Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism

Have you ever wondered why love, sex, and even family life often feel entangled with money? Kristen R. Ghodsee’s Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism begins with this provocative question and turns it into a sweeping exploration of how economic systems shape our most intimate experiences. Her argument is as daring as it is data-driven: unregulated capitalism is bad for women, but democratic and state socialism—despite their flaws—created conditions for women’s greater freedom, equality, and even more satisfying relationships.

Ghodsee, a professor and anthropologist who spent decades studying post-socialist Eastern Europe, invites you to rethink capitalism not just as an economic system but as a social and emotional one—a machine that commodifies affection, bodies, and even desire. She argues that when people don’t have to marry for survival, they can pursue love for love’s sake. “The political is personal,” she writes, reclaiming a feminist maxim to suggest that economic justice is inseparable from emotional and sexual well-being.

Capitalism, Dependency, and Gender Inequality

At its core, the book exposes how capitalism thrives on gender inequality. Because women bear children and often take responsibility for care work, they are excluded from—or penalized within—competitive labor markets. They’re paid less, promoted less, and displaced more easily. When states cut spending on education, health care, and elder care, women pick up the slack at home without pay. Ghodsee argues that capitalism’s supposed “efficiency” depends on this invisible female labor, trapping women in cycles of dependency and emotional exhaustion.

This isn’t just theory—it’s lived experience. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Ghodsee saw Eastern Europe transform from socialist states with guaranteed employment, child care, and maternity leaves to neoliberal economies full of hardship and hollow promises. Women who had once enjoyed state-supported independence suddenly found themselves economically dependent on men again, a dynamic that revived patriarchal relationships. As one East German man bragged to historian Dagmar Herzog, “I have more power now as a man in unified Germany than I ever did in communist days.”

Learning from the Socialist Past

To understand what was lost, Ghodsee revisits twentieth-century socialism, distinguishing clearly between authoritarian state socialism and democratic socialism. While she doesn’t excuse the repression of the Soviet Union or Eastern Bloc states, she insists that we can separate the crimes of dictators from the genuinely progressive social policies these societies achieved—especially regarding gender. State socialists funded universal education, free health care, paid maternity leave, public child care, and workplace equality programs that made women less dependent on men. Even under imperfect regimes, these policies created real gains: literate populations, lower infant mortality, and a remarkable female presence in science, industry, and politics.

Democratic socialist countries like Denmark, Sweden, and Finland carried these ideas further without authoritarian repression. Ghodsee points out that these Nordic nations—where redistribution, high taxation, and generous safety nets are normal—consistently top global rankings of both happiness and gender equality. Women there enjoy more freedom and, notably, more sexual satisfaction. In fact, she playfully cites the American “pickup artist” Roosh V’s complaint that his seduction tactics fail in Denmark because women are too independent to be manipulated by economic incentives.

Sex, Love, and Economic Systems

Ghodsee’s title claim—women have better sex under socialism—isn’t metaphorical. Drawing on psychological and sociological data, she explores “sexual economics theory,” which treats sex as a marketplace transaction in capitalist societies. In this model, women exchange sex for resources—money, security, status—while men compete to buy access. When economic conditions force women to rely on men, sex becomes currency. But under socialism, where the state guarantees material security, women can enjoy intimacy free from financial calculation. Ghodsee cites interviews, surveys, and studies from East Germany showing that women there reported more frequent and satisfying orgasms than their West German counterparts—a finding that ignited what the press dubbed “The Great Orgasm War” after reunification.

Freedom, Citizenship, and the Future

In her final chapters, Ghodsee widens her lens from the bedroom to the ballot box. She makes a compelling argument that economic dependence translates into political weakness. Throughout history, women’s suffrage, labor rights, and social welfare expanded together. When women vote, governments tend to grow more redistributive. That’s why, Ghodsee argues, far-right movements attacking feminism often also try to restrict voting rights or cut welfare—because empowered women are bad for plutocrats. Her call to action is clear: women must see economic justice as a foundation for personal freedom and collective happiness.

In essence, Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism is both a history lesson and a manifesto. It asks you to reconsider how deeply capitalism invades your personal relationships, to question the myth that free markets equal freedom, and to imagine societies that value cooperation over competition. Ghodsee doesn’t advocate a return to Soviet-style communism; instead, she revives the democratic socialist ideal of shared prosperity, civic engagement, and emotional well-being. Her message is invigorating: our intimate lives will only be as free as the economic systems that sustain them.

Kristen Ghodsee begins with a simple but radical claim: women’s political and sexual liberation starts with their economic independence. Under capitalism, she argues, markets punish those whose biology and social expectations tether them to unpaid care work. Without collective support—affordable childcare, paid leave, or accessible health care—women become dependent on men, even in marriages that appear loving.

