In addition to closing off many positions to women in the public realm, Communism closed off many avenues for females in their personal realm. In her book, "How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed", Slavenka Drakulić vividly illustrates that for all its idealistic claims, Communism ignored the basic needs of women. “In the seventy years of its existence it couldn’t fulfill the basic needs of half the population,” Drakulić proclaims, as she describes the lack of sanitary towels or tampons made available to women during the Socialist era.