Women in Transition From Post Feminism to Past Femininity - PartI

"[In]... the brothels off Wenceslas Square, in central Prague,

[where] sexual intercourse can be bought for USD 25 - about half

the price charged at a German brothel... Slav women have

supplanted Filipinos and Thais as the most common foreign

offering in [Europe]." (The Economist, August 2000, p.18)



"I'm also wary of the revolutionary ambition of some feminist

texts, with their ideas about changing present conditions,

having seen enough attempted utopia's for one lifetime" (Petr

Prํhoda, The New Presence, 2000, p.



35).



"As probably every country has its Amazons, if we go far back in

Czech mythology, to a collection of Old Czech Legends, we come

across a very interesting legend about the D้vํn castle (which

literally means 'The Girls' Castle'). It describes a bloody

story about a rebellion of women, who started a vengeful war

against men. As the story goes, they were not only capable

warriors, they had no mercy and would not hesitate to kill their

fathers and brothers. Under the leadership of mighty Vlasta, the

"girls" lived in their castle, "D้vํn", where they underwent a

severe military training.



They led the war very successfully,

and one day Vlasta came up with an shrewd plan, how to take

hostage a famous nobleman, Ctirad. She chose the lovely Sแrka

from the 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 reach, but

in her sight. In this state, Sแrka was waiting for Ctirad to

find her. When he actually really appeared and saw her, she told

him a sad story of how the women from D้vํn punished her for not

following their ideology by tying her to the tree, mockingly

putting a jar and a horn (so that she would be always reminded

that she is thirsty and helpless) near by.



Ctirad, enchanted by

the beautiful woman, believed the lure and untied her, and when

she handed him the mead, he willingly drunk it. When he was

drunk already, she let him blow the horn, which was a signal for

the D้vํn warriors to capture him. He was then tortured in many

horrible ways, at the end of which, his body was woven into a

wooden wheel and displayed. This event mobilized the army, which

soon afterwards destroyed D้vํn. (Very significantly, this

legend is the only account of radical feminism in Czech Lands.



)"

("The Vissicitudes of Czech Feminism" by Petra Hanแkovแ)



"We myself...and many others are not in search of global

sisterhood at all, and it is only when we give up expecting it

that we can get anywhere. It is each other's very 'otherness '

that motivates us, and the things we find in common take on

greater meaning within the context of otherness. There is so

much to learn by comparing the ways in which we are different,

and which the same elements of women's experience are global,

and which aren't, and wondering why, and what it means" (Jirina

Siklovแ)



"It is difficult to carry three watermelons under one arm.



"

(Proverb attributed to Bulgarian women)



"The high level of unemployment among women, segregation in the

labour market, the increasing salary gap between women and men,

the lack of women present at the decision making level,

increasing violence against women, the high levels of maternal

and infant mortality, the total absence of a contraceptive

industry in Russia, the insufficiency of child welfare benefits,

the lack of adequate resources to fund current state programs -

this is only part of the long list of women's rights

violations.



" (Elena Kotchkina, Moscow Centre for Gender Studies,

"Report on the Legal Status of Women in Russia")



Communism was men's nightmare and women's dream, or so the left

wing version goes. In reality it was a gender-neutral hell.

Women under communism were, indeed, encouraged to participate in

the labour force. An array of conveniences facilitated their

participation: day care centres, kindergarten, daylong schools,

abortion clinics. They had their quota in parliament. They

climbed to the top of some professions (though there was a list

of women-free occupations, more than 90 is Poland).



But this -

as most other things in communism - was a mere simulacrum.



Reality was much drearier. Women, however mettlesome, groaned

under the "triple burden" - work, marital expectations cum

childrearing chores and party activism. They succumbed to the

lure and demands of the (stressful and boastful) image of the

communist "super-woman". This martyrdom - now threatened by the

dual Western imports, capitalism and feminism - served as a

fountain of self-esteem and a source of self-worth in otherwise

gloomy circumstances.



