Talking the talk, but not walking the walk: gender equality in Eastern Europe

In a world that has many campaigns against discrimination, that has female candidates running for president, that has gay couples waking around with a stroller, or two men or two women holding hands kissing in public, something has changed. There is more tolerance, more rights, and more representation of minorities today than ever before, yet, can we say that the world we live in is gender equal? Are men and women equally rewarded for the same amount of work, do they take equal share of the unpaid household work, are they equal participants in raising their children, do they have the same obstacles and rewards in their career aspirations, are same-sex couples granted the same legal partnership and parental rights as heterosexual partners, and are people fairly treated regardless of their gender, age, religious affiliation, ethnicity, or sexual orientation?

Unfortunately, the answer to almost all of these questions is “no”. While, the number of women and men in the European member-states is roughly the same (according to most recent Eurostat data women make up 51%, while men make up 49% of EU-28’s population), the equality seems to end there. Eurostat’s most recent gender statistics report¹ shows that although more women than men receive tertiary education in the EU (43% vs. 34%), a higher percentage of men have employment and male workers receive higher salaries than female workers. Even Norway, known for being one of the countries with most egalitarian policies, presents data which shows that while more women than men receive higher education, men earn more, take a significantly larger proportion of leadership posts, and dominate the private sector, while women have a larger share of part-time work and jobs in the public sector (Statistics Norway 2016).

Despite the rather sobering statistics, and the long road to equality that still needs to be walked, the number of women involved in political decision-making and public debate in Europe has been steadily increasing in the last two decades. Nugent (2015) notes that the average proportion of women parliamentarians in a subset of West European democracies has increased over 50% from 20.7% in 1997 to 31.2% in 2014, and in the Nordic states it is currently 40.9% (Freidenvall 2015). Women’s parliamentary representation has also reached high levels in Eastern Europe, where the average figure for women in parliament in the most recent legislature is 23.2%, with Slovenia and Serbia leading the region with 35.6% and 34%, respectively (Rashkova and Zankina 2015). A central factor for increasing the number of women in elected office has been the introduction and adoption of gender quotas (Krook 2009), although for a large number of East European states, another factor which has placed gender equality high on the political agenda has been the role of the EU and the countries’ aspirations for membership (Anderson 2006).

The existing inequality as portrayed by data from multiple sources, and yet the increasing number of women’s involvement in politics and decision-making, has inspired a rapidly growing body of literature. Many studies focus on descriptive and substantive representation, trying to find what conditions increase women’s representation or who represents women and how (Cauk 1999; Celis 2007; Wängnerud 2009). In recent years, research on gender politics has moved from the traditional argument linking women’s representation to leftist parties and governments, to studies which find that gender claims are also made by conservative MPs (Childs and Celis 2014). Despite the wide interest on the subject, most gender politics research (with few exceptions) has been conducted on established democracies. There is relatively little written about gender politics in Eastern Europe.

The purpose of this article is to review three recently published books on various aspects of gender equality in Eastern Europe. While quite diverse in terms of what and how they cover, all three books share one common theme – that implementation is lagging, and sometimes even lacking. Employing rational choice and sociological institutionalist conceptual frameworks, Bego’s (2015) account of four new EU member-states’ equal employment and reconciliation policies tells a story of high level of adoption of new regulations ensuring and protecting gender equality, yet of a significant lag in implementation. Including countries beyond just EU member-states, Hassenstab and Ramet’s (2015) edited volume offers studies on a number of gender equality issues including same-sex marriage, gay rights, and the role of the church in public perception of sexuality, partnership, and parenthood. Among other things, the book emphasises the low level of implementation of discrimination laws, as well as the anti-gay sentiments resulting from pre-existing cultural attitudes and current campaigns led by the main religious organisations. A similar traditionalist discourse is found in Russia by Chandler (2013), who examines the intricate relationship between social welfare decline and Russia’s democratic reversal during the last decade.

Equal employment and reconciliation policies in new EU member-states

The first few pages of the book suggest that the new EU member-states have varied level of accession of gender equality and the true long-term effect of the EU on women’s issues is yet to be assessed. In a detailed and crafty manner, Ingrid Bego takes us through the developments of gender equality policy in four new EU member-states. In particular, she examines the adoption and implementation of “equal employment policy” and “reconciliation policy”, using a rational choice-sociological institutionalist framework. Trying to explain her dependent variable – successful implementation of gender equality policies – Bego uses concepts such as number of veto points, institutions, in particular women’s policy agencies (WPAs), norm entrepreneurs (women’s movements and NGO actors), and political culture to assess the speed and extent of adoption, and the legal procedures, state-sponsored public information campaigns, and sufficient deterrents of the implementation of the studied policies. The study is carried out with four cases – Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Latvia, and Poland – chosen on the basis of a most different systems design, using qualitative methodology. The domestic development of both policies is studied in a period of 12 years, between 1998 and 2010. The analysis presents Bulgaria and Poland as being more successful in their efforts towards the adoption and implementation of gender equality policies, than the Czech Republic and Latvia. Yet, all four countries struggle with implementation.

