Women in the Politics of Postcommunist Eastern Europe

Marilyn Rueschemeyer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781315292632
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

During the Communist period, in most of these contries, even women with small children typically worked outside the home, and their participation in formal institutions was virtually mandatory. Today, as they are being disproportionately affected by marketization, downsizing, the dramatic erosion of social services, and as their sons are being drafted to participate in an unending series of border wars, have women found a new political voice?

1
Introduction

Marilyn Rueschemeyer

This volume focuses on the political scene, on what has happened to women during the various stages of transition from communism to a market economy and a multiparty political system, to societies in which nationalism has increasing appeal and legitimacy or where the church has gained in power. We seek to understand the relations of political institutions to these developments and the emerging conceptions of women’s place in the new social and political orders.

The contributors to this book are social scientists who either live and work in Eastern Europe or have spent long periods doing research there, both before and after the fall of communism. Our past experiences and our present work in that part of the world lead us to see the new policies that are emerging in the postcommunist societies of Eastern Europe as neither simply reprises of precommunist procedures nor new imitations of the West. They also reflect the changes that have taken place in these societies since World War II. Therefore, an assessment of the position of women in communist societies is crucial for our understanding of what is happening now.

The writings of early socialist theorists advocated that women be brought into the labor force and into the public sphere so that they could contribute their energies and intelligence to the creation of a more egalitarian society. Private household responsibilities were eventually to become public responsibilities. And women would no longer be forced into marriage and dependence on men with whom they would rather not live. This broad framework of ideas for the participation of women in work outside the household strongly influenced the policies of communist societies. These policies have been criticized by feminists from a wide variety of perspectives: the primary goal of communist societies was to gain the labor of women, rather than to achieve gender equality; support for the participation of men and women in the labor force were inadequate; the policies were generally geared to women, rather than to men and women, parents, and families; the obligations of men in the household were seldom discussed; and the very process took place in an authoritarian state where women had little influence on the policies that affected their lives. These criticisms contain much more than a grain of truth, but they are not sufficient for our understanding of a variety of important changes that took place in the lives of many women in Eastern Europe.

It is probably safe to say that very few people, men or women, would choose to return to life in the authoritarian systems of Eastern Europe. But important expectations associated with the role of the state are now threatened, and women especially feel that threat. Here it is important to note that the situation of women in communist Eastern Europe varied considerably, and women’s assessments of this period also vary within each country.

Among the factors to which we pay particular attention are differences among the various countries in the composition of sectors of the labor force and in education level, in the status of women, and in the tensions and conflicts—latent or open—surrounding former policies on women. Even the public discussion of these issues varied from place to place. Thus we try to guard against the tendency to see the later years of communist rule and “the transition” as a single process with a few minor variations.

Within any society the positions and the experiences women have had influence their current concerns and hopes for the future. And these positions and experiences are not all the same. We must take into account, for instance, the fact that women in the former German Democratic Republic and at least the Czech part of what was Czechoslovakia grew up and worked in societies that had been industrialized before World War II. It is also true, though, that even in a country such as Albania, with its religious traditions and a population that was two-thirds rural, and Romania, with its pervasive rural past and small educated urban elite, large numbers of women moved into the public sphere during the forty-five years of communist rule and became skilled workers and professionals. We are not suggesting that it was always better to be an urban worker than a peasant, but many women found new opportunities to change and develop when they left the traditional setting.

The reaction to the communist policy of educating women and bringing them into the work force also varied over time. In some countries both men and women were horrified by a policy that forced women to join the labor force and devote their time and attention to their jobs rather than to their families. Other women embraced work outside the home with intensity and enthusiasm but later became bitterly disappointed by the continuing inadequacy of the state’s services and supports.

Since nearly all women worked outside the home and since nearly all women had families, several of us refer to their “double burden” or “double duties.” What these added responsibilities entailed, however, also varied from country to country. Some countries have experienced slow but definite changes in the relations between men and women; young and educated couples especially have increasingly tended to share child care and some household tasks. In other countries the women have been responsible for everything that goes on in the household. We deal with this issue in considerable detail.

During the early years of communist formation, official organizations encouraged the education of women, their political training, and their participation in the work force. It was several years before nearly all state-socialist societies could establish the structure of economic and social supports that citizens of these societies now take for granted. While the details and the overall level of these supports varied enormously from country to country, these policies were part of the overall economic and social agenda of East European communism, which also included supports for socially weaker strata and classes. They were also in line with socialist ideas on gender relations from Engels on, even if this transformation was not complete and was not programmed and processed according to criteria many of us might use now. But the quality of the services—nurseries, kindergartens, medical care, and so on—was directly related to the burdens shouldered by families, and particularly by women. Here, too, we find variations in access among and within countries.

