During the Cold War, rhetoric surrounding gender roles and family structure often figured prominently in the political and ideological battles between the countries of the communist (socialist) Eastern Bloc and the capitalist West. Following the Second World War, ideas about the ‘proper’ place of women in the home, the workplace and the world were already in a state of general upheaval in these societies in the wake of economic, political, social and demographic changes brought on by decades of war and industrialization. These ideas and realities would continue to undergo drastic changes in both the East and West throughout the Cold War, but the tendency to invoke them as evidence of the supposedly diametrically opposed values of the corresponding societies was at its height as tensions first escalated in the 1950s, slowly becoming less politically relevant as second-wave feminism gained prominence in the West during the following decades and the political détente of the late seventies cooled the dichotomous East-West rhetoric to some extent.

Of course, when it came to ‘women's issues’, neither political ideals nor societal attitudes were ever divided cleanly by the Iron Curtain. The specific circumstances of countries on both sides heavily influenced the ways in which socialist or capitalist ideologies, and women's issues in relation to these, took hold. In East Germany, for example, the post-war population of approximately 19 million consisted of 3 million more women than men, making the mobilization of the female workforce a necessity (something that was easily compatible with socialist ideology), while in Australia many women who were ‘called upon to take up responsible jobs during the war […] [were] sent back to “the home front”’ as troops returned. Susan Sheridan asserts that in Australia