Gender Politics and Mass Dictatorship

Using mass dictatorship as a working hypothesis to comprehend support for dictatorship from below, this book concentrates on the gender politics deployed by dictatorial regimes such as Nazism, Stalinism, 'really existing socialism' in the GDR and People's Poland, Maoist China, the development dictatorship in South Korea, and colonial empires. 20th century dictatorial regimes used gender politics as a lever to mobilize men and women as voluntary participants in state projects....
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Using mass dictatorship as a working hypothesis to comprehend support for dictatorship from below, this book concentrates on the gender politics deployed by dictatorial regimes such as Nazism, Stalinism, 'really existing socialism' in the GDR and People's Poland, Maoist China, the development dictatorship in South Korea, and colonial empires. 20th century dictatorial regimes used gender politics as a lever to mobilize men and women as voluntary participants in state projects. Ironically enough, women under dictatorships could become important players in the previously male-dominated public sphere in exchange for voluntary mobilization. But both men and women were not passive objects of gender politics. Men both embraced and rejected the masculine roles set out for them; and the dictatorial regimes' invitation to participate in the public sphere, designed for the self-mobilization of women, was often used by women for self-empowerment. This book shows the twisted paths of citizens' lives under the dictatorial regimes as they veered between self-mobilization and self-empowerment.