NOT TOO long ago, state-socialist bureaucrats and Western feminists were both telling women in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union how good they had it, that they already had what western women's movements were still fighting for. Abortion rights, childcare, equality and full employment were regularly cited.How have things changed since the collapse of Stalinism? NANETTE FUNK, co-editor of LIBERATION POLITICS Gender Politics and Post-Communism (Routledge, 1993). reports.
B (from the THE EARLIER accounts of life under Stalinism left out women's own experiences. the problems they really faced and still face, and how these problems are both similar and different from those in the west.
Without understanding postcommunist women's attitudes toward work, family, feminism the possibilities and difficulties for ine acyclopment 0i a women's movement in post stood in the west.
Post-communist women's reputed desire to retur bome and leave the paid workforce is not generally represent women turning their backs on a feminist paradise nor is it necessarily anti-feminist dreaming or cathe glories of the traditional housewife role.
The reasons are complex. In the East, not working represents freedom. Previously had to work, either for ecothey want to have a choice whether to be employed. In addition the private sphere in state communism often represented the realm of freedom - freedom from state intervention, freedom to discuss politics, freedom to express one's real values and experience.
One form of resistance for women in the Soviet Union had been to leave the paid workforce and take care of children at home, thereby taking control of one's own life, eluding the power of the state and gaining Could this be the secret of bureaucratic power? Stalinist display of old balls Tear's cannone) attracts the curiosiv of Soviet sorciators. more authority over the devel opment of one's children.
Women also consider the costs of paid work - in bealth, stress, guilt towards children and lack of job satisfaction. For some the equation comes out in favour of not being employed.
Gender roles haven't changed very much. Women have the double burden of paid work and primary responsibility for children and the home Women do about 80 per cent of the work in the home.
Women in the GDR also frequently found their ions more dissatisfying than did men, with women having very few positions of authority and decision making c.g. women in 4 per cent of top positions in industry and 2 per cent in agriculture.
Women were still overwhelmingly in 'women's jobs" - in textiles, office work, health more than men in unskilled jobs. In Hungary women were than 25 per cent of the skilled workers and in the GDR women were 60 per cent of the unskilled workers altogh they had equal job qualifications with men.
Eased out
It should be noted that state socialist policies had generally changed from thosc of the 1950s and 1960s and women had already begun to be cased out of the workforce well before 1989.
Yugoslavia, with its high unemployment, had introduced measures which made it possible for women to stay out of the workforce for three years in greeting the first successful Soviet space flight.
"It would be a mistake to think high unemployment is a result of women's own choices. Many women, including lone the West" Hungary, five in the former Yugoslavia, while raising children.
This became a way for the state to maintain supposed full emplorment. From 1975 or women's employment in technical work declined by almost half in the former GDR.
Hungary had already decided prior to 1989 that women staying at bome with young children was i cacaper miyesuncal tak developing an adequate childcare system.
But post-communist women have conflicting attitudes on the issuc of employment as studies have indicated. Some may want to retum to the home but feel a tremendous vacuum if they do not work. Women's friendships and social life revolved largely around work, their job being part of their identity.
It is true that about 30 per cent of women throughout the former Soviet system would prefer to be cmployco part-ame they do not want to be employed when their child is very young. In most countries this has not been allowed.
Despite all this it would be a mistake to think high unemown choices. Many women, inclucing one molers, race le same traps as they do in the West with inadequate childcare prohibiting them from working.
Bottom of ladder Because of institutional discriminanca womca were at the Doing as they were told: Russian women in 1961 mothers, face the same traps as they do in bottom of the job ladder with less power and were the first fired. Once fired it is much more difficult for women to find jobs.
i tack, growing avorcas unemployment due to the oconomic transformation is a major problem that women face and any women's activities in postThere are also cultural, social and political pressures for women not to work. The present form of employment of women signified a disrespectful, arrogant modern world view being imposed on society by the comnunist state, disregarding pre 1945 pre-1911 traditional culture and women's roles.
Patriarchal
Returning women to the home represents a reappropriation of a sovereion. inditiona but often patriarchal culture and autenac socnaily This also serves as an ideo logical mask and encouragement for eliminating women in the ever-growing competition with mica Toroos Pro-women activities now must also confront the fact that the end of state socialism meant a loss of a collective identity, often replaced by nationalism.
Nationalism sees women primarily in their role as mothers. as reproducers and perpetuators of the nation, a mation arways perocived as under the threat of extinction.
No paradise lost: women under Staliniem still suffered the double burden of work and domestic labour that if often part of nationalism also means pressure for women Returning women to the home, as well as restricting abortion, is also a symbol to the Church of its power. For the patriarchal Church, restricting abortion rights not only undoes evil, but also signifies that the old 'evil' system of communism is dead.
