Strategies of Contentious Action: A comparative analysis of the women's movements in Poland and the Czech Republic

ABSTRACT

This article compares the contemporary Czech and Polish women's movements and demonstrates that there are significant differences in their strategies. While the Polish women's movement is more active in mobilizing the population and uses both transactional and participatory strategies in order to achieve its goals, the Czech women's movement focuses more on transactional activities, such as lobbying, setting up cooperation with national and international organizations, and negotiating with the authorities, as well as on educational activities. The article explains why these differences occur and why during the last decade the Polish women's movement has attempted at mobilizing the population successfully, while the Czech women's movement has not tried to organize any mass mobilizations. Based on interviews with women's organizations in Poland and the Czech Republic, we argue that institutional factors can explain these differences. This includes such factors as the role of the reformed, postcommunist women's organization in each country and the political opportunity structures. The most important political opportunity structures include a law in Poland that force the parliament to debate a law proposal if civil society organizations can get 100,000 signatures, as well as the facility for residents to allocate 1% of their income taxes to a registered civil society organization of their choosing. Another important difference in the political opportunity structures has been the types of institutional arrangements made to accommodate European Union's demands for gender mainstreaming.

Key words:

• women's movement
• Poland
• Czech Republic
• transactional activism
• mobilization

Funding

Our research for this article was supported by a grant from the Swedish Research Council [grant number 421-2010-1706].

Notes

¹ According to EU rules, governments are supposed to analyze the effects of all new legislation on gender relations; hence, the term “gender mainstreaming”.

² These are EU funds to support regional development, especially in the poorest regions of the EU.

Additional information

Funding

Funding: Our research for this article was supported by a grant from the Swedish Research Council [grant number 421-2010-1706].

Notes on contributors

Elzbieta Korolczuk

Elżbieta Korolczuk is a sociologist and works as a researcher at the Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg and as a lecturer in Gender Studies at Warsaw University. She has published on social movements, civil society, and gender (especially motherhood/fatherhood, assisted reproductive technologies, and infertility). She co-edited (with Renata E. Hryciuk) the books Farewell to the Polish Mother. Discourses, Practices and Representations of Motherhood in Contemporary Poland (2012, in Polish) and Dangerous liaisons. Motherhood, fatherhood and politics (2014, in Polish).

Steven Saxonberg

Steven Saxonberg is an Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of International Relations, Prague (Czech Republic) and is a guest researcher in political sociology at Dalarna University College in Sweden. He has written several books and numerous articles on the collapse of communism and the post-communist transformation, including books and articles focusing on social movements, the women's movement, gender relations, and family policy. His most recent monographs dealing with post-communist gender issues include: Gendering Family Policies in Post-Communist Europe: A Historical-Institutional Analysis (Palgrave, 2014); With Martina Kamplicher and Miroslava Janouskova, Mothers – Grandmothers – Daughters? Reconciling Labor Market Integration with Care Responsibilities in Brno (Masaryk University Press, 2013); and Together with Hana Hašková, The Development of Czech Childcare Policies (Prague: Slon, 2013).