An American photographer was in Moscow in 1959 and was surprised to see a lot of Soviet women working equally hard with Soviet men. Often at jobs requiring hard physical labor – like paving the roads here on the photo above.

This is a really hard labor – to throw hot smelly asphalt from a pile into the road.

And women, of different ages were acting equally hard as men.

As you can see there are girl to be of very young age and elder women that can be someone’s babushka.

Also another female labor was noticed at digging trenches and replacing water pipes.

Digging sand, carrying bricks and stuff like this.

Look how subtle is her figure compared to the job she is doing. However she seems to do her job without any complaining.

Also working at city lawns, which looks more normal but still required a lot of digging. Also notice, the cloths they were wearing was still classical “feminine” not pants, despite the hard work.

Probably even in year 2018 it’s hard to imagine in many Western countries a woman in skirt digging a trench, paving the road or working at a hardest part of construction works. However in 1959 it was already a norm in Soviet Russia.