 Communist societies that purported to institute equality for women from the top down, so to speak, failed to accomplish their goal precisely by overlooking the obvious conflict between the perfect mother and the perfect worker. For example, commentators such as Li (1995) contend that in China the Communist model of equality superimposed a thin veneer of equal gender relations over 5,000 year old patriarchal customs that strongly socialized women to the roles of obedient and deferential wife and daughter. Combining these norms with Communist women’s equal obligations as workers created double obligations for women without any real recognition of the double role as a double burden (Li 1995). Some feminists have noted that the Soviet Communist idea of gender equality and its post-communist development created a triple burden, as women were expected to function in three roles: wife and mother; good worker or professional; and social activist (Petrova 1993). And today, as women enter the public sphere around the globe, they carry the burdens of the private sphere with them, because the institutional structure has not been changed to accommodate social and economic evolution or to recognize the value of traditional women’s work (Fineman 2004, 1995).