Women in Transition From Post Feminism to Past Femininity
"[In]... the brothels off Wenceslas Square, in axial Prague, [where] animal action can be bought for USD 25 - about bisected the amount answerable at a German brothel... Slav women accept supplanted Filipinos and Thais as the a lot of accustomed adopted alms in [Europe]." (The Economist, Baronial 2000, p.18)
"I'm aswell alert of the advocate appetite of some feminist texts, with their annual about alteration present conditions, accepting apparent abundant attempted utopia's for one lifetime" (Petr Príhoda, The New Presence, 2000, p. 35).
"As apparently every country has its Amazons, if we go far aback in Czech mythology, to a accumulating of Old Czech Legends, we appear beyond a actual absorbing fable about the Dévín alcazar (which in fact agency 'The Girls' Castle'). It describes a blood-soaked adventure about a apostasy of women, who started a antagonistic war adjoin men. As the adventure goes, they were not alone able warriors, they had no benevolence and would not alternate to annihilate their fathers and brothers. Beneath the administration of boss Vlasta, the "girls" lived in their castle, "Dévín", area they underwent a astringent aggressive training. They led the war actual successfully, and one day Vlasta came up with an acute plan, how to crop earnest a acclaimed nobleman, Ctirad. She chose the admirable Sárka from the physique (sic!) of her troops and had her angry up to a timberline by a alley with a horn and a jar of a mead out of her reach, but in her sight. In this state, Sárka was cat-and-mouse for Ctirad to acquisition her. If he in fact absolutely appeared and saw her, she told him a sad adventure of how the women from Dévín punished her for not afterward their credo by attached her to the tree, mockingly putting a jar and a horn (so that she would be consistently reminded that she is agog and helpless) abreast by. Ctirad, bugged by the admirable woman, believed the allurement and apart her, and if she handed him the mead, he agreeably bashed it. If he was bashed already, she let him draft the horn, which was a arresting for the Dévín warriors to abduction him. He was afresh bent in abounding abhorrent ways, at the end of which, his physique was alloyed into a board caster and displayed. This blow mobilized the army, which anon afterwards destroyed Dévín. (Very significantly, this fable is the alone annual of abolitionist feminism in Czech Lands.)" ("The Vissicitudes of Czech Feminism" by Petra Hanáková)
"We myself...and abounding others are not in seek of all-around acquaintance at all, and it is alone if we accord up assured it that we can get anywhere. It is anniversary other's actual 'otherness ' that motivates us, and the things we acquisition in accustomed crop on greater acceptation aural the ambience of otherness. There is so abundant to apprentice by comparing the agency in which we are different, and which the aforementioned elements of women's acquaintance are global, and which aren't, and apprehensive why, and what it means" (Jirina Siklová)
"It is difficult to backpack three watermelons beneath one arm." (Proverb attributed to Bulgarian women)
"The top akin of unemployment a allotment of women, allegory in the labour market, the accretion bacon gap amid women and men, the abridgement of women present at the accommodation authoritative level, accretion abandon adjoin women, the top levels of affectionate and babyish mortality, the absolute absence of a contraceptive industry in Russia, the dearth of adolescent abundance benefits, the abridgement of able assets to armamentarium accustomed accompaniment programs - this is alone allotment of the continued account of women's rights violations." (Elena Kotchkina, Moscow Centre for Gender Studies, "Report on the Acknowledged Cachet of Women in Russia")
Communism was men's daydream and women's dream, or so the larboard addition adaptation goes. In absoluteness it was a gender-neutral hell. Women beneath communism were, indeed, encouraged to participate in the labour force. An arrangement of conveniences facilitated their participation: day affliction centres, kindergarten, daylong schools, aborticide clinics. They had their allocation in parliament. They climbed to the top of some professions (though there was a account of women-free occupations, added than 90 is Poland). But this - as a lot of added things in communism - was a simple simulacrum.
Reality was abundant drearier. Women, about mettlesome, groaned beneath the "triple burden" - work, conjugal expectations cum childrearing affairs and affair activism. They succumbed to the allurement and demands of the (stressful and boastful) angel of the antipathetic "super-woman". This affliction - now threatened by the bifold Western imports, commercialism and feminism - served as a bubbler of self-esteem and a antecedent of self-worth in contrarily black circumstances.
Yet, the antipathetic aggressive abode anarchy was not complemented by a calm one. Women's acceptable roles - so succinctly abbreviated by Bismarck with Prussian affability as "kitchen, children, church" - survived the modernizing assailment of accurate Marxism. It is accurate that ability confused aural the ancestors assemblage ("The woman is the close that moves the head, her husband"). But the "underslippers" (as Czech men disparagingly self-labeled) still had the top hand. In short, women were now subjected to arduous bifold patriarchy, both clandestine and accessible (the closing broadcast by the affair and the state). It is not that they did not amount the independence, status, amusing alternation and abutment networks that their jobs afforded them. But they resented the abridgement of best (employment was obligatory) and the abject aphorism of their generally abortive husbands. Abounding of them were an basic and important allotment of civic and amusing movements throughout the region. Yet, with accomplishment anchored and goals achieved, they were consistently alone and marginalized. As a result, they acquainted exploited and abused. Small admiration women voted overwhelmingly for appropriate addition parties column communism.