Yet, the communist inspired workplace revolution was not

complemented by a domestic one. Women's traditional roles - so

succinctly summarized by Bismarck with Prussian geniality as

"kitchen, children, church" - survived the modernizing onslaught

of scientific Marxism. It is true that power shifted within the

family unit ("The woman is the neck that moves the head, her

husband"). But the "underslippers" (as Czech men disparagingly

self-labeled) still had the upper hand. In short, women were now

subjected to onerous double patriarchy, both private and public

(the latter propagated by the party and the state).



It is not

that they did not value the independence, status, social

interaction and support networks that their jobs afforded them.

But they resented the lack of choice (employment was obligatory)

and the parasitic rule of their often useless husbands. Many of

them were an integral and important part of national and social

movements throughout the region. Yet, with victory secured and

goals achieved, they were invariably shunned and marginalized.

As a result, they felt exploited and abused. Small wonder women

voted overwhelmingly for right wing parties post communism.



Yet, even after the demise of communism, Western feminism failed

to take root in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The East Coast

Amazons from America and their British counterparts were too

ideological, too Marxist, too radical and too men-hating and

family-disparaging to engender much following in the

just-liberated victims of leftist ideologies. Hectoring,

overly-politicized women were a staple of communism - and so was

women's liberation. Women in CEE vowed: "never again".



Moreover, the evaporation of the iron curtain lifted the triple

burden as well.



Women finally had a choice whether to develop a

career and how to balance it with family life. Granted, economic

hardship made this choice highly theoretical. Once again, women

had to work to make ends meet. But the stifling ethos was gone.



Communism left behind it a legal infrastructure incompatible

with a modern market economy. Maternal leave was anywhere

between 18 and 36 (!) months, for instance. But there were no

laws to tackle domestic or spousal violence, women trafficking,

organized crime prostitution rings, discrimination, inequality,

marital rape, date rape and a host of other issues.



There were

no women's media of any kind (TV or print). No university

offered a gender studies program or had a women's studies

department. Communism was interested in women (and humans) as

means of production. It ignored all other dimensions of their

existence. In sputnik-era Russia, there were no factories for

tampons or sanitary bandages, for example. Communism believed

that the restructuring of class relations will resolve all other

social inequities. Feminism properly belonged to the spoiled,

brooding women of the West - not to the bluestockings of

communism.



Ignoring problems was communism's way of solving

them. Thus, there was no official unemployment in the lands of

socialism - or drugs, or AIDS, or unhappy women. To borrow from

psychodynamic theories, Communism never developed "problem

constancy".



To many, women included, communism was about the perversion of

the "natural order". Men and women were catapulted out of their

pre-ordained social orbits into an experiment in dystopy. When

it ended, post communism became 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 otherwise linear progress. It

was cast as a regrettable historical accident or, worse, a

criminal endeavour to be vehemently disowned and reversed.



Yet again women proved to be the prime victims of historical

processes, this time of transition. They saw their jobs consumed

by male-dominated privatization and male-biased technological

modernization. Men in the CEE are 3 times more likely to find a

job, 60-80% of all women's jobs were lost (for instance in the

textile and clothing industries) and the highest rates of

unemployment are among middle aged and older women

("unemployment with a female face" as it is called in Ukraine).



Women constitute 50-70% of the unemployed. And women's

unemployment is probably under-reported. Most unrecorded workers

(omitted from the official statistics) are women. Where

retraining is available (a rarity), women are trained to do

computer jobs, mostly clerical and low skilled. Men, on the

other hand, are assigned to assimilate new and promising

technologies. In many countries, women are asked to waive their

rights under the law, or even to produce proof of sterilization

before they get a job.



The only ray of light is higher

education, where women's participation actually increased in

certain countries. But this blessing is confined to "feminine"

(low pay and low status) professions. Vocational and technical

schools have either closed down entirely or closed their gates

to women. Even in feminized professions (such as university

teaching), women make less than 20% of the upper rungs (e.g.,

full professorships). The tidal wave of the rising cost of

education threatens to drown this trend of women's education.



Studies have shown that, with rising costs, women's educational

opportunities decline. Families prefer to invest - and

rationally so - in their males.



(continued)