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Family policy debates in Hungary

Explore how political debates on parental leaves and mothers' paid work evolved in Hungary from 1992-2009, including the role of women's organizations. Analyze maternalist policies and the shift towards gender equality, examining the influence of feminist debates and women's voices.

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Family policy debates in Hungary

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  1. Family policy debates in Hungary Maternalism and gender equality Erika Kispéter – CEU kispeter_erika@ceu-budapest.edu

  2. Research question • How have political debates about parental leaves and the paid work of mothers changed in Hungary since the early 1990s? • How have women’s civil society organizations contributed to the debates? • Textual analysis of policy and media texts • Time period: 1992-2009

  3. Links to existing literature • Gendered analysis of post-state socialist political debates (Gal and Kligman 2000; Goven 2000; QUING project) • Recognition struggles, redistributive struggles (Barbara Hobson 2003, 2006; Julia Szalai 2003) • Feminist debates about similarity vs difference (Milkman 1986; Scott 1988)

  4. State socialist family policy • 1960s: maternalist phase of Hungarian welfare policy (Haney 2002) • GYES-discourse (Adamik: 2000) • Demographers • Economists • Psychologists

  5. Debates in the 1990s • Three waves of debates • ‘Right-wing’ discourse: children (demography), mothers, families, the nation • Left-wing: children, families (social justice). • Missing: women qua women, women’s voice from the debates

  6. Debates in the 2000s Policy plan on demographic policies in 2003: • No direct link between family policy/the length of parentl leave and fertility, better conditions of childbearing • Better conditions: no employment discrimination • EU-inspired norms: gender equality • Shifts: mothers  parents, choice reconciliation

  7. 2000s: The voice of women’s organizations • Experts in academia and in women’s civil society organizations • Critiques, Shadow Reports, Publications on the issue of women’s employment, committees around National Development Plans, quota debate

  8. The parental leave debate in 2009 • The proposed changes • The gov’t appropriates the discourse of its feminist critics • Women’s civil society organizations object • Unexpected turn: they use maternalist, even demographic arguments (children’s need)

  9. Why is it interesting? • Under pressure women’s organizations formed an alliance on the basis of maternalism. • Haney (2002): the maternalist discourse of state-socialist family policies enabled women to formulate claims as mothers • Maternalism in the early 20th century in the USA and Western-Europe: women formulating claims as mothers, gaining voice as mothers • Hobson(2003, 2006): in redistributive struggles gender-distinctive discoursive frames are more successful than gender equal ones

  10. Lessons learned: similarity versus difference • Milkman (1986): argues for the strategic use of arguments about sameness/difference • Scott (1988): ‘deconstructs’ equality/difference asan impossible choice. It is not sameness or identity that we want to claim but a “more complicated notion of diversity and difference as the ground for demands of equality.”

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