Women thus have an imoorposition mine transformatoon which is not to their benefit. Thus Poland is about to pass a law prohibiting abortion except in rape, serious malformation of ine roos or canger to the Bie of the mother.
Western women must also recognize that although there was a right to abortion under were often poor and unsanitary.
Likewise, the childcare of state socialism was often insufficient, inadequate and even unRussia and Romania. There was poor food, not enough heat, sickness and political indoctriWomen often felt guilt, bitterness and unhappiness at chilBecause of women's long work nours micy somcames icit thica children in daycare for the whole week, seeing them only at weekends.
If the communist past wasn't post-communism surely isn't one, now that repression has been lifted and a civil society is being created, one might expect it is a time ripe for feminism.
Not ripe Yes and no. It is not ripe for that developed in the West thirty years ago, or even one that uses the term "feminism'.
The cultures are different, now a different historical moment, one with widespread economic recession, political instability, social crisis and even war In addition, although femiexisted under communist, ant ventive strike against a possible invasion of Western feminism; "feminism' became a dirty word.
Post communist women are influenced by state socialism's depiction of feminism as a divisive, anti-socialist movement of selfish, spoiled, narcissistic women who hated men.
Feminism was regarded as dividing the class, not based on proper productivist grounds. saracuuuust and socially de structive. Collectivism is still part of people's social understanding and the belief exists that a movement must be for all, not for some 'special group'.
Women also look so western feminism and ask what it has accomplished - there is no adequate childcare and women do box have power in socity cru politics.
Women are especially suspicious of joining any organisations, even organisations, since they had to do this often in the past, and they tions were largely an arm of the state to transmit state idcology to women, to control the family and the private sphere through Post-communist women are model of equality that state soto them"
cialism offered, one which required women to be like men. They resented those hardedged, tough, authoritarian, repressive, state authorized women who were the models of the liberated woman. They do not want equality if that is what it means.
Overwhelmed
Whelmed and aisoricalco by tul the sudden changes. They don't have the time or the motivation Moreover, there was no political culture, especially for women, that would encourage post communist women to believe they could influence events, and take things into their hands. They were products of a state paternalism, whereby the good, along with the bad, was Largely given to them. Now women are having 1o compete with each other in order to survive and are unlikely women. There is also a general Women have very little representation in parliaments and women's issues are rarely discussed, excep for abortion. Does this mean that a women's movement, whether "There was no political culture, especially for women, that would encourage post communist women to believe they could influence events, and take things into their hands. They were products of a state paternalism, whereby the good, along with the bad, was largely given called feminist or not, is an impossibility and will not develop?
No, no more than it meant that in the West. where one could also rocite an imposing litany of resistance to feminism. will respond to post-communist women's own hissory and situation.
Women activists will have to deal with the immediate probems women face. Whereas in ognise the differences among women in ex- Yugoslavia it is important for women to establish that it is not the differenoes that matter, whether it was a Croatian or Bosnian woman who was rapod, but that all are Different sorts of arguments will be needed. In Poland or in ex-Yugoslavia not only rightto-life arguments but nationalist Singalonga Stalin? have decades of stereotypes to break arguments are deployed against abortion, for example that the nation must be replenished.
It is these arguments that The western feminist argument that a woman shond have control over her own body is not the most relevant issue in post-comSOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 45 June 26 1993. Page 9 In these countries the notion of the worth of the individual, of individual choice and a right to privacy had cither not developed of had been strongly repressed.
Western feminists must also be prepared to learn something from the East and not just be Wester hyper-individualism. of women in post-communism will vary by country. The coowhere means it is important to demand training and retraining programmes for women, to discuss quotas for women and the introduction of anti-discrimination laws.
Diccussions of the commutnist ust are nococo, and now what was represented as equality, was not equality at all. LIBERATION POLITICS and women's studies are needed to provide literature, to counter types of feminism and to enable women to appropriate their own history.
Support for translations of some westem feminist works and donations of such books by wester women to these centres are needed.
Fledgling groups Fledgling women's groups in each post-communist country must be supported, responding for equipment and training so that they can act for themselves.
It means demanding that there be publication of data on ployment.
And it. means discussions of equal opportunities to deal with the economic discrimination against women, but in conjunction with plans to develop the Western feminists must reflect on their own understanding of feminism, make every effort i understand the situation of post-communist women, lend constructive support to activities and efforts post-communism on behalf of from the experience of these This would be one step along the way to global feminism.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 45 June 26 1993. Page 10