“[In]… the brothels off Wenceslas Sq., in central Prague, [where] sexual intercourse can be bought for USD 25 – about 50 percent the price billed at a German brothel… Slav ladies have supplanted Filipinos and Thais as the most typical international featuring in [Europe].” (The Economist, August 2000, p.18)
“I’m also wary of the groundbreaking ambition of some feminist texts, with their tips about changing current circumstances, having witnessed more than enough tried utopia’s for just one lifetime” (Petr Príhoda, The New Existence, 2000, p. 35).
“As possibly every single state has its Amazons, if we go considerably back again in Czech mythology, to a selection of Old Czech Legends, we occur throughout a quite exciting legend about the Dévín castle (which virtually signifies ‘The Girls’ Castle’). It describes a bloody story about a rise up of females, who started a vengeful war towards males. As the story goes, they ended up not only capable warriors, they experienced no mercy and would not be reluctant to eliminate their fathers and brothers. Below the leadership of mighty Vlasta, the “girls” lived in their castle, “Dévín”, where by they underwent a intense armed service education. They led the war very correctly, and a single day Vlasta came up with an shrewd prepare, how to take hostage a renowned nobleman, Ctirad. She chose the attractive Sárka from the entire body (sic!) of her troops and had her tied up to a tree by a road with a horn and a jar of a mead out of her achieve, but in her sight. In this state, Sárka was waiting around for Ctirad to obtain her. When he essentially actually appeared and saw her, she told him a unfortunate tale of how the ladies from Dévín punished her for not next their ideology by tying her to the tree, mockingly putting a jar and a horn (so that she would be generally reminded that she is thirsty and helpless) around by. Ctirad, enchanted by the gorgeous lady, believed the lure and untied her, and when she handed him the mead, he willingly drunk it. When he was drunk currently, she enable him blow the horn, which was a signal for the Dévín warriors to seize him. He was then tortured in numerous awful means, at the stop of which, his overall body was woven into a picket wheel and exhibited. This celebration mobilized the military, which quickly afterwards ruined Dévín. (Really considerably, this legend is the only account of radical feminism in Czech Lands.)” (“The Vissicitudes of Czech Feminism” by Petra Hanáková)
“We myself…and lots of many others are not in lookup of global sisterhood at all, and it is only when we give up expecting it that we can get anywhere. It is every other’s very ‘otherness ‘ that motivates us, and the items we discover in prevalent just take on increased this means inside the context of otherness. There is so a lot to master by evaluating the approaches in which we are distinctive, and which the exact same factors of women’s working experience are international, and which are not, and wanting to know why, and what it signifies” (Jirina Siklová)
“It is tricky to have a few watermelons beneath 1 arm.” (Proverb attributed to Bulgarian women)
“The higher amount of unemployment amid women, segregation in the labour current market, the growing wage hole concerning women and gentlemen, the lack of women of all ages present at the decision generating amount, raising violence versus women, the substantial ranges of maternal and toddler mortality, the complete absence of a contraceptive field in Russia, the insufficiency of baby welfare added benefits, the absence of satisfactory assets to fund present point out applications – this is only section of the lengthy checklist of women’s rights violations.” (Elena Kotchkina, Moscow Centre for Gender Research, “Report on the Lawful Position of Females in Russia”)
Communism was men’s nightmare and women’s dream, or so the remaining wing model goes. In actuality it was a gender-neutral hell. Ladies below communism were being, in truth, inspired to participate in the labour power. An array of conveniences facilitated their participation: working day treatment centres, kindergarten, daylong educational facilities, abortion clinics. They experienced their quota in parliament. They climbed to the prime of some professions (however there was a listing of women of all ages-free of charge occupations, a lot more than 90 is Poland). But this – as most other factors in communism – was a mere simulacrum.
Truth was a lot drearier. Girls, nonetheless mettlesome, groaned beneath the “triple stress” – get the job done, marital anticipations cum childrearing chores and celebration activism. They succumbed to the lure and calls for of the (demanding and boastful) graphic of the communist “super-female”. This martyrdom – now threatened by the dual Western imports, capitalism and feminism – served as a fountain of self-esteem and a source of self-really worth in normally gloomy conditions.
But, the communist encouraged place of work revolution was not complemented by a domestic one. Women’s conventional roles – so succinctly summarized by Bismarck with Prussian geniality as “kitchen area, children, church” – survived the modernizing onslaught of scientific Marxism. It is true that electricity shifted within just the spouse and children unit (“The girl is the neck that moves the head, her partner”). But the “underslippers” (as Czech males disparagingly self-labeled) however had the upper hand. In small, women of all ages have been now subjected to onerous double patriarchy, equally non-public and general public (the latter propagated by the party and the state). It is not that they did not price the independence, standing, social interaction and assistance networks that their careers afforded them. But they resented the lack of selection (work was obligatory) and the parasitic rule of their normally ineffective husbands. Quite a few of them were an integral and important element of countrywide and social actions all through the area. Yet, with victory secured and goals accomplished, they ended up invariably shunned and marginalized. As a end result, they felt exploited and abused. Modest marvel gals voted overwhelmingly for correct wing functions put up communism.
