Soviet Women

Soviet women, Gray reports, are expected to hold full-time jobs, yet they are also bombarded by government propaganda exhorting them to have large families. This, combined with a ``cult of femininity,'' induces them to marry early. Traveling widely throughout the U.S.S.R., Gray, who is of Russian-French descent, found gender stereotyping rampant, the Soviet family extremely fragile, sexual frigidity widespread and knowledge or use of birth control appallingly limited. Though the government enforces strict taboos on any women's movement operating outside party control, Gray ( World Without End ) found signs of hope as she talked with feminists, factory workers, a newspaper editor, psychologists, actors, a sexologist, married couples, a hotel maid. Her series of sharply focused, brilliantly incisive vignettes add up to a remarkably revealing, often surprising profile of Soviet women under glasnost. First serial to the New Yorker. (Mar.)