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Women in Transition From Post Feminism to Past Femininity |
by:
Dr. Sam Vaknin |
"[In]...brothels off Wenceslas Square, in central Prague, [where] sexual intercourse can be bought for USD twofive - about halfprice charged atGerman brothel... Slav women have supplanted Filipinos and Thais asmost common foreign offering in [Europe]." (The Economist, August twozerozerozero, p.oneeight)
"I am also wary ofrevolutionary ambition of some feminist texts, with their ideas about changing present conditions, having seen enough attempted utopia's for one lifetime" (Petr Príhoda, The New Presence, twozerozerozero, p. threefive).
"As probably every country has its Amazons, if we go far back in Czech mythology, tocollection of Old Czech Legends, we come acrossvery interesting legend aboutDévín castle (which literally means 'The Girls' Castle'). It describesbloody story aboutrebellion of women, who startedvengeful war against men. Asstory goes, they were not only capable warriors, they had no mercy and would not hesitate to kill their fathers and brothers. Underleadership of mighty Vlasta,"girls" lived in their castle, "Dévín", where they underwentsevere military training. They ledwar very successfully, and one day Vlasta came up withshrewd plan, how to take hostagefamous nobleman, Ctirad. She choselovely Sárka frombody (sic!) of her troops and had her tied up totree byroad withhorn andjar ofmead out of her reach, but in her sight. In this state, Sárka was waiting for Ctirad to find her. When he actually really appeared and saw her, she told himsad story of howwomen from Dévín punished her for not following their ideology by tying her totree, mockingly puttingjar andhorn (so that she would be always reminded that she is thirsty and helpless) near by. Ctirad, enchanted bybeautiful woman, believedlure and untied her, and when she handed himmead, he willingly drunk it. When he was drunk already, she let him blowhorn, which wassignal forDévín warriors to capture him. He was then tortured in many horrible ways, atend of which, his body was woven intowooden wheel and displayed. This event mobilizedarmy, which soon afterwards destroyed Dévín. (Very significantly, this legend isonly account of radical feminism in Czech Lands.)" ("The Vissicitudes of Czech Feminism" by Petra Hanáková)
"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, andthings we find in common take on greater meaning withincontext of otherness. There is so much to learn by comparingways in which we are different, and whichsame elements of women's experience are global, and which aren't, and wondering why, and what it means" (Jirina Siklová)
"It is difficult to carry three watermelons under one arm." (Proverb attributed to Bulgarian women)
"The high level of unemployment among women, segregation inlabour market,increasing salary gap between women and men,lack of women present atdecision making level, increasing violence against women,high levels of maternal and infant mortality,total absence ofcontraceptive industry in Russia,insufficiency of child welfare benefits,lack of adequate resources to fund current state programs - this is only part oflong list of women's rights violations." (Elena Kotchkina, Moscow Centre for Gender Studies, "Report onLegal Status of Women in Russia")
Communism was men's nightmare and women's dream, or soleft wing version goes. In reality it wasgender-neutral hell. Women under communism were, indeed, encouraged to participate inlabour force. An array of conveniences facilitated their participation: day care centres, kindergarten, daylong schools, abortion clinics. They had their quota in parliament. They climbed totop of some professions (though there waslist of women-free occupations, more than ninezero is Poland). But this - as most other things in communism - wasmere simulacrum.
Reality was much drearier. Women, however mettlesome, groaned under"triple burden" - work, marital expectations cum childrearing chores and party activism. They succumbed tolure and demands of(stressful and boastful) image ofcommunist "super-woman". This martyrdom - now threatened bydual Western imports, capitalism and feminism - served asfountain of self-esteem andsource of self-worth in otherwise gloomy circumstances.