Yet, even afterwards the annihilation of communism, Western feminism bootless to crop basis in Axial and Eastern Europe (CEE). The East Coast Amazons from America and their British counterparts were too ideological, too Marxist, too abolitionist and too men-hating and family-disparaging to arouse abundant afterward in the just-liberated victims of advocate ideologies. Hectoring, overly-politicized women were a basic of communism - and so was women's liberation. Women in CEE vowed: "never again".
Moreover, the dehydration of the adamant blind aerial the amateur accountability as well. Women assuredly had a best whether to advance a career and how to antithesis it with ancestors life. Granted, bread-and-butter blow fabricated this best awful theoretical. Once again, women had to plan to accomplish ends meet. But the airless appearance was gone.
Communism larboard abaft it a acknowledged basement adverse with a avant-garde bazaar economy. Affectionate leave was anywhere amid 18 and 36 (!) months, for instance. But there were no laws to accouterment calm or conjugal violence, women trafficking, organized abomination corruption rings, discrimination, inequality, conjugal rape, date abduction and a host of added issues. There were no women's media of any affectionate (TV or print). No university offered a gender studies affairs or had a women's studies department. Communism was absorbed in women (and humans) as agency of production. It abandoned all added ambit of their existence. In sputnik-era Russia, there were no factories for tampons or germ-free bandages, for example. Communism believed that the restructuring of chic relations will boldness all added amusing inequities. Feminism appropriately belonged to the spoiled, absorption women of the West - not to the blueblood of communism. Ignoring problems was communism's way of analytic them. Thus, there was no official unemployment in the acreage of socialism - or drugs, or AIDS, or black women. To borrow from psychodynamic theories, Communism never developed "problem constancy".
To many, women included, communism was about the corruption of the "natural order". Men and women were catapulted out of their pre-ordained amusing orbits into an agreement in dystopy. If it ended, column communism became a bequest to the 19th century: its values, community and babyish accepted aspirations. In the comment of transition, communism was interpreted as an aberration, an abeyance in an contrarily beeline progress. It was casting as a afflictive actual blow or, worse, a bent endeavour to be angrily disowned and reversed.
Yet afresh women accustomed to be the prime victims of actual processes, this time of transition. They saw their jobs captivated by male-dominated privatization and male-biased abstruse modernization. Men in the CEE are 3 times added acceptable to acquisition a job, 60-80% of all women's jobs were absent (for instance in the bolt and accouterment industries) and the accomplished ante of unemployment are a allotment of boilerplate age-old and earlier women ("unemployment with a changeable face" as it is alleged in Ukraine). Women aggregate 50-70% of the unemployed. And women's unemployment is apparently under-reported. A lot of accustomed workers (omitted from the official statistics) are women. Area retraining is accessible (a rarity), women are accomplished to do computer jobs, mostly accounting and low skilled. Men, on the added hand, are assigned to digest new and able technologies. In abounding countries, women are asked to abandon their rights beneath the law, or even to aftermath affidavit of sterilization afore they get a job. The alone ray of ablaze is college education, area women's accord in fact added in assertive countries. But this absolution is bedfast to "feminine" (low pay and low status) professions. Vocational and abstruse schools accept either bankrupt down absolutely or bankrupt their gates to women. Even in feminized professions (such as university teaching), women accomplish beneath than 20% of the top rungs (e.g., abounding professorships). The flat beachcomber of the ascent amount of apprenticeship threatens to asphyxiate this trend of women's education. Studies accept apparent that, with ascent costs, women's educational opportunities decline. Families adopt to advance - and rationally so - in their males.
Women witnessed the improvement of cornball nationalism, neo accuracy and religious awakening - amusing armament which approved to confine them to home, hearth, apron and accouchement and to "liberate" them from the "forced labour" of communism. Negative demographic trends (declining activity assumption and bearing rate, abundant abortions, backward marriage, a top annulment rate, accretion suicide rate) conspired to abet a "we are a dying nation" clamor and the assured re-emphasis of the woman's changeable functions. Fierce debates about the chastity of aborticide erupted in bastions of Catholic fundamentalism (such as Poland and, to a bottom degree, Lithuania) as able-bodied as in citadels of rational agnosticism, such as the Czech Republic. Curiously, corruption and women trafficking were accustomed as inevitable. Perhaps because they catered to adult needs.
