Review Essay : Gender Politics in Post-Socialist Central Eastern Europe (original) (raw)
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Urges and obstacles:: Chances for feminism in eastern europe
Women's Studies International Forum, 1999
Synopsis-This article debates the potential for building feminism in Hungary-a country where, under State Socialism, women's emancipation was considered already resolved. More recently, under the economic impact of globalization and the re-establishment of the market economy, full employment and the state provision of social services are disappearing. Women's groups are now split between, for example, reclaiming women's traditional status in motherhood, and saving state nurseries. The impact of such contradictions, and the conflicts between feminism and tradition, are illustrated here by an analysis of how feminist issues are debated in the Hungarian media. This article concludes that, in times of change, feminists face the challenge of allowing time for a process of healing in society, as well as facing differences between women locally and nationally, before being able to build a feminism that challenges wider power relationships at national and international levels.
The text analyzes some aspects of the recent "war on gender" in Poland. I propose to interpret this trend as a transnational rather than local phenomenon. Moreover, while the notion of "gender" has gained momentum in the Polish context, and in some other countries, only recently, the moral panic around sexual education in schools, LGBT rights and paedophilia has a long history, so the current trend should be interpreted as yet another phase in a long-term process rather than as something entirely new. Consequently, I critically assess the notion of “backlash” as an explanatory framework and conclude with some preliminary remarks regarding the consequences that the war on gender may have for women's empowerment and feminist strategising in the region and beyond.
FEMINIST MOVEMENTS IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE (2018)
Praktyka Teoretyczna, 2018
In recent years, Central Eastern Europe has been witnessing an unprecedented wave of feminist protests. In spring 2016, a group of Ukrainian, Russian and later, Kazakh activists organised a social media based campaign, where they stressed the immutable prevalence of sexual and gender-based violence in contemporary post-Soviet societies. Campaigners used the #ЯнеБоюсьСказать (#IamNotScaredToSpeak) hashtag, which was quickly shared by thousands of women in the above-mentioned countries. The action clearly demonstrates similarities to the North-American and later, global #metoo movement. It is important to note however, that the Eastern European campaign not only preceded the more famous NorthAmerican mobilisation, but was also organised by, so called, “ordinary women” unlike its celebrity-focussed counterpart. In the paper entitled “The #яНеБоюсьСказать (#IamNotScaredToSpeak) campaign in the Russian speaking community of Facebook in July2016: A Critical Discourse Analysis” Anna Sedysheva provides a unique analysis of the character of mobilisation that had started in Ukraine and was overtaken by Russian activists. Attacks on reproductive rights have galvanised public opinion and brought thousands of people into the streets in Poland. An effective platform, countering right-wing and highly patriarchal governments, has started to form around these protests.
Barna Emília; Csányi Gergely; Gagyi Ágnes and Gerőcs Tamás (2017): East-Central European feminist activism in the context of uneven development in the EU, and ways to move forward. In: Kováts Eszter (ed.) The Future of the European Union Feminist Perspectives from East-Central Europe. Budapest: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Budapest. (2017) 69-79. In this paper, we analyse points of connection between the feminist movement, the European Union, and the gendered division of labour in East-Central Europe with the methodology of world-systems analysis. The method and theoretical framework of world-systems analysis enables us to understand, first, that the European Union is the product of a certain historical-world economic phase. Second, that the southern and eastern expansion of the EU is embedded into a different world economic phase. Third, that the history of (feminist) movements of given nation states or regions cannot be understood merely through the social history of those nation states; rather, it has to be considered that (feminist) movements are also embedded in economic macro-processes. Fourth, that relations of dependency arising from unequal development are expressed in them. And fifth, that the relationship between informal and formal work is a hierarchical one: through their combination, informal work acts as a subsidy to the cost of formal labour, thus contributing to the accumulation of value on higher levels of the chain and within the household relation; female reproductive labour generally acts as a subordinated subsidy to male labour; and the contradicting logics of accumulation through unequal household relations, and love and care as part of reproductive relations, makes the household an intrinsic front of battles and compromises of human life within capitalism.
SHAPING THE AGENDA: FEMINIST STRATEGIES OF CIVIC AND POLITICAL ACTION IN POST-COMMUNISM
More than 20 years after the 1989 Revolution, the Romanian society continues to be patriarchal -and implicitly less democratic for women. This fact becomes more obvious if one looks towards the political sphere and at the way in which women's interests are represented at the political decision level. In this social environment, civil society and especially the feminist movement have a particularly important role in terms of promoting women's specific civic and political agendas.