From the heroine of labor to the mother-heroine

Abstract

The paper analyses the transition of the ideal of women under socialism in Bulgaria from the heroine of labor to the mother-heroine. In its first part it focuses on the elevated hierarchical position of the woman shock worker during the early socialist regime. This ideal of Bulgarian woman is considered in the context of the communist project that tries not only to reduce the elaborate taxonomy of various kind of women to the married hard-working woman, but to equalize and even to merge the figure of the woman with the man in a universal subject of labor that gradually loses the distinguishing features of the sex. In its second part the paper analyses the pro-natal policies of late socialism in Bulgaria. It compares the early communist practices and ideology focused on the ideal figure of woman shock worker with those of the late communist regime oriented towards the favoring of maternity. This accent on the role of woman as a mother changes the emancipatory politics of the regime and ultimately leads to recapturing of femininity of socialist women.