibilities. Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex

(1949) helped mobilize movements for the rights of women in the United

States and, more slowly, in Europe. In Western countries, the important

contribution of working women made it difficult to continue to deny half

the population the right to vote. After the war, women received the suf­

frage in France, Italy, Belgium, and Portugal. Women probably were more

equal in the countries of the Soviet bloc (where there were no free elec­

tions) in terms of employment opportunities, although in practice this

often meant that they bore the dual burden of wage earning and domestic

duties. In the Soviet Union and Sweden, women made up more than half

of all employees, and more than a third in every European country. In

Western Europe, more and more middle-class women began to work full­

time. Beginning in 1977, French women no longer needed their husbands’

permission to work. In Communist countries, women more easily entered

the medical profession, but men dominated the state bureaucracies.

Women were most successful in reaching rough equality in the Scandina­

vian countries, least so in the Mediterranean lands where traditional

biases remained difficult to overcome.

At the same time, the number of female university students rose dramati­

cally, and so did the number of women in the professions. Women received

legal protection against job discrimination in England in the late 1960s, and

in France the government created a Ministry for the Status of Women.

Feminism, reviving during the 1968 protests, helped the cause of women’s

rights. Gradually, the percentage of women serving in legislatures increased.

Moreover, gays and lesbians gained more rights beginning in the 1970s, even

if some countries retained laws permitting discrimination against them.

Catholicism in Modern Europe

Like the nations of Western Europe, the Catholic Church, for centuries a

major force in European life, has been forced to confront pressure for

change. Within the Catholic Church, a liberal current of thought and action

developed in response to some of the social problems of modern life. ‘‘Worker