Indeed, in feminist belief and theory, both bellicism and commercialism are "patriarchal". Bellicism allocates audible and mutually absolute roles to men and women. The closing are declared to act as homemakers and accept babies. Commercialism encourages the accumulation of alarming macho elites, disseminates new technologies mainly to macho monopolies, eliminates abject and low accomplished (women's) jobs and puts accent on adult ancestry such as assailment and competitiveness. No admiration changeable political representation in parliaments and governments beneath abominably back 1989. If powerless, beneath communism, CEE parliaments were ample with women. Now that they are added almighty adopted bodies, they are about boilerplate to be seen. The few that infiltrated these baronial institutions are relegated to "soft" committees (social issues, usually) bare of budgets and of influence. It is actual abundant like beneath communism if the accommodation authoritative affair echelons were predominantly male. The alone affecting women afresh were dissidents but they assume to accept alone the bake-apple of their labour, democracy, in favour of ataraxia and accord of apperception - or to accept been usurped by an arising macho establishment. Despite an apprenticeship in economics, they are under-represented a allotment of business executives, the owners of privatized enterprises and the beneficiaries of favourable pay regulations and tax systems.
This abrasion of their bread-and-butter abject accompanying with the desperate decreases in adolescent benefits, in the breadth of affectionate leave, in the amount of accessible and, thus, affordable adolescent affliction accessories and in added abutment networks led to a abrupt abasement in the amusing cachet and advantage of women. With their alone able contraceptive - aborticide - restricted, affectionate bloodshed exploded. So did boyish abundance - a aftereffect of the abbreviating or absence of sex education. The amount of sexually transmitted diseases went through the roof. Abandon adjoin women - rape, conjugal abuse, date abduction - became epidemic. So did skyrocketing artery prostitution. Widowed women - an anytime added accustomed abnormality in CEE - are bankrupt and bargain to allurement as the pensions of the advantageous ones are arena to nil by a ascent amount of active and IMF prodded stinginess. There are aswell added circadian problems (often alone by the media athirst and soundbite appetite feminists) like abject annulment aliment payments or aged maternology wards in crumbling hospitals.
Yet, women's acknowledgment to all this was notable in its absence. Afterwards decades of affected activism and imposed altruism, the alien Western appearance mutated in CEE to cancerous egotism. A sliver of the changeable citizenry did able-bodied in bounded government and as entrepreneurs. The blow (especially the old, the rural, the beneath educated) backward at home and seemed to adorned this atypical acquaintance of dependence. A generational bisect emerged. Younger women apparent the joys of apparent burning and apperception algid pop "culture". They constituted the masses of career opportunists, the new authoritative class, shareholders and professionals - a anemic apery of the yuppies of America. Earlier women aloof - bouncing a blow of abatement - into home and family, gluttonous ambush from the advance of annoying accessible matters. Bread-and-butter realities still affected them to seek a job and abiding assets (often in a ancestors business or in the breezy economy, with no job aegis or adapted labour conditions) but their activism vanished into newfound and affectionate reclusiveness.
Yet, even the adolescent entrepreneurs generally book badly. They abridgement the all-important business skills, the knowledge, the admiring infrastructure, or the admission to credit. The earlier women cannot plan continued hours, abridgement abilities and, if clearly employed, are expensive, due to the accountability of the still able amusing benefits. Thus, women can be mostly begin in services, ablaze industry and agronomics - the a lot of non advantageous sectors of the battered economies of CEE. And speaking of the amusing allowances not yet axed - their superior has deteriorated, admission to them has been belted and aliment are generally short. The costs of accessible appurtenances (mainly bloom and education) accept been transferred from accompaniment to households either clearly (a aftereffect of the commercialization of services) or surreptitiously and insidiously (e.g., patients appropriate to acquirement their own food, bed bedding and medication if hospitalized).
To accusation it all on a adulterated alteration is now in vogue. Yet, abounding of the problems adverse the abject women of CEE were axiomatic as aboriginal as 30 years ago. The feminization of abjection is not a new phenomenon, nor is the feminization of assertive professions and the accessory abatement in both their cachet and their pay. Beneath communism, women acquainted as beat and as apologetic as they feel today. They were advised capricious workers (which they were, what with a lifetime boilerplate of 10 abortions and 2 children). Their babyish endured an alienated adolescence in the barbarous and faceless gulag of day affliction centres maintained by aloof bureaucrats. Juvenile delinquency, a top annulment rate, individual motherhood and abject fathers were all swept beneath the brainy carpeting by communism. Even communism's alone accomplishment - the inclusionary workforce - was an elaborately crafted apparition for burning by believing Western intellectuals. In the agrarian societies which preceded communism, women formed no less. And women were not accustomed to plan night time or accouterment or in assertive jobs, nor were they paid as abundant as men in according functions. Job commercial is sex-specific and sexist to this actual day (in abrupt abuse of asleep letter Constitutions).
Discarding the babyish with the aperture bathtub has been a authentication of transition. Communism has done a lot for women (one of its actual attenuate achievements). Some of these foundations were complete and abiding and should accept been preserved to body upon. Yet the aloofness of women and the alacrity of ability athirst men converged to crop an old new world: patriarchal, abominable and iniquitous. The day of CEE feminism will come. But first, CEE has to become added Westernized.
About the author:
Sam Vaknin is the author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited" and "After the Rain - How the West Lost the East". He is a columnist in "Central Europe Review" and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory, Suite101, Go.com and searcheurope.com He is the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia. His web site: http://www.geocities.com/vaksam/
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