I am a child of communism. I was born in Communist Albania in the late seventies and was raised there until the age of 19 when I secured a scholarship to study at an English university. I am now a practising barrister in capitalist Britain and a mother of a two-and-a–half-year-old child, regularly facing the challenges that come with being a full-time working mother who seeks to succeed in a challenging profession. Inspired by the ongoing debate on women’s inequalities, I have recently reflected on my own childhood politics and have come to the surprising conclusion that the place to look for solutions to gender inequality is the Communist model.

Growing up in Communist Albania

Life as a child under Communism was simple and unburdened with excess or luxury. I vividly remember queuing for hours with my grandmother outside the grocer’s to buy rationed food. The queues buzzed with lively conversation and I enjoyed talking to the elderly ladies.

My family lived in Tirana in an old house with a big garden, fruit trees and a fence drowned in passion flowers. When I was eight the state, to my despair, confiscated our house and gave us a prefabricated flat in exchange. Our house was demolished to build more pre-fabricated blocks and provide more housing. The state owned everything.

"I excelled academically and was awarded the Communist red star in my first year and later on became a “pioneer of Enver” which meant I could wear the pioneer’s red scarf."

At school we were taught to worship Enver Hoxha, the country’s leader and the chairman of the Albanian Party of Labour, the successor to the Communist party. This continued even after his death in 1985. Another part of the school curriculum was condemning capitalism and the West, which we all did without the slightest hesitation. The classroom walls were decorated with beautifully printed expressions: “Religion is opium for the people” or “Glory to Marxism-Leninism”.

Whilst I knew nothing about religion, drugs or political theory at the time, I nonetheless enjoyed being at school. I excelled academically and was awarded the Communist red star in my first year and later on became a “pioneer of Enver” which meant I could wear the pioneer’s red scarf. I did so with pride, mainly because I liked the colour.

But life under Communism was not so easy for my parents. They both worked hard to provide a good living and education for me and my younger sister. The fact that any form of private enterprise was banned in Albania did not stop them from sending me to clandestine and privately paid for Italian lessons from the age of six. My father especially had always hated Communism, its political and ideological oppression; its suffocation of liberty and its cruel treatment of those who believed in free speech and disagreed with the party. He had wanted to flee to the West since adolescence but stayed because he feared the possible repercussions for the rest of his family which could have included internment, execution or, at the very least, social isolation.

So in December 1990 my parents were among the first to join the thousands of Albanians, publicly protesting in the streets of Tirana, surrounded by herds of armed police and their dogs, demanding the fall of the regime. They were there when the bust of Enver Hoxha was ceremoniously brought down in the middle of Skanderbeg Square. It is imprinted in my memory when they returned home with their faces full of excitement and joy, the unmistakable signs of hope of a better life.

I too felt instinctively happy and as I grew-up understood and shared their political convictions. That is why my instinctive aversion to any socio-economic system that resembles Communism has not faded. But there is one major exception to this and it is how Communist Albania treated women at work and in the home.

How Communist Albania treated women

The Communist promise that women should be equal players in the workforce was not an empty one. Women were positively encouraged by government campaigns to embark on all professions, including “manly” jobs, building on the fact they had fought in large numbers alongside the men as partisans during the Second World War. To achieve this they were given traineeships, professional qualifications and scholarships. No doubt the reasons behind this policy were not entirely ideological. Albania imposed one of the sternest and most isolating forms of Communism. Consequently the country was largely self-reliant in terms of its economy.

"If men suggested that women should be relegated to the house they were mocked for their anachronistic ideas."

Put simply the government could not afford to let half the country’s potential workforce stay at home. Regardless of motive, the results were startling. Large numbers of women became farmers, mechanics, engineers, doctors, scientists and university professors. Women also joined the army and acquired high ranks. In politics too they were omnipresent and as of 1990, almost 30 per cent of Albanian MP’s were women.

Growing up, I never encountered any suggestion that women in these professions were in any way less capable than men by virtue of their gender and additional role as mothers. On the whole, they faced no barriers of gender discrimination. I remember my parents and their friends frequently praising excellent female doctors and teachers.

Women in their role at home were seen in the same way, namely as equal and extremely valuable partners. In my family both my parents worked full-time - but they always shared their domestic duties - the one who happened to be less tired on a particular day taking the larger share. I remember my father, a good-looking alpha male, regularly cleaning the house, cooking, doing school runs and helping with homework. Even when both my sister and I were teenagers he would rather we read books and spent time with friends than helped him with household chores.

My parents did everything together, including going to the demonstrations in December 1990. A few years after the regime fell they built and ran a successful business together. This form of equal partnership was commonplace in the Albanian society I grew up and importantly women’s role in the family informed how women were viewed in the workplace and vice-versa. If men suggested that women should be relegated to the house they were mocked for their anachronistic ideas.

