When discussing women’s emancipation under capitalist and socialist systems, one might recall the storylines of the female protagonists in the American film «Mona Lisa Smile» and the Soviet film «Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears.» While Julia Roberts’ character uses her art history classes to show young women that they do not have to conform to stereotypes that define women primarily as wives and mothers, the heroine of the iconic, Oscar-winning Soviet film overcomes life’s hardships and raises a daughter on her own. She works at a factory and eventually rises to become its director, maintains a romantic relationship without marrying, and ultimately finds love by the end of the film.
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When intimate relationships are subjected to unregulated free-market capitalism, human intimacy risks becoming a financial transaction rather than an expression of mutual desire. In her book «Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism,» author and ethnographer Kristen Ghodsee examines how economic systems shape romantic bonds, contrasting the transactional sexual markets of market capitalism with the non-monetized intimacy enabled by socialist social safety nets.
Sex as a commodity under market rules
Under capitalist market dynamics, social psychologists Roy Baumeister and Kathleen Vohs formulated «sexual economics theory,» which posits that heterosexual courtship functions like a commercial market. In this model, female sexuality is treated as a scarce commodity that women trade for non-sexual resources, such as financial support, social status, and marital security. When women face gender wage gaps, workplace discrimination, and a lack of affordable public childcare, their access to basic survival resources often depends on financial partnerships with men. Consequently, sexual intimacy becomes an economic asset traded out of financial necessity.
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Socialist theorists, starting with August Bebel and Bolshevik activist Alexandra Kollontai, rejected this commercialization of women’s bodies. Kollontai argued that true female gender emancipation required severing sex and romantic love from financial calculations entirely. By guaranteeing full state employment, subsidized housing, public childcare, and healthcare, state socialism aimed to make women financially independent of individual men. Free from economic dependence, women could choose romantic partners strictly based on mutual attraction and affection — a concept Kollontai famously termed «winged Eros» — rather than financial survival. Furthermore, cross-cultural studies indicate that greater economic equality relaxes restrictive sexual norms, allowing women to engage in intimacy purely for personal pleasure.
Empirical proof from behind the Iron Curtain
Research across former socialist nations demonstrates how economic autonomy directly enhanced women’s sexual satisfaction. Russian sociologists Anna Temkina and Elena Zdravomyslova identified a clear shift among Soviet women from child-oriented «sexual scripts» toward «romantic» and «friendly» scripts in the 1970s and 1980s. Because state employment and universal social benefits provided material security, sexual intimacy ceased to be a bargaining chip. However, following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, rapid market privatization re-established an «instrumental script,» re-commodifying female sexuality through commercialized sex industries and financial sponsorship arrangements.
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Comparative studies in divided Cold War Germany revealed similar contrasts. Researchers found that East German women reported significantly higher rates of sexual satisfaction and orgasmic frequency than their West German counterparts — 80% compared to 63% in one landmark survey. In the German Democratic Republic, state-funded universal childcare, easy divorce laws, and high female labor participation meant women did not need to tolerate unsatisfactory or abusive relationships for financial security. Similarly, Czechoslovak and Polish sexologists in the 1970s viewed female sexual fulfillment as a holistic cultural right tied to social security, rejecting Western commercialized medical models.
Ultimately, Ghodsee’s comparative analysis shows that when state safety nets eliminate economic vulnerability, intimacy is liberated from financial leverage, allowing genuine emotional connections to flourish.
