"COMPASSION be the bright light of your eyes'. So says the motto on the cover of the influential Hungarian vomen's weekly magazine, Vok Lapia. It never used to be there. But these days women in Hungary, along with their sisters in all the other former Stalinist dictatorships in Eastern Burope are facing a huge ideological and economic offensive.
From Poland to czechoslovakia, Bast Germany to Hungary, anti-abortion attacks cobundreds of thomanda shut and women workers are losing their jobs and livelihoods.
Enormous price rises, the removal of subsidies, inflation hardest, since they are most often responsible for feeding and clothing their familics.
The first subsidy to be scrapped European countries was that on As material attacks mount, Hastern Europe is also witness ing a renaissance of all manner of reactionary ideologies. For women this means explicitly that their role, first and foremost, is as wife, mother and nomekeeper. vurtuc, in a cood woman, is seen through how standing she is.
Re-emergent nationalist currents also have a tendency to see women as mere machines produced 'for the nation". hat many women may accep this retreat. women in Eastern Europe will automatically demand the defence of the real social gains of these previously postcapitalist states: Ivet necessar ly.
To understand why, means looking beyond the surface 'emancipatory rhetoric of the old Stalinist regimes.
Without doubt, it is true that there were progressive gains for women in Easter Europe made, albeit, imposed via ureaucratic diktat. Legislation y on demand in the first three months of pregnancy, Women were positively encouraged to gain economic independence by having full-time jobs.
State-run creches and nurseries were provided in varying degrees throughout Eastern Europe. Even positive discrimination for women in training opportunities was taken for granted by both women and men in the GDR, Poland, Hunway ano nossaki.
Today many of these gains are under massive attack Creches and nurseries are unprofitable. Large sectors of female labour are considered uneconomic, hence the huge now joining the growing army So why aren't working class women visibly demonstrating tacks? In art, this may be esult of the mass rejection o Stalinist ideology, since official Stalinist rhetonic committed itself to women's emancipation.
But the fundamental material (and ideological) contradiction of the old system was that women were defined as both workers and mothers, without any definition of the role of men.
Therefore women faced a double burden, enshrined in legislation, where not only were they expeteu to be model waged-workers as well as to raise families and be domestic workers. Surveys showed that women in Eastern Europe were esponsible for some 75 per cent f domestic labour Indeed many women also highly controversial question on the left intemationally.
No agreement has just the basis for a possible agree ment.
But FMLN fighters have been systematically prepared by their leadership for reintegration into chrian life. The end of the war is certainly coming.
Originally the FMLN set out boid socialist aims. But after violent struggles in the FMLN leadership.
in 1984 they adopted a programme for a 'government of broad participation which would integrate the FMLN and Salvador army into a single force.
No such proposal is on the table now. Although a purging of officers responsible for crimes is a possblity, the army would remain intact, but the FMLN fighters would disband.
The FMLN faces huge dificul ties in its fight with the death-squad govemment. Internationally itis isolated, especially with the events in the Soviet Union, and the defeat of the Sandinistas. The people above all want peace. This exerts a huge faced a triple burden, as many were also expected to play some role in social and political women did not feel theslightest bit 'emancipated". On the contrary, they felt positively overstretched.
Whilst women were active at all levels of the dissident move1989 upheavals, and were present in large numbers on the 1989/90 pro-democracy demonstraions, they have subsequently been marginalisco trom pont cal activity.
With very few exceptions, the former dissidents who make up the new transitional governments are men. in the new parliaments, women, cent of deputies. Even in the former regimes snere were some 33 deputtes. Of course in both cent women DOTY regimes, power does not rest with parliament present few women are mobilising in support of their rights. But a num Eastern and politically very diverse. Feminism, like socialism, is tar from popular in the eyes of the The idea of independent women's organisation las beer discredited by the old-style official women's movements, conreality these were just extensions of the state with a pretended autonomy.
Nevertholess, in the immediate altermath of the events of 1989, there were signs that a strong independent women's movement could develop.
In the GUk the women s magazine, Fur Dich, which had been close to the official women's movement, became far more