The Hidden Cost of Dependency

Ghodsee juxtaposes two women’s stories to show how dependency operates. “Lisa,” a stay-at-home mom, discovers that her husband controls the credit cards and dictates personal spending. When he threatens to withhold them, it becomes clear who holds the power. For Ghodsee, this isn’t an isolated problem—it’s structural. Capitalism systematically relies on women’s unpaid labor while rewarding men who “provide.” When you depend on a partner for survival, even affection becomes transactional.

George Bernard Shaw recognized this dynamic a century ago, writing that capitalism offers women “a continual bribe to enter sex relations for money.” Feminist dystopias like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale dramatize what happens when women lose economic rights altogether: their savings vanish, and financial control translates into bodily control. Ghodsee’s point echoes both: dependency makes domination possible, whether in households or economies.

Socialist Solutions to Economic Inequality

The state socialist countries of the twentieth century tackled this inequality head-on. Nations like Bulgaria, East Germany, and the USSR guaranteed women employment, built child-care centers, and provided long maternity leaves. In these systems, a woman’s labor was recognized—not treated as an invisible domestic contribution. Even peasant societies were transformed as women learned to operate tractors or manage factories. A 1954 Bulgarian documentary titled I Am a Woman Tractor Driver symbolized a broader cultural revolution: women were workers, citizens, and equals.

These policies, Ghodsee explains, generated measurable benefits. Female literacy rates soared, child mortality plummeted, and women entered science and engineering in unprecedented numbers. Although state socialism had glaring political flaws, it provided the infrastructure that allowed millions of women to live without depending on men for subsistence.

Democratic Socialism vs. Neoliberal Retreat

When the Eastern Bloc collapsed, these social supports vanished. Privatization slashed public jobs and subsidies, and women were told to return to their “natural” family roles. Across post-socialist Europe, birthrates plunged and economic inequality ballooned. Meanwhile, as neoliberalism spread globally, Western countries followed a similar path—defunding social programs, deregulating markets, and calling it freedom. But as Ghodsee writes, lower taxes for corporations often mean higher unpaid labor for mothers and daughters.

In contrast, democratic socialist nations like Denmark and Sweden cultivated public institutions to share the burden of care. When governments ensure economic security, women no longer have to “marry well” to survive. Their choices become freer—professionally, emotionally, and sexually. For Ghodsee, that’s not an accident but the logical result of economic justice.

“When women have their own incomes and the state supports their independence, the calculus of love changes. They no longer have to stay in bad marriages or sleep with men for shelter. They can choose freely—and that is the foundation of true intimacy.”

In the end, economic independence is not just about money—it’s about dignity. By linking financial security to emotional autonomy, Ghodsee revives an old socialist idea in contemporary terms: liberation begins when no one has to trade affection for survival.

Why does motherhood still derail women’s careers? Ghodsee argues that capitalism punishes those who give birth, not because biology demands it, but because markets equate productivity with uninterrupted labor. Employers shy away from hiring women who “might” have children, a bias economists call statistical discrimination. The result: motherhood becomes an economic risk.

The Cost of Pregnancy Under Capitalism

Through personal stories, Ghodsee brings this structural injustice to life. She describes a friend, “Jake,” who champions hiring a woman in his tech startup. When she becomes pregnant and quits after struggling without child-care support, Jake swears never to hire a woman again. The problem isn’t her—it’s a system without maternity policies. Women bear the cost of reproduction, and employers treat it as a liability. Even feminism falters when motherhood is privatized as a “personal choice” instead of a collective responsibility.

Socialist Origins of Maternity Benefits

In contrast, socialist and social-democratic thinkers viewed childbearing as socially vital work. Nineteenth-century German reformer Lily Braun proposed maternity insurance funded by progressive taxation. These ideas inspired policies implemented by Alexandra Kollontai in revolutionary Russia: paid maternity leaves, legalized abortion, and public nurseries. Though Stalin later reversed many reforms, the principle survived and spread across Eastern Europe and Scandinavia. By the mid-twentieth century, nations like Bulgaria and Poland guaranteed paid parental leave, job protection, and subsidized child care—long before the United States even outlawed pregnancy discrimination.

Ghodsee notes that modern welfare states in Scandinavia carried Braun’s “maternity insurance” into democratic practice. Iceland’s gender-equal leave laws and Sweden’s “use-it-or-lose-it” paternity leaves embody this legacy. By contrast, the U.S.—one of the only developed countries lacking paid maternity leave—continues to treat motherhood as a private burden, not public good.

Motherhood as Collective Infrastructure

The socialist insight was simple but profound: since future workers sustain society, supporting mothers is national self-interest. Policies like universal child care, job-protected leave, and flexible scheduling allowed women to keep careers without neglecting family. In East Germany, for instance, 90% of women with children worked outside the home, aided by an extensive network of crèches and kindergartens. Birthrates stayed stable because women didn’t have to choose between employment and family. After 1989, however, privatization dismantled these supports, and fertility rates plummeted—what journalists called the “birth strike.”

