Soviet women are overburdened, exploited by their husbands and ill treated by their doctors. They are also clothes-mad and not at all interested in driving tractors or putting up with men. Households consisting entirely of two or three generations of women are widespread and seemingly perfectly content. Francine Gray marvels at the complexities and contradictions in the Soviet female character and she comes up with many surprises. On the whole she finds Soviet women not at all downtrodden, but formidable, and in many ways admirable.