Compare and contrast the impact on women of the policies of two authoritarian states, each chosen from a different region.

Well, every History IB teacher or student knows that the essay questions on History HL and SL can not be answered in one or two paragraphs. If I were a tutor I would help my student to form a plan of the essay first. Making plans of the essays to common essay questions and the questions from the past papers are crucial in the preparation for IB exams.
To answer abovementioned question it is vital to compare and contrast policies of TWO authoritarian states from DIFFERENT regions (in IB programme it is specified as different continents). In this case we could take in account The People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong (1949-76) and Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler (1933-1945). If we are comparing and contrasting, it is crucial to find some common fields, areas that we will discuss - showing similarities as well as differences. Analysing the impact on women of the policies of authoritarian states I would analyse three aspects: the role of a woman in a family, women's participation in employment and their participation in politics. The policies towards women were different in People's Republic of China and Nazi German. To simplify as I am required to answer the question shortly: In China, with the reign of Mao Zedong, there was a big shift from patriarchal society to communist equality of all people, including women. This happened in area of women's role in the family and emplyment, but not necesarilly in the area of politics. In Nazi Germany, the values were far more to the right of the political spectrum. Women were required to take care of the family, were not participating in workforce or politics. However, in both states, the policies has been changing over time due to wars, conflict or other circumstances like famine. Those changes over time have to be highlighted in the essay. Therefore, for example, women entered the workforce in Nazi Germany when economy needed it during the Second World War. The supposed women's freedom in the communist state of China changed when communists used extremely tragic situation during the Great Famine to open up party-led brothels. There are a lot of fields to be covered in the main body of the essay, but the conclusion here would be that the differences are very big and obious, in both states there was a inconsistency of the policies due to crises and the success of policies in two countries were different too.