A Different Future

Ghodsee believes these lessons remain urgent. Societies that guarantee care work as public infrastructure empower everyone—fathers included—to live more balanced lives. Far from authoritarianism, this is democracy in its most practical form: freedom through social solidarity. When you can raise a child without losing your livelihood, freedom stops being theoretical—it becomes real.

Despite progress, women remain underrepresented in leadership. Ghodsee attributes this gap not to women’s lack of ambition but to systemic bias and cultural inertia. Across industries and governments, “the boys’ club” still holds sway. She contrasts the U.S.’s slow evolution—where women occupy less than a quarter of congressional seats—with the Nordic countries’ use of quotas to fast-track equality.

From Utopian Ideals to Real Policies

To explain how quotas became central to socialist feminism, Ghodsee dives into history. Early thinkers like Charles Fourier and Flora Tristan imagined societies governed by gender-balanced pairs. Later, German Social Democrats like August Bebel and Friedrich Engels argued that eliminating private property would naturally dismantle patriarchy. When revolution came to Russia, these ideals found partial expression. Women like Alexandra Kollontai and Inessa Armand joined Lenin’s government, shaping policies for education, child care, and marriage law. Across Eastern Europe, heroines like Bulgaria’s Elena Lagadinova and Romania’s Ana Pauker symbolized an alternative future—one where women could lead armies, ministries, and global delegations.

Quotas as Corrective Tools

Quotas worked because they institutionalized fairness. In the Soviet bloc, they ensured that parliaments and governments included women, even if symbolic. In modern Scandinavia, corporate and political quotas achieved real parity. Norway legally requires 40% of board members to be women—a model now adopted across the EU. Studies cited by Ghodsee show that corporations with more women directors tend to be more profitable and collaborative.

Cultural change followed policy. As more women entered visible leadership, younger generations saw ambition as compatible with femininity. Ghodsee quotes research by KPMG showing that 88% of women feel more ambitious when they see female leaders modeled around them. Symbolism, in other words, matters.

Beyond Corporate Feminism

Ghodsee warns, however, that quotas alone can’t fix inequality. When feminism focuses only on elite women—“pantsuits at the top,” as she jokes—it risks ignoring workers at the bottom. Executive progress shouldn’t be won on the backs of underpaid nannies and caregivers. True socialism means connecting advances at the top with protections for those providing invisible labor. In that sense, representation is necessary but not sufficient—it must come with redistribution.

Seen globally, the story of women’s leadership is still unfolding. Wherever states take active steps—through quotas, welfare, and education—gender gaps narrow. Where markets rule unregulated, they widen. Ghodsee’s takeaway is simple: power rarely concedes without structure. Egalitarian policy is the scaffolding for cultural transformation.

One of the book’s most fascinating detours comes through what Ghodsee calls “capitalism between the sheets.” Here, she examines how economic logic infiltrates romance. The story begins with her late friend Ken, a Wall Street trader who equated attraction with wealth and women’s affection with status symbols. His awakening—that equality breeds authenticity—becomes Ghodsee’s springboard to dissect sexual economics theory.

Markets of Desire

Psychologists Roy Baumeister and Kathleen Vohs proposed that heterosexual relations operate like a marketplace: women “sell” sex, and men “buy” it with resources. Although meant descriptively, the theory gained traction among conservatives, who blamed “cheap sex” for male apathy and social decay. The Austin Institute’s viral video The Economics of Sex argued that contraception lowered the “price” of intimacy, making men lazy and commitment-shy. For Ghodsee, this shows how deeply capitalist thinking distorts human connection. When desire becomes a commodity, both genders lose—the one who buys and the one who sells.

The Socialist Counterargument

Ghodsee counters this with forgotten socialist thinkers who saw love as the antithesis of transaction. August Bebel’s Woman and Socialism (1879) envisioned a world where partnership was free of economic coercion. Friedrich Engels traced marriage’s oppression to property inheritance, not morality. Alexandra Kollontai, the early Soviet diplomat and theorist, believed only socialism could “end the buying and selling of caresses.” She championed “winged Eros”—love integrated with equality and friendship—over “wingless” lust divorced from empathy.

These thinkers shared a vision: once men and women stood as economic equals, sex would shift from scarcity and exchange to mutual pleasure. In capitalist logic, Ghodsee writes, even desire obeys “supply and demand.” Socialist philosophy rejected this, proposing that passion, like art, thrives best when liberated from markets.