Chapters 2 and 3 provide a detailed account of the adoption and implementation of the equal employment and reconciliation policies, respectively. Chapter 2 opens with a discussion of the development of the “equal pay” and “equal treatment” directives at the European level, giving attention to Article 119 of the Treaty of Rome, 1957, which, for the first time, presented the principles of equality of reward and treatment in the European Community. Using her conception of adoption as a two-step process, Bego then examines the speed and extent to which the two directives were adopted in the four Central and East European Countries. All four countries are said to have adopted the directives on time, although the full content of the directives in the Czech Republic and Latvia was lagging behind due to the fact that the EU directives were adopted piecemeal, through amendments to the Labour Code, and the texts which were adopted into new laws were lacking clarifications of their content. More importantly, however, in the implementation of the new policies, Bulgaria and Poland are evaluated as leading, while the Czech Republic and Latvia as lagging. Bego determines an implementation strategy as successful if a country demonstrates the presence of at least two of the three indicators – out-of-court alternatives, state-sponsored public information campaigns, and a system of accountability. Analysing the region based on these criteria, she concludes that one noticeable pattern is the lack of public information campaigns. Poland’s “Woman-Family-Work” media campaign, as well as other attempts of NGOs to increase public awareness through the 1990s and early 2000s, is an exception.

Chapter 3 turns to reconciliation policy beginning once again with a discussion of the development of the two directives – “pregnant workers directive” and “parental leave directive” – in the EU. The adoption of the pregnant workers directive is said to have been less challenging due to the generous maternity benefits of the former communist regimes. At the moment, all the four countries still offer above EU-average number of days for maternity leave ranging between 112 days in Latvia to 410 days in Bulgaria. The parental leave directive was also adopted on time by all the four states. However, despite the speedy adoption, Bego argues that the implementation efforts for both directives have been scarce. As with the equality directives, the low implementation level and the lack of court cases are attributed to the lack of public awareness campaigns.

Combining feminist policy, rational choice, and sociological institutionalism, in chapters 4 and 5 the author tries to find explanations for the adoption and implementation levels of all four directives. Bego argues that the high degree of misfit of existing legislation and the one suggested by the EU explains the uniform adoption efforts across countries, however, the absence of WPAs during the policy-making process is linked to the lack of implementation efforts in all of the cases. In her attempt to understand the diverse development of gender equality policies in the four states, Bego mentions the importance of the communist legacy (Rashkova and Zankina 2014) on the process, but also on the construction of the concept of gender itself. Similar to Rashkova and Zankina (2014), Bego (2015) argues that despite fewer in number, women representation in politics in the post-communist era in East European (EE) states “became more meaningful than it ever was during communism” (95). In her final chapters, Bego takes a closer look at norms, actors, and institutions. She concludes that Europeanisation and the prospect of EU membership has been the largest step EE states have taken towards gender equality, even in the light of developing Euroscepticism. Summing up her findings, Bego notes that the evidence in the book has given more support to sociological institutional factors, such as norm entrepreneurs and a cooperative policy environment that have led to successful policy outcomes in the cases of Poland and Bulgaria, than rational choice ones (142).

Bego’s contribution to our understanding of the state of gender equality policies in East European states is undeniable. The book has offered a very detailed analysis of four specific policies. The level at which gender equality is achieved, however, could have been strengthened by additional simple statics on the overall adoption level of gender equality policies across all new East European EU member-states, broadening the focus beyond the equality and reconciliation policies. Then, also the justification of choosing the four countries, which are studied here would come more naturally. On a more specific level, one could critique some of the conclusions regarding implementation, and especially the author’s classification of the latter as high in Bulgaria, since there is no data provided cases that have been ruled in favour of the plaintiff, nor of the potential “cost” women who bring cases may have to pay or face. Considering such deeper dynamics of the court processes in new EU member-states might paint a different picture. Despite these critiques, Bego’s book is one of the few ones on gender politics in EE states, it offers a systematic analysis, and it is rich on empirical information regarding the four gender equality policies it examines.

