le's courts.

Since 1967 task forces of women from the cities have been dispatched to
tour backward regions, particularly the highlands, explaining the
Party's line on the emancipation of Albanian women. Reforms such as
giving women equal rights to inherit property, an equal voice in the
people's councils, and equal political rights, however, have created
considerable hostility in a country where man has traditionally been the
master of the family.

The tasks of the United Trade Unions are similar to those of the
Democratic Front, albeit on a more limited scale. During ceremonies in
February 1970 marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of
the trade unions, it was stated that they were created by the Party,
that they had since struggled to implement the Party line, and that they
recognized the Party leadership as the "decisive factor of their force
and vitality." It was stated further that they were created jointly with
the dictatorship of the proletariat for its consolidation and defense
and as an important component part of this dictatorship.

In a conference in Tirana on February 10, 1970, Gogo Nushi, then
president of the trade unions, boasted that they had become powerful
levers of the Party in implementing the Party line among all the
country's workers, who had grown from some 30,000 in February 1945 to
about 400,000 in February 1970. At the same conference Politburo member
Adil Carcani, in a speech dealing with the functions of the trade
unions, attributed to them the task of exercising control over all
workers.

Other duties and responsibilities of the trade unions in 1970, according
to Tonin Jakova, General Secretary of the General Council of the United
Trade Unions of Albania, were to carry out the political and ideological
education of the workers; to influence all the other strata of the
population so that the class ideology should gradually become the sole
ideology of the society; to broaden their control and sphere of action
in all fields of life--political, ideological, cultural, artistic,
social, economic, and educational; to increase labor productivity by
increasing work norms; and to struggle against old traditions and
backward customs, with emphasis on religious beliefs. In listing the
duties and responsibilities of the trade unions not a word was said
about their safeguarding the interests of the workers, such as improving
their living and bargaining with the management.

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