Liberation Through Security

What happens when access to education, housing, and healthcare is universal? According to Ghodsee’s research in Eastern Europe, intimacy improves. Freed from fear of destitution, women can enjoy sexuality as choice rather than strategy. “Sex is not as great when you’re forced to sell it to pay your rent,” she writes bluntly. Studies of East Germany before 1989 showed women reporting higher satisfaction than in the capitalist West, evidence that equality—not scarcity—nurtures desire.

For Ghodsee, this isn’t just about orgasm statistics; it’s about human dignity. When care, safety, and love lose their price tags, people rediscover what connection feels like without calculation. As she puts it, “When we stop asking what our affection is worth on the market, we start remembering its real value.”

Does socialism really make sex better? Ghodsee’s evidence suggests yes—and not only in quantity but in quality. Surveys from divided Germany in the 1970s and 1980s revealed that East German women reported more orgasms, greater emotional intimacy, and fewer sexual anxieties than West German women. After reunification, many lamented the loss of what sociologist Josie McLellan later called “love in the time of communism.”

Empirical Proof Behind the Provocation

Ghodsee connects these results to broader patterns. East German women worked, earned wages, and had access to universal health care and childcare; their West German counterparts faced restrictive gender norms and economic dependence. Relationships in the East were less transactional because women didn’t need male support. As sociologist Ingrid Sharp observed, “When you rely on men to pay the bills, you learn to fake happiness.” Economic equality fostered sincerity, and sincerity—unsurprisingly—improved sex.

The Cultural Battlefield of Desire

The collapse of socialism brought a flood of pornography, prostitution, and “sugar baby” culture to Eastern Europe. Ads for gold-digger academies and mail-order brides replaced socialist love stories. For Ghodsee, this shift dramatizes how quickly economic liberalization commodifies intimacy. Capitalism didn’t introduce sex—it commercialized it. As one Russian feminist told her, “Money is now the measure of worth—even in bed.”

The Intersection of Gender and Political Economy

In other post-socialist nations, like Poland and Hungary, Ghodsee highlights surprising variations. Polish sexologists during the 1970s studied equality as central to pleasure, long before Western psychologists did. Hungarian researchers found that young people admired couples who “made love before marriage” but despised prostitution—proof that sex was seen as a mutual gift, not a trade. Where the state provided security, women didn’t need to monetize love. When neoliberalism dismantled those protections, love became business again.

These findings reach beyond the bedroom. Equality in intimate life mirrors equality in civic life. When affection is shared rather than traded, societies are less hierarchical and more humane. Ghodsee’s cheeky title masks a serious thesis: better sex under socialism means healthier citizens, more cooperation, and ultimately a stronger democracy.

The book’s final section turns from intimacy to citizenship. Ghodsee argues that capitalism doesn’t just shape love—it distorts democracy. In an era where money equals speech, political power tilts toward plutocrats. She contrasts today’s apathy with earlier moments when collective action transformed history: the French Revolution, the suffrage movement, the fall of the Berlin Wall. Her lesson: change always feels impossible—until it happens.

The Threat to Women’s Political Power

Ghodsee highlights how antifeminist movements use nostalgia to roll back progress. The #Repealthe19th hashtag, which trended during the 2016 election, openly called for revoking women’s right to vote. She traces such ideas to men’s rights writers and pundits like Ann Coulter and “pickup artist” Roosh V, who argue that female suffrage fuels socialism because women vote for welfare and regulation. Ironically, their claims are partly true—studies show women consistently favor redistribution—but for Ghodsee, that’s democracy working as intended: voters using power to protect the vulnerable.

Millennials and the New Left

Younger generations, she observes, are rediscovering socialism’s appeal. After 2008’s financial crisis, surveys revealed that Americans under thirty preferred socialism to capitalism by double-digit margins. Writers like Julia Mead and Sarah Leonard interpret this as a reaction to “an unequal world we inherited.” Student debt, housing insecurity, and climate anxiety have made redistribution attractive again. As Ghodsee notes, these voters—especially women—represent a demographic shift powerful enough to reshape the electorate.

Democracy or Plutocracy?

Political equality, Ghodsee argues, depends on economic equality. When the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision made campaign donations unlimited, markets invaded politics as decisively as they had intimacy. The result is plutocracy—rule by the wealthy. She calls on readers, especially women, to reassert civic responsibility through voting, organizing, and education. Government, she insists, is a vessel; it can serve citizens or oligarchs depending on who steers.

“Love kills capitalism,” declared a bookstore banner in Munich—a slogan Ghodsee adopts to mean that solidarity, not cynicism, is the truest form of resistance.

Her closing message is almost spiritual: care for others as an act of rebellion. Build communities that prize connection over competition. The same spirit that transforms bedrooms and boardrooms can transform ballots. Or, as she puts it, “The star of capitalism may go out like a supernova, but the transition to something better will only succeed if ordinary people make it happen—together.”