Seeking the Balance Between Work and Family After Communism

Summary

During the 1990s the Central-European governments all took steps in varyingdegrees toward implementing more conservative, re-familization policies, which support women in their roles as mothers and make it more difficult for them to remain in the labor market. This article discusses the relationship between gender attitudes and gender policy in Central Europe and the latest changes in both. We focus on two countries, Catholic Poland, and the secular Czech Republic, in order to control for the role of Catholicism as an explanatory factor of familism. Beside statistical sources, administrative data and information from interviews with policy makers, we use data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) 1994 and 2002 on gender and family, analyzing them at both the micro and macro levels. Our study shows that post-communist re-familization policies are coming increasingly into contradiction with the needs and aspirations of the populace, which is becoming more positive towards gender equality.

Key Words:

• Aspirations
• Catholic Church
• communist legacy
• defamilization
• family policy
• fertility rates
• gender equality
• re-fam-ilization