Gender (in)equality and gender politics in Southeastern Europe

The lag and lack of implementation of gender equality policies is a recurrent theme also in Hassenstab and Ramet (2015). Different from Bego’s analytically tight and single-author focused examination of the adoption and implementation of gender equality policies in new EU member-states, Hassenstab and Ramet’s book is a collection of 18 relatively self-standing accounts of a particular gender-related issue in the context of, usually, a single East European country. As a result, the contributions lack a common framework or a theoretical expectation that ties them together. Notwithstanding this drawback, the book offers however, an enormous empirical detail about countries that we know little about. Ten out of the 16 substantive chapters, or more than 60% of the entire book, focus on an aspect of the gender inequality debate in countries from the Western Balkans (a region including former Yugoslavia, except Slovenia, and Albania). The book is divided into five parts, with only part IV, presenting a common theme – religion and gay/lesbian rights – among its four contributions.

The adoption–implementation gap is perhaps best illustrated by Simic’s chapter on gender (in)equality in Bosnia and Herzegovina. While the author notes that most of the internationally sought gender equality regulation is in place, B&H is severely lagging in implementation. This is resonated in a number of interviews of women, representatives of civil society, whom Simic cites. One of her interviewees claims that although there are women in political parties, they are not in positions of power, primarily due to men not wanting to allow that. Furthermore, the interviewee continues, the women who asked for more women on candidate lists have been removed from their positions (94). Additional evidence that Simic brings to show that although adopted, rules are not actually implemented, is that despite the 40% quota for women in public administration established in the Gender Equality Law of 2003, the latter has not been met. The author explains the lack of implementation with three reasons: lack of clarity in definitions of the law, lack of dialogue and cooperation between state gender equality agencies and NGOs, and ignored role of religion. Institutions of the latter have not been contacted to discuss or inform about gender equality law and views. The chapter ends with the conclusion that de jure and de facto status of gender equality in East European states diverges vastly and stresses the need for an accountability principle, as a way forward.

A more interesting and eye-opening debate is presented in chapters 12–15 (part IV of the book), which study the role of the church in the formation of societal views on gay/lesbian rights. The accounts from four former Yugoslav republics here give the rather grim picture of a (still) very intolerant society and to an extent endangered minority of people with different sexual or religious orientation. A common thread among the accounts of the struggles of the LGBT community in Macedonia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Serbia is that pre-existing anti-gay/anti-minority sentiments in society are fuelled by the church under the mask of preserving the nation. The role of the traditional family is emphasised as the need for reproduction against a daunting demographic crisis. This is reflected in the views on homosexuality, as well on the views on abortion. Even to this date 48% of people in Macedonia believe homosexuality to be a disease (Dimitrov 2015, 233, cited in Hassenstab and Ramet 2015) and the Law Against Discrimination does not include protection against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation (238).

Hassenstab and Ramet (2015) edited volume provides many accounts of the various struggles with different aspects of gender inequality in a set of countries, which are often left outside the main focus. In this effort the book is a success. If we are trying to assess its contribution to the gender politics scholarship more broadly, however, there is little other than factual information that the book adds. The study of such a rich and hardly examined region as the one the book focuses on, can benefit significantly from a common theoretical framework, centrally formulated hypotheses, and a more systematic manner of collecting, presenting, and testing the data. As the chapters stand right now, they remind more of an encyclopaedic reference of a historical cross-section of a particular gender (in)equality issue in a given country. Moreover, given that the contribution is a collection of short articles by various scholars, it would be expected that conclusions are drawn based on more recent data than a number of the chapters present. Regardless of these shortcomings, the edited volume remains the gender (in)equality account with the broadest scope in the region of Southeastern Europe, and as such should be considered a starting point for any other gender research in this region in the future.

Democracy, gender, and social policy in Russia

The final book considered in this article is Chandler’s (2013) study on the gender equality discourse in Russia – Putin, and beyond. Chandler notes that the expansion of the welfare state was closely linked to notion of increased democratic participation, through which in addition to social provisions, citizens demand active forms of social inclusion – such as integration of minorities, be it gender, ethnic, or religious minorities. As such, she makes the case, the expansion of the welfare system is a good test for the level of democratisation, which makes Russia, Chandler’s case study, an excellent arena to test the causal links between social welfare, social discontent, and regime change. Given that social welfare policies require a strong state, Chandler argues that studying social welfare can reveal a lot about a state’s ability to respond to change. In particular, she is interested in understanding why did Russia go back in its democratisation process after Putin’s victory in 2000? The book is divided into four parts, each focusing on a specific period and the social welfare transformation within in. Chandler uses discourse analysis and constructivism to do this study and focuses on language used and the organisation of ideas, as well as on the process by which ideas come to being. As Chandler mentions, the reform of the welfare state has attracted a number of constructivist scholars, yet most of the work has been carried out in a Western context. By studying social welfare reform in a hybrid regime, this study provides an innovation.

