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Abstract
This Explorations investigates the current status of the research done on women's economic position in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), focusing on the current treatment of feminism in these countries. Agnieszka Majcher discusses feminist economic inquiry and the position of women in higher education in Poland. Krisztina Majoros focuses on the progress and problems of women in higher education and research institutions in Hungary and compares these to other EU countries. Finally, Andrea Pető reports on the legacy of what has been termed “statist feminism” and explores various strategies to strengthen feminist economic research in CEE countries.
Notes
JEL Codes: P2, P3, P5, A14
1 We included not only the countries that are obviously part of Western Europe, but also Austria, Finland, and Greece in this group.
2 More detailed tables are available from the authors upon request.
3 These policies are sometimes referred to as “statist feminism”.
4 This conflict harkens as far back as the debates between Clara Zetkin, an ardent communist but an equally dedicated feminist, and Lenin. He paid lip service to the goal of helping women achieve equality by “socializing” housework and childcare, but always argued that for the time being there were more urgent priorities (Zetkin Citation1934: 29).
5 This issue initially proved to be important in creating and reinforcing women's movements in CEE countries where the Catholic or the Eastern Orthodox Church was strong, notably in Poland. More recently, the emphasis has shifted, to a considerable extent, to contraception (Henry David Citation1999).
6 The role of women's organizations during the communist period illustrates this point well. Women's League – the major women's organization – served the regime's goals, and was allowed to act only within the narrowly predetermined spheres of competence.
7 The year 1956 marked the end of the Stalinist period with Soviet premier Khrushchev's “secret speech” during the XXth Communist Party Congress that denounced the errors and brutalities of Stalin's regime. In Poland this opening encouraged criticism of Stalinist methods introduced in this country in 1948 and demands for democratization and greater sovereignty from the USSR. These pressures led to a temporary liberalization in the media and public life and changes in the political elites. However, the communist regime clamped down, but a return to the earlier Stalinist methods of terror was now impossible.
8 The explosion of the independent labor union movement “Solidarity” in the 1980s marked the beginning of Poland's deepest democratization since 1956. Despite the political repression that followed soon after (e.g., the imposition of martial law in 1981), the regime never fully recovered and collapsed several years later.
9 It should be noted that the traditional “male breadwinner/ female homemaker” family model could never be as dominant in largely agricultural Polish society as it had been in the West. Yet the role of women as mothers was usually prioritized, and her responsibility for homemaking was indisputable. Only in the Stalinist period were the mothering and homemaking roles of women underplayed (which brought much criticism). The communist regime encouraged the involvement of men in homemaking but did not systematically enforce this (e.g., sick-children leaves were available for women only, and social security was available for nonworking, able-bodied wives of working men but not vice versa).
10 The state “promised” public childcare, canteens, and the mass provision of domestic appliances and services. While the childcare for older children was satisfactory, the crèches had bad reputations. Domestic appliances and services intended to shorten the time spent on household duties were usually inaccessible or of poor quality due to the pathologies of the communist economy. In times of more severe economic crises, even daily shopping consumed enormous amounts of (usually women's) time and effort.
11 According to data on the importation of foreign academic journals to Poland (www.kbn.gov.pl), no Polish university library subscribes to Feminist Economics. Journals such as Signs, Gender and Society, or European Journal of Women's Studies are found in only one or two university libraries, and it is highly probable that not all volumes are available. This is due to the financial misery of Polish academia as well as a lack of interest among people in positions of authority.
12 The final decision in the case of women's lower retirement age has been to keep the minimum age for women lower than that for men, yet to make it voluntary (a woman may retire earlier or work for another couple of years), which does not solve the problem of women's being “pushed out” of the labor market. In effect, the problem of retirement age for both men and women has been postponed, awaiting a more complex solution. In the case of extended maternity leaves, after an initial period of extensions, they were shortened again to the previous duration due to budget cuts.
13 The members of the National Steering Committee are Zsuzsa Gilyén (Hungarian Scientific Research Fund [OTKA]), Dr. Ágnes Haraszti (Institute for Research Organization of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Dr. Ildikó Hrubos (Budapest University of Economic Sciences and Public Administration), who is also a member of the Helsinki Group, and Erzsébet Móla (Ministry of Education, Research Development Division).
14 Earlier the Hungarian higher education system operated according to the pattern of continental Europe in which universities were the place of higher education and research, and also had the right to award scientific (doctoral) degrees. In 1949 this system was fundamentally remodeled into the Soviet mold: research was removed from the universities and placed in separate research institutions, and universities lost the privilege of granting scientific degrees, though they retained education as their principal function. In 1993 the New Higher Education Act restored the autonomy of the universities, and along with it the right to award scientific degrees (Hrubos Citation2000).
15 When the university system was changed to the Soviet model after 1949, as mentioned above, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences was given the right to award scientific degrees that were essentially the equivalent of the PhD. Two individual degrees were awarded: the Candidate of Science (CSc) and the Doctor of Science (DSc), which was one notch higher. In 1993 the CSc degree was abolished and replaced by the PhD, now awarded by the universities. The DSc was also replaced by the new Doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences degree (in short, Doctor of the Academy) (Hrubos Citation2000).
16 The above ratios varied from year to year in the period studied.
17 The reason I chose to look at the gender segregation of these applicants was personal: I was among the accepted applicants of the year surveyed.
18 There were, however, exceptions. Czechoslovakia was the second country in the world (Finland was first) where women received suffrage after World War I.
19 This is different from Western countries where feminists are well represented among academic men and women in the humanities.