[tetromino_]

I strongly suspect that your mother's unfortunate experience was 100% caused by official Soviet antisemitism, not by anything about her gender. Post-war Soviet policy was to deny most Jews the right to even study in prestigious universities, to deny them higher degrees for spurious reasons, and exclude them from many research institutions [1] - is it any wonder that your mother found it difficult to obtain a university teaching position?

> While the USSR might have been seen as a “feminist” heaven back in the day it was far from that

Compared to the West at the time, the USSR was feminist. I have talked to several Soviet Jewish women who emigrated to the US in the 1970s. All of them were struck by blatant gender discrimination that was normal in America at the time, but to them seemed like something out of a 19th century novel; for example, needing a husband's permission to open a bank account.

[1] See, for example, https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Антисемитизм_в_советской_матем...

[dogma1138]

It wasn’t just antisemtism it was the fact that women barred from any progression.

Sure in US it might have been oh honey why do you need to work but in the USSR it was much worse it was horrible exploitation under the guise of liberation.

[lowry]

It is a bit too late, but I just stubled upon a mini-series documentary by Leonid Parfenov about Russian Jews. As Parfenov points out, Russian Empire and then Soviet Union and contemporary Russian went over periods of both antisemitism and judophilia. Those interested in the history of Russian Jews should really watch it.