The fall of Communism in Albania

Despite the fall of Communism and for all its other trials and tribulations, Albania, preserved its progressive attitude towards women. For instance, as of 2013 there were 168 female judges – which meant 45.2 per cent of the country’s 371 judges in total were women. Currently, four of the 17 judges on the bench of the Albanian Supreme Court are women, and if you leave aside the Head of the Supreme Court, that makes a ratio of one woman to four men. Whilst there are still more men than women in this role, the situation is considerably better than that in the UK where the figure is one out of 12 and, according to Lord Sumption, unlikely to change anytime soon.

"As a woman you have to prove yourself on a continuous basis that you are at least as able as the men."

The participation in politics, on the other hand, seems to have deteriorated since 1990 when almost 30 per cent of Albanian MPs were women to 18.6 per cent or 26 women in 2014. However, once in Parliament, seven women were promoted to cabinet ministers in the 21-member Albanian cabinet. That is the same number as female ministers in the 22-member UK cabinet, excluding those who sometimes sit in the cabinet. Therefore, it seems that Albania promotes women to high positions in larger numbers than the UK – which in itself is interesting.

Looking at my own profession in the UK, being a barrister is one of the jobs generally viewed as unaccommodating to women. Sadly I agree.

When I contemplated the Bar, other women lawyers encouraged me to become a solicitor instead, as the Bar was too competitive and it was unlikely I would succeed in securing a place. Being an Eastern European trying to enter a historically elitist profession would only add to the hurdles. But I ignored that advice and with a little luck I defied the odds. However, the fight does not end there. As a woman you have to prove yourself on a continuous basis that you are at least as able as the men. You also have to show you can handle your male opponents, a lot of whom still see women as an intrusion or guests to the profession and at times deploy boarding school bullying tactics.

What women and men can learn from Communism

Having reflected on my own experience I strongly believe that had it not been for the gender-equal Communist society in which I was raised, I would not have had the confidence or the courage some 10 years ago to try to join the English Bar. Armed with an upper second class degree from a young university, a Master’s in Public International Law and a foreign accent, I bulldozed through in blissful ignorance of English gender or class based difficulties. I suspect that any real awareness of those obstacles would have successfully withered my ambition. I have recently mentored three young students who are contemplating trying to join the Bar. Each of them has decided against it primarily due to what they feel are the insurmountable difficulties facing women in this field. All three were brought up in the UK.

Since becoming a barrister, I have also had my own family. Interestingly, when it comes to duty-sharing at home I am having a harder time here than my mother had at my age back in Albania. I married an Englishman who is also a lawyer as well as a Cambridge graduate, and basically a very nice middle-class man. Two and a half years ago we were blessed with the arrival of our son and it took us about two years to reach a point at which we carry out an equal share of duties at home, from tidying the kitchen to taking turns in putting our son to bed or waking up early in the morning with him.

My husband’s father worked and his mother was a homemaker and a great one at that. She took care of the children and the house exclusively - whilst he was busy being a journalist. I fear it is this model which feels familiar and comfortable to my husband and it took time to realise that both my job and need to rest were just as important as his.

"I cannot help but think that in order to address women’s struggle with career and promotion we have to tackle the preconceptions formed in the family - as well as the mentality of the male decision-makers."

But whilst two lawyers together can always settle even the most contentious dispute, it is worrying to see the same patterns of behaviour repeated throughout British society. This feature steadily trickles through into the wider world where women seek to be equal participants in the workforce and where their merits and chances of progress are judged in part by the reluctant cooks and the kitchen-phobes. But I wonder whether these successful and able men would be prepared to redefine equal opportunities and success if they had to do their fair share of work and childcare.

I wonder whether, in those circumstances, they would be asking society and the workforce to reconsider and cater for the time spent carrying out their fatherly and husbandly duties, whilst allowing them to excel in their chosen careers? I do not claim to understand the male psychology perfectly, but I suspect that they would. And having reminisced about my life in Communist Albania and my relative success in a challenging, male-dominated profession in the UK, I cannot help but think that in order to address women’s struggle with career and promotion we have to tackle the preconceptions formed in the family - as well as the mentality of the male decision-makers.

Gender equality really does start at home

The two are inescapably interdependent and, as counterintuitive as that may be; it seems that the answer to both branches of the problem can be found in the truly egalitarian model followed in Communist societies. Therefore, this government must put in place a proactive campaign which first and foremost educates the society as a whole on the role of women as equal players. They must also provide cultural education, training and scholarship opportunities to women from a very young age so that when they reach adulthood, they see family and careers as symbiotic rather than a difficult choice.

Perhaps in addition to the political and social attitude towards women, gender equality worked in Albania because of other conditions present in its society, such as close family links and networks of support. That does not make the achievement less important. Instead, it demonstrates that it may be time that the UK government also took steps to encourage families to create and maintain such support. In fact, is that not what David Cameron is doing in other areas by suggesting that, due to limited resources, elderly parents move in with their children and be cared for by them?

Are we not trying to steer the emphasis of our society’s values toward kindness and care for one another more than privacy, personal space, independence and basic selfishness? And if so, has there not come a time for proactive government campaigns that educate men first and foremost to share equally duties at home? It seems to me this would remove some if not all obstacles women face to fair access and promotion in the work market. It would be only a start but a good one. After all if charity starts at home - so should respect.