Nonetheless, even soon after the demise of communism, Western feminism unsuccessful to get root in Central and Japanese Europe (CEE). The East Coastline Amazons from The usa and their British counterparts ended up much too ideological, too Marxist, way too radical and too males-hating and household-disparaging to engender a lot adhering to in the just-liberated victims of leftist ideologies. Hectoring, overly-politicized females were being a staple of communism – and so was women’s liberation. Girls in CEE vowed: “never once more”.
Furthermore, the evaporation of the iron curtain lifted the triple load as very well. Girls finally experienced a decision irrespective of whether to acquire a profession and how to harmony it with household daily life. Granted, economic hardship designed this selection remarkably theoretical. The moment again, women of all ages had to work to make finishes meet. But the stifling ethos was absent.
Communism left behind it a lawful infrastructure incompatible with a present day sector overall economy. Maternal leave was any where among 18 and 36 (!) months, for occasion. But there were no guidelines to deal with domestic or spousal violence, ladies trafficking, arranged crime prostitution rings, discrimination, inequality, marital rape, date rape and a host of other troubles. There had been no women’s media of any variety (Television or print). No college offered a gender scientific studies plan or experienced a women’s studies department. Communism was interested in women (and human beings) as means of generation. It ignored all other proportions of their existence. In sputnik-period Russia, there were being no factories for tampons or sanitary bandages, for example. Communism considered that the restructuring of course relations will solve all other social inequities. Feminism appropriately belonged to the spoiled, brooding ladies of the West – not to the bluestockings of communism. Disregarding problems was communism’s way of resolving them. So, there was no formal unemployment in the lands of socialism – or medications, or AIDS, or disappointed women. To borrow from psychodynamic theories, Communism hardly ever created “trouble constancy”.
To quite a few, women of all ages involved, communism was about the perversion of the “pure buy”. Guys and females ended up catapulted out of their pre-ordained social orbits into an experiment in dystopy. When it ended, publish communism turned a throwback to the 19th century: its values, mores and petite bourgeois aspirations. In the exegesis of transition, communism was interpreted as an aberration, an interruption in an normally linear progress. It was solid as a regrettable historic incident or, even worse, a prison endeavour to be vehemently disowned and reversed.
Yet all over again women proved to be the key victims of historical processes, this time of changeover. They observed their careers consumed by male-dominated privatization and male-biased technological modernization. Men in the CEE are 3 periods a lot more very likely to uncover a position, 60-80% of all women’s jobs were lost (for instance in the textile and apparel industries) and the highest costs of unemployment are among middle aged and older females (“unemployment with a female confront” as it is known as in Ukraine). Females constitute 50-70% of the unemployed. And women’s unemployment is likely underneath-reported. Most unrecorded employees (omitted from the formal data) are females. Exactly where retraining is out there (a rarity), girls are qualified to do laptop careers, generally clerical and reduced qualified.
Adult men, on the other hand, are assigned to assimilate new and promising systems. In several countries, ladies are requested to waive their rights under the regulation, or even to develop proof of sterilization ahead of they get a job. The only ray of light is increased education, exactly where women’s participation actually greater in certain countries. But this blessing is confined to “female” (low shell out and minimal standing) professions. Vocational and complex colleges have either shut down solely or shut their gates to women. Even in feminized professions (these types of as college instructing), women of all ages make fewer than 20% of the upper rungs (e.g., total professorships). The tidal wave of the soaring expense of education and learning threatens to drown this development of women’s education. Experiments have proven that, with increasing prices, women’s educational chances drop. Family members choose to invest – and rationally so – in their males.
Females witnessed the resurgence of nostalgic nationalism, neo traditionalism and religious revival – social forces which sought to confine them to house, fireside, wife or husband and kids and to “liberate” them from the “forced labour” of communism. Negative demographic tendencies (declining everyday living expectancy and beginning level, a lot of abortions, late relationship, a large divorce price, growing suicide rate) conspired to provoke a “we are a dying country” outcry and the inevitable re-emphasis of the woman’s reproductive functions. Fierce debates about the morality of abortion erupted in bastions of Catholic fundamentalism (these as Poland and, to a lesser degree, Lithuania) as very well as in citadels of rational agnosticism, this kind of as the Czech Republic. Curiously, prostitution and girls trafficking were accepted as unavoidable. Perhaps simply because they catered to masculine wants.