The author attempts to systematise her examination of discourse on the subject, by delineating four hypotheses, which guide the rest of the study. The first few chapters examine the first hypothesis suggesting that social welfare crises contribute to the initiation of regime transitions. In her account of Gorbachov’s final years and Yelstin’s promises for social improvement, which was never achieved, Chandler discussed Yeltsin’s failed shock therapy and his attempts to safe-guard most vulnerable groups, such as multi-child families, single parents, the disabled, and pensioners, through the use of decree power. The interest of women in politics was born out of some of the early debates on social welfare, and in particular the debate on the baby food industry, in which Ekaterina Lahkova, at that time Yeltsin’s adviser on women’s issues, took a stand on. She later became the leader of “Women of Russia” party. The latter were able to gain some ground in the adoption of some progressive legislation, however, as disclosed in the other two books discussed here, there was a failure of enforcement of the law and sanctions, which deepened, rather than decreased, gender inequalities in the workplace.

The second part of the book focuses on the worsening social conditions, opposition politics, the rise of nationalism, and ultimately the search for a stronger governing “hand”. Chandler goes through a number of social questions (the use of alcohol and pornography are some examples), which in the course of the crises have become politicised, but emphasises how one of the more important discourses – that of Russia’s (orphaned) children – has remained just a discussion, rather than action. The accounts in this part of the book show the necessity of a strong state for social welfare reform and expose the fact that political transitions further weaken, rather than strengthen the state, thus “calling for increased state power” (103). It is this need for a strong state, according to Chandler, that gave the opposition to the reformers, and in this case Putin, a way to power. Presenting the social welfare crisis as a key indicator of weak governance, Putin promised a strong state and an effective welfare system under his presidency. Under Putin’s presidencies the more liberal family policies of the 1990s turned into strictly pronatalist policies, which posited that women have a patriotic duty to have children. Chadler argues that Putin’s pronatalist programme created increased social demand for day care, for health care, and for gender equality itself. The situation changed slightly under president Medvedev, and for the first time women started to go to court and fight against discrimination. Despite Medvedev’s open support to improving women’s social status, little happened. However, the increasing pressure for procreation, as emphasised by Putin’s first two terms, opened room for discontent with the lacking social structure deemed necessary for bringing up children. Women organised protests across several Russian cities, which culminated with the Pussy Riot, during which three young women were sentenced to two years in prison for openly criticising the presidential regime and the role of the Orthodox church.

Chadler’s book is extremely informative and reveals a lot of detail about the social policy discourse in Russia, which has not thus far been uncovered. The author also attempted to create a somewhat systematic manner of analysis, yet more could be asked in this regard. The introductory chapter opens with four hypotheses, each of which can be presented in a more concise manner and can be examined, or returned to, throughout the book, and not only in the conclusion. Furthermore, the reversed democratisation, which Chandler sets out at the beginning to explain can benefit from additional attention throughout the text. Finally, despite its qualitative nature, discourse analysis is also able to produce some comparative statics and including some would make the case for the relationship between social welfare and democratisation, stronger.

Gender (in)equality in Eastern Europe

The three books reviewed here present the little that we have thus far on the subject of gender equality in Eastern Europe (with the exception of several journal articles). Studies on how women issues are represented, by whom, and to what extent, are still for a large part, missing. The authors of the books included in this article tackle that lacuna from different angles. Bego (2015) presents four gender equality directives and tracks their adoption and implementation in four East European states. Hassenstab and Ramet (2015) include a large number of countries and a broad number of topics in their edited volume, and Chandler (2013) focuses on social welfare and social policy development in Russia from the initial regime change, to date. The common thread in all three books is the observed lag, and in some cases lack of implementation. All authors provide evidence for newly adopted legislation, and although the extent to which this is the case varies, all countries involved in the analyses suffer from low implementation levels. This suggests that in addition to the need for more studies, we ought to change the perspective from which we study the question of gender equality, in not showing only what is, but finding how to change it.

Notes

1. Gender Statistics, Eurostat, 2016, http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Gender_statistics.