One question that has captured the attention of scholars and others interested in Eastern Europe is whether women will “choose” to stay at home, rather than participate in the labor force. The choice that women really have now is limited for a variety of reasons, as we shall see. But it is clear to all of us that something important did happen during those forty-five years that changed the lives of large numbers of women. We observed, as scholars who studied workers in the West did, that during the communist period the more skilled the woman was or the more involved she became in her profession, the more she identified with the place where she worked, the more interested she was in keeping her job, and the more reluctant she was to become a full-time homemaker. The percentage of women involved in the labor force was much greater in communist societies than in most Western countries, including—until recently—the United States. Indeed, many women in Eastern Europe developed a changed sense of self, a more independent voice, and expectations of partaking in public life. As several of the contributors suggest, these past experiences strongly shape their reactions to current developments.

In most East European countries, men and women participated in the labor market in almost equal numbers during the communist period. Work in some occupations, however, was of a gender-specific character, with more women than men doing less prestigious and poorly paid work. In some countries—in Hungary and Poland, for example—women’s education was more general than men’s. Men were trained for vocations and given greater access to jobs after their schooling. Few women held managerial and leadership positions in industry and in the professions. We have observed that, as in the West, professions that are considered female or that become largely female are usually characterized by lower prestige and earnings. Here, too, however, the issue is more complicated than it may seem. In Poland, for example, though medicine became a feminized profession and was not very well paid, it retained its high social prestige. More than half of all Polish doctors were women, as were more than three-fourths of all dentists and pharmacists. Evidence suggests that despite the low monetary compensation, such women felt confident and independent, and that many retained certain expectations with respect to social policy and the responsibility of the state. Silva Mežnarić and Mirjana Ule note that the very understanding of the term “modern” among women in Croatia and Slovenia incorporates a view of the state as the provider of services for the community, for society.

The increasing equality of women and men in education and labor force participation was not matched in political life. In nearly all the countries of Eastern Europe, few women advanced beyond mid-level positions. They accounted for from a quarter to a third of the members of their parliaments, but very few women were to be found in the Central Committees and Politburos, though more in some countries than in others. At both the local and national levels women were seen as representatives of official organizations, present because of quotas. In some countries they were considered tokens and looked down upon because they differed from their male colleagues in their educational or occupational backgrounds. But even their comparatively small role in political life during the communist period is more complex than it appears at first glance. We will have to return to the way the authority and legitimacy of women politicians during that period was evaluated later, how that evaluation was used in the formation of a new political milieu, and what has changed since the early years of the transformation.

The conditions under which the transition from communism to a multiparty system and market economy took place varied significantly from country to country, and these variations influenced the formation of parties, social policies, and modes of economic development. In Hungary the communist party itself introduced a variety of reforms, and by the time the communist system had essentially ended in Eastern Europe, Hungary had the strongest links to the outside, with a larger number of investors than the rest of Eastern Europe. In Poland the church played a powerful role in the transition, along with repeated and persistent union action, while the financial and other supports that West Germany provided East Germany and the complex relation between the two states strongly affected the unification process. These differences in the ways communism came to an end and new political and economic orders were approached had direct and indirect consequences on the position of women.

Although we all deal with similar themes, an issue that is salient in one country is not necessarily so in another. All societies in Eastern Europe strive for economic development, but whether abortion or the role of the church or of ethnicity is of major concern varies from country to country. Mežnarić and Ule’s contributions illuminate the importance of a modernized, democratic state with a strong civic culture for the position of women.

In view of the chaotic developments in this part of the world, especially the states of the shattered Yugoslavia, we are grateful to have so many Eastern European countries represented in our analysis. With the inclusion of chapters on women in Russia and Germany we gain perspective on the full sweep of the region, from north to south and west to east. We only regret that we were unable to include chapters on more of the former Soviet states.

Russia

2
Women and Politics in Post-Soviet Russia

Carol Nechemias

Years of far-reaching political reform and socioeconomic upheaval, beginning with Gorbachev’s perestroika and continuing through the breakup of the USSR and the establishment of a newly independent Russian state, did not draw women into the halls of power. Indeed, women’s low level of representation in newly reformed legislatures quickly led women activists to charge that “democratization without women is not democracy.”¹ Commentators regarded the plummeting numbers of women in the postcommunist parliaments of Eastern and Central Europe as evidence of women’s declining political status. But a closer examination reveals an ostensible, rather than a real, decline in political influence. Comparing communist legislatures with their postcommunist counterparts masks the persistent marginalization of women from political decision making.