Indeed, in feminist lore and concept, the two nationalism and capitalism are “patriarchal”. Nationalism allocates distinct and mutually distinctive roles to adult men and gals. The latter are meant to act as homemakers and have infants. Capitalism encourages the formation of impregnable male elites, disseminates new technologies predominantly to male monopolies, gets rid of menial and low expert (women’s) employment and places emphasis on masculine characteristics this kind of as aggression and competitiveness. No ponder woman political illustration in parliaments and governments diminished significantly given that 1989. When powerless, under communism, CEE parliaments had been stacked with ladies. Now that they are extra strong elected bodies, they are almost nowhere to be observed. The handful of that infiltrated these august institutions are relegated to “tender” committees (social difficulties, ordinarily) devoid of budgets and of influence. It is quite significantly like underneath communism when the decision producing social gathering echelons ended up predominantly male. The only influential girls then ended up dissidents but they appear to be to have rejected the fruit of their labour, democracy, in favour of tranquility and peace of head – or to have been usurped by an rising male institution. Despite an education in economics, they are underneath-represented amongst enterprise executives, the owners of privatized enterprises and the beneficiaries of favourable pay out rules and tax methods.
This erosion of their financial base coupled with the drastic decreases in baby positive aspects, in the size of maternal go away, in the number of general public and, therefore, very affordable youngster treatment services and in other guidance networks led to a swift deterioration in the social status and leverage of ladies. With their only powerful contraceptive – abortion – restricted, maternal mortality exploded. So did teenage being pregnant – a result of the curtailing or absence of intercourse training. The charge of sexually transmitted disorders went by the roof. Violence versus girls – rape, spousal abuse, day rape – turned epidemic. So did skyrocketing road prostitution. Widowed women – an at any time more prevalent phenomenon in CEE – are destitute and lowered to begging as the pensions of the blessed ones are floor to nil by a growing expense of living and IMF prodded stinginess. There are also a lot more quotidian troubles (generally neglected by the media hungry and soundbite craving feminists) like pitiful divorce upkeep payments or decrepit maternity wards in crumbling hospitals.
Still, women’s reaction to all this was notable in its absence. Immediately after decades of forced activism and imposed altruism, the imported Western individualism mutated in CEE to malignant egotism. A sliver of the woman population did well in community governing administration and as entrepreneurs. The rest (particularly the aged, the rural, the considerably less educated) stayed at household and appeared to fancy this novel expertise of dependence. A generational divide emerged. Youthful ladies found the joys of conspicuous intake and thoughts numbing pop “society”. They constituted the masses of career opportunists, the new managerial course, shareholders and industry experts – a pale imitation of the yuppies of The usa. Older women retreated – heaving a sigh of relief – into household and family members, trying to find refuge from the intrusion of cumbersome general public issues. Economic realities however compelled them to seek a position and continuous money (typically in a spouse and children organization or in the informal financial system, with no job stability or regulated labour conditions) but their activism vanished into newfound and demonstrative reclusiveness.
Yet, even the young business owners normally fare terribly. They absence the necessary enterprise expertise, the know-how, the supportive infrastructure, or the accessibility to credit. The older girls cannot work extended several hours, deficiency expertise and, when officially used, are highly-priced, thanks to the load of the however powerful social advantages. Thus, women can be primarily discovered in expert services, gentle marketplace and agriculture – the most non worthwhile sectors of the dilapidated economies of CEE. And speaking of the social added benefits not however axed – their good quality has deteriorated, access to them has been limited and materials are often short. The costs of community products (generally well being and schooling) have been transferred from point out to homes both officially (a consequence of the commercialization of solutions) or surreptitiously and insidiously (e.g., clients necessary to order their have meals, mattress sheets and medication when hospitalized).
To blame it all on a botched changeover is now in vogue. But, a lot of of the issues going through the wretched girls of CEE ended up apparent as early as 30 years in the past. The feminization of poverty is not a new phenomenon, nor is the feminization of certain professions and the attendant decline in the two their status and their shell out. Less than communism, women of all ages felt as exhausted and as guilt-ridden as they come to feel nowadays. They were regarded as unreliable workers (which they had been, what with a life time ordinary of 10 abortions and 2 youngsters). Their offspring endured an alienated childhood in the brutal and faceless gulag of day care centres maintained by indifferent bureaucrats. Juvenile delinquency, a large divorce level, one motherhood and parasitic fathers were being all swept below the ideological carpet by communism. Even communism’s only achievement – the inclusionary workforce – was an elaborately crafted illusion for use by wide-eyed Western intellectuals. In the agrarian societies which preceded communism, gals worked no fewer. And women ended up not allowed to function night time time or shifts or in specific employment, nor had been they paid as significantly as guys in equivalent functions. Task promoting is intercourse-precise and sexist to this extremely day (in stark violation of useless letter Constitutions).
Discarding the little one with the leaking bathtub has been a hallmark of transition. Communism has performed a whole lot for women (one particular of its incredibly exceptional achievements). Some of these foundations ended up audio and durable and really should have been preserved to construct on. Yet the apathy of ladies and the zeal of power hungry adult men converged to generate an old new earth: patriarchal, discriminatory and iniquitous. The working day of CEE feminism will arrive. But 1st, CEE has to become a lot more Westernized.