Money, Sex and Power Gendered Power and Postcommunist Transformation: The Rise of Masculinism?

1. Money, Sex and PowerGendered Power and Postcommunist Transformation: The Rise of Masculinism? Week 7 2011-12

2. Lecture outline • Gender and the state-socialist subject – what it was like for women under communism • How the transformations that are happening in post-communist societies can be understood in terms of gender • The implications for women of the nation-building and marketisation projects going on in post-communist societies

3. What is post-communist transition? • Move from totalitarian states to western free-market liberal-democratic model • Symbolised by fall of Berlin wall,1989 • Marketisation and democratisation • Want to join the Western European club • Contrasts with 1945-89 when Eastern bloc under control of Soviet Union

4. Changes to Eastern Bloc • Poland joined NATO in 1999 • 1st May 2004 - accession of Poland; Hungary; Czech Republic; Slovakia; Estonia; Latvia; Lithuania and Slovenia to the EU • 1st January 2007, Bulgaria & Romania joined EU • Candidate countries include Croatia; Turkey & Macedonia whilst ‘potential candidates’ include Albania; Bosnia/Herzegovina; Montenegro & Serbia. (i.e. includes south east Europe/Balkans)

5. Implications of change • Now? Almost total rejection of state socialism, and its legacies, for the creation of the new post-communist order • The aspiration? To set up free market liberal democracies along the lines of their (successful) western European counterparts • Societies seen as being in transition from state socialism to free market, liberal economies

6. Critique of transition • Some prefer to talk about ‘transformation’ rather than ‘transition’. Why? • transitions emphasise destinations • transformations stress actual processes of change • Everything undergoing process of redefinition

7. What was it like for women under communism? • women expected to be workers, mothers and to participate in political activity - quotas • high levels of women’s employment facilitated by state provision of childcare services • reproductive rights • but no challenge to domestic divisions of labour • rhetoric of state socialism – emancipation for women • but unequal access to status and resources

8. Socialist paternalism • ‘implicated gender by seeking to eradicate male-female differences to an unprecedented degree, casting onto the state certain tasks associated with household gender roles’ (Verdery, 1994:228-9) • defined women as subject-citizens who enjoyed a privileged relationship to the state • gender difference, as well as any other difference, had no substantive meaning under state socialism since everybody was deprived of their political rights and citizenship

9. Reaction within post-communist societies • difference being re-institutionalised as an organising principle • gender difference is absolutely essential in this • The ‘regaining of a traditionally prescribed gender identity is an important aspect of the nostalgia for “normality” which has so often been expressed as what people most hope for from change in Eastern Europe’ (Watson, 1993, p.473).

10. Debate and disagreement • Eva Fodor rejects assertion that state subjugation resulted in gender homogenisation • But the end of state socialist project of gender equality seen as return to ‘normal’ • Rejecting worker-mother-citizen role, reversion to traditional gender identity one way to move beyond Soviet influence

11. How transformations in E Central Europe can be understood in terms of gender • Two aspects: how its affected women and how it’s talked about. • Effect on women: • Women’s ‘losses’ greater than their ‘gains’ • Overt discrimination • Unemployment • Feminisation of poverty • Drop in political participation

12. Democracy with a male face • The failure of “socialism with a human face” has ultimately yielded to the partial success of “Democracy with a male face”. The shift from paternalist régimes to patriarchally based socio-political systems that seemingly privilege the interests of men more than those of women may be the most characteristic shared feature of the “transition”. (Kligman, 1996, p.69) • The term ‘masculine democracies’ was first coined by a member of the Belgrade Women’s Lobby, Sonja Licht, in 1989 and has been used widely since.

13. What does this mean for women? • A ‘return’ to the family • Women no longer expected to be involved in public sphere • Wage labour was compulsory and family was escape from diktats of state • Family was the site where opposition could be voiced, where ‘real life’ happened • Maintained national identity • Resisted occupation and state authoritarianism

14. How is the transformation being achieved through discourses which are gendered? • Post-communist transformation gendered in its effect • But change also being brought about through debates about gender relations • As Gal and Kligman put it: ‘not only do state policies constrain gender relations, but ideas about the differences between men and women shape the ways in which states are imagined, constituted, and legitimated’ (Gal and Kligman, 2000b p.4).

15. Reproductive politics • Particularly important here are ‘discourses about women, family, and reproduction…. [which are] crucial in the legitimation of politics’ both in postsocialist Europe and in the West (Gal & Kligman, 2000:9) • Ideas about women’s place in society encapsulated in debates about reproductive politics • reproduction has become a key issue through which political identities are constructed and political authority legitimated

16. Gender, citizenship and nation in East Central Europe • Men enjoy full citizenship rights as political and economic actors • Women are consigned to the private sphere • Men=individualism, women= collectivism • Women have to reproduce for the collective • Restriction of abortion

17. Women as symbols • Responsible for biological and socio-cultural reproduction of nation • Symbolic role as guardians of tradition and authenticity precludes full involvement in citizenship • Men’s symbolic role is modern face of nation, full citizenship rights • Women are blamed for low birth rates and ‘death of the nation’

18. Women as mothers of the nation • Women have the ‘sacred duty’ of bearing children for the nation • Bringing up children in a way which ensures the future of the nation • Roles that confine women to child-bearing and child-rearing also valorise women’s maternal role • Women gain status and power from the family and home

19. Subordination of women • Emphasis on women’s traditional roles allows subordination of women to collective interests – nation or family • Those who do not fit with the concept of the Polish Mother excluded and punished for not being feminine • Alternative discourses such as feminism or lesbianism are constituted as a threat

20. Women’s emancipation • Women’s emancipation rhetoric of state socialism equated with an emasculation of the Polish nation • Need to reinstate separate spheres • So gender difference is absolutely essential to the reconstruction of East Central European societies • Private sphere being re-feminised and public sphere masculinised

21. Conclusions • Gender is crucially implicated in nation-building projects underway in East Central Europe • Reproductive politics particularly important • Women become symbolic markers as guardians of the nation in their capacity as biological reproducers • Post-communist transformation involves eradication of the gender equality project of state socialism, this has an effect on women’s claims to equal citizenship rights