‘In My Opinion, Work Would be in First Place and Family in Second’: Young Women's Imagined Gender–Work Relations in Post-Soviet Lithuania

Abstract

This article explores young women's orientation to work and motherhood in the post-communist context of radical socio-economic transformation in Europe. Based on a qualitative-explorative study into meanings of work and unemployment among young people in post-Soviet Lithuania, the paper introduces an empirically grounded classification of imagined gender–work arrangements. The single patterns of the classification are based on the three configurations of work and motherhood, work and partnership, and work and provision. The findings inform the reconstruction of the ‘landscape’ of imagined gendered adulthoods in Europe as well as the analysis of emerging gender relations under conditions of rapid social change.

Keywords:

• transformation
• post-communism
• Lithuania
• gender
• young women
• imagined adulthood
• motherhood

Notes

Notes

1 For a more extensive assessment of the Lithuanian gender order and regime in comparison to the Soviet one on the basis of available secondary data, see (Reiter 2008a, chapter 9; 2008b).

2 For the problematic role of the Catholic Church in the definition of the post-communist status of women in Lithuania see Gineitienė (1998). For the role of churches as agents in structures of gender inequality in general see Korpi (2000: especially pp. 149–50).

3 The male perspective on fatherhood is obviously important but first of all for reasons of space not explicitly represented here. Furthermore, the focus on the female perspective should emphasize that there is not always an interaction of female and male positions, especially at a younger age. Finally, all interviews were done by female interviewers and some of the responses of the young men, especially where they are exaggerated and outright sexist, suggest a strong bias.