Post-1989 women’s struggle between career growth and everyday duties

ABSTRACT

Reflection of everyday life in connection to post-socialist transformation inevitably includes a gender perspective. Within this broad framework, the paper concentrates on two aspects of the transition: new professional opportunities on the one hand and persisting gender patterns, which put a burden on women to cope with both work and family care. The paper focuses on the management environment to address the topic; the author reflects on the issue through the analysis and interpretation of the life and professional stories of two Czech women managers. However, it does not offer a mere reflection from the point of view of the “elites.” It convincingly shows how everyday life and the ongoing connection of women with the sphere of family and household functioned as an inhibitor for women to enter top positions, positions in which it is possible to exercise the power to make decisions and influence the functioning of society.

KEYWORDS:

• Czech Republic
• gender
• management
• post-socialist transformation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Concerning the transformation of society after 1989, in the Czech context, a number of sociological researches and studies already exist. These works focus on the life chances of women (for example, Hraba, McCutcheon, and Večerník 1997; True 2003), on the issue of building and developing a career or promoting women in decision-making positions, in science, etc (for example, Linková et al. 2013; Vohlídalová 2010; Vohlídalová et al. 2016); or various activities to support the position of women in society founded and developed after 1989 are reflected (Hašková, Křížková, and Linková 2006).

2. According to the 1980 census, in the category “executives in the sphere of management and administration,” the representation of women was 32.8%, which in absolute numbers represents 64,885 women (Český statistický úřad 2020).

3. For the topic of conservative turn, see a comprehensive work of Gal and Kligman (2000).

4. Interview with Ela Z., 17. 8. (2016). Digital Collections, Centre of Oral History, Institute of Contemporary History, Prague, Czech Republic.

5. For contemporary reflections on this issue, for example the paper on women’s display in advertising from the mid-1990s (Oates-Indruchová 1995).

6. Interview with Olga G., 17. 5. (2017). Digital Collections, Centre of Oral History, Institute of Contemporary History, Prague, Czech Republic.

7. It is a research with 1994 data, it means, corresponding with the time when Olga was at maternity leave.

8. Interview with Tomas H., 15. 11. (2016). This interview is quoted as an illustrative example; the conclusions reflected in the narrative can be generalized; in some form, they appear in most interviews with male managers of the generation.

9. Interview with Martin B., 18. 11. (2016).

10. Some narratives in the collections of oral history interviews here used as source data show that at the beginning of the 1990s, the theme of connection with the pre-November authoritarian regime was an important variable in the recruitment of workers to newly built branches of large foreign corporations in Czechoslovakia, the Czech Republic. As a result, university graduates were given preference in open competitions for various working positions (for example, Interview with Tomas H., 15. 11. 2016).

11. In 2022, the Czech Republic, with its 17.2% representation of women in management, lags behind both the global (19.7%) and European (30.7%) averages, although this number has increased by 3.4 percentage points compared to 2018. For example, in neighbouring Poland, the share of women in management is 23% (Delloite 2022).

Additional information

Funding

This article was funded by the Czech Academy of Sciences Lumina quaeruntur scheme as part of the [No LQ300632301] grant at the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Notes on contributors

Lenka Krátká

Lenka Krátká is a researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences and lecturer at the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University. Her research is primarily concerned with economic history, specifically, transport history, and mobility during the state socialism era in Czechoslovakia.