It is the position of the legislature in the overall political system that has changed, while women’s place in politics has remained stable. Women played a marginal role in the political life of the Soviet Union, and their exclusion from high-level decision making in the Russian Federation constitutes an element of continuity, not a break with the past. Discontinuity has occurred, however, with respect to the establishment and growth of independent women’s organizations, some of which seek to enhance women’s role in decision making. This chapter explores these aspects of continuity and change by reviewing the legacy of communism and of perestroika before focusing on women’s political participation in the Russian Federation.

The Legacy of Communism

An examination of high-level party and state institutions under communism demonstrates women’s lack of access to key decision-making bodies. Within the Communist Party, the Central Committee, and above all the Politburo, were the key centers of policymaking, while upward mobility within the party apparatus provided the surest path to political power. The Central Committee, generally regarded by scholars as the best measure of the party elite, had a female membership that hovered at the 3 percent mark for decades, finally inching above 4 percent in 1986. Moreover, the women’s contingent on the Central Committee disproportionately contained individuals selected to lend a rank-and-file flavor to that institution: honored textile workers and collective farmers, rather than high-ranking party or state officials.²

The record of female membership on the Politburo, the pinnacle of the party apparatus, shows a similar dearth of women: between the passing of the old generation of Bolsheviks to the eve of perestroika, only one woman—Ekaterina Furtseva, from 1957 to 1960—served on the Politburo.

Few women reached the top because few women traveled the path of upward mobility within the party apparatus. As is the case with many pyramid structures, women congregated at the bottom. At the lowest level of the party—primary party organizations or party cells—women frequently held the position of first party secretary. As early as 1966 women held one-third of these positions, which generally did not involve full-time party work. But women typically did not ascend the party ladder: they constituted only 7 percent of all regional and county level party secretaries in 1988.

Women likewise failed to secure more than token representation within influential state institutions. At the all-union or national level it was rare to have more than one woman minister on the Council of Ministers; overall, women ministers generally held positions associated with women’s roles, such as health, social security, and culture.

Women did achieve a substantial presence in the soviets, holding 33 percent of the seats in the USSR Supreme Soviet in 1984 and even higher proportions in soviets at lower federal levels. Unfortunately, however, the Supreme Soviet functioned more as a facade of democracy than as a center of lawmaking. The high proportions of women deputies reflected a quota system, rather than public opinion. Roughly 40 percent of the Supreme Soviet’s members were persons who held significant party and/or state positions; but women generally were found among the other 60 percent, chosen according to quotas that kept the sexual, professional, and party composition of the legislature within proportions set by the party leadership. Soviet propaganda proudly pointed to the “democratic” character of the Supreme Soviet by noting its high proportion of women, workers, and collective farmers.

While some groups may have had access to high-level decision making through bureaucratic politics, like the military and industrial managers, organizational structures formally charged with “speaking” on behalf of women carried little weight in the Soviet system. In the post-Stalinist era one all-union structure representing women existed—the Soviet Women’s Committee (SWC). But the SWC functioned as a mouthpiece for Soviet propaganda, representing the USSR at international conferences and hosting foreign delegations of women. Its functions were oriented toward foreign affairs and echoing Soviet policy positions.

At the local level, women’s councils (zhensovety) were active at some work sites and engaged in such activities as organizing the purchase of food at work, exchanges of children’s clothes, social gatherings for young people, and help for pensioners. Like the SWC, the women’s councils were state created, part of the “old” system of state-sponsored activism.

Within society women’s absence from politics evoked little concern. The Communist Party had proclaimed women’s struggle for equality won as early as 1929. The communist conception of women’s emancipation highlighted the central role of work in securing women’s independence and social status. And it is in the spheres of work-force participation and educational opportunities that sweeping change did take place, though after 1928 the Soviet state’s mobilization of women into the labor force occurred more for demographic and economic reasons than ideological considerations. By the close of the Soviet era, women had more formal education than men and represented 51 percent of the work force. Despite women’s impres...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• About the Editor and Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction
• Russia
• Poland
• Unified Germany
• Czeck and Slovak Republics
• Hungary
• Romania
• The Former Yugoslavia
• Bulgaria
• Albania
• Selected Bibliography
• Index