Yet,communist inspired workplace revolution was not complemented bydomestic one. Women's traditional roles - so succinctly summarized by Bismarck with Prussian geniality as "kitchen, children, church" - survivedmodernizing onslaught of scientific Marxism. It is true that power shifted withinfamily unit ("The woman isneck that moveshead, her husband"). But"underslippers" (as Czech men disparagingly self-labeled) still hadupper hand. In short, women were now subjected to onerous double patriarchy, both private and public (the latter propagated byparty andstate). It is not that they did not valueindependence, status, social interaction and support networks that their jobs afforded them. But they resentedlack of choice (employment was obligatory) andparasitic rule of their often useless husbands. Many of them wereintegral and important part of national and social movements throughoutregion. Yet, with victory secured and goals achieved, they were invariably shunned and marginalized. Asresult, they felt exploited and abused. Small wonder women voted overwhelmingly for right wing parties post communism.
Yet, even afterdemise 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 injust-liberated victims of leftist ideologies. Hectoring, overly-politicized women werestaple of communism - and so was women's liberation. Women in CEE vowed: "never again".
Moreover,evaporation ofiron curtain liftedtriple burden as well. Women finally hadchoice whether to developcareer 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. Butstifling ethos was gone.
Communism left behind itlegal infrastructure incompatible withmodern market economy. Maternal leave was anywhere between oneeight and threesix (!) 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 andhost of other issues. There were no women's media of any kind (TV or print). No university offeredgender studies program or hadwomen'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 thatrestructuring of class relations will resolve all other social inequities. Feminism properly belonged tospoiled, brooding women ofWest - not tobluestockings of communism. Ignoring problems was communism's way of solving them. Thus, there was no official unemployment inlands 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 aboutperversion of"natural order". Men and women were catapulted out of their pre-ordained social orbits intoexperiment in dystopy. When it ended, post communism becamethrowback toonenineth century: its values, mores and petite bourgeois aspirations. Inexegesis of transition, communism was interpreted asaberration,interruption inotherwise linear progress. It was cast asregrettable historical accident or, worse,criminal endeavour to be vehemently disowned and reversed.
Yet again women proved to beprime victims of historical processes, this time of transition. They saw their jobs consumed by male-dominated privatization and male-biased technological modernization. Men inCEE are three times more likely to findjob, sixzero-eightzero% of all women's jobs were lost (for instance intextile and clothing industries) andhighest rates of unemployment are among middle aged and older women ("unemployment withfemale face" as it is called in Ukraine). Women constitute fivezero-sevenzero% ofunemployed. And women's unemployment is probably under-reported. Most unrecorded workers (omitted fromofficial statistics) are women. Where retraining is available (a rarity), women are trained to do computer jobs, mostly clerical and low skilled. Men, onother hand, are assigned to assimilate new and promising technologies. In many countries, women are asked to waive their rights underlaw, or even to produce proof of sterilization before they getjob. 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 twozero% ofupper rungs (e.g., full professorships). The tidal wave ofrising 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.
Women witnessedresurgence of nostalgic nationalism, neo traditionalism and religious revival - social forces which sought to confine them to home, hearth, spouse and children and to "liberate" them from"forced labour" of communism. Negative demographic trends (declining life expectancy and birth rate, numerous abortions, late marriage,high divorce rate, increasing suicide rate) conspired to provoke"we aredying nation" outcry andinevitable re-emphasis ofwoman's reproductive functions. Fierce debates aboutmorality of abortion erupted in bastions of Catholic fundamentalism (such as Poland and, tolesser degree, Lithuania) as well as in citadels of rational agnosticism, such asCzech Republic. Curiously, prostitution and women trafficking were accepted as inevitable. Perhaps because they catered to masculine needs.
Indeed, in feminist lore and theory, both nationalism and capitalism are "patriarchal". Nationalism allocates distinct and mutually exclusive roles to men and women. The latter are supposed to act as homemakers and have babies. Capitalism encouragesformation of impregnable male elites, disseminates new technologies mainly to male monopolies, eliminates menial and low skilled (women's) jobs and puts emphasis on masculine traits such as aggression and competitiveness. No wonder female political representation in parliaments and governments diminished dramatically since onenineeightnine. When powerless, under communism, CEE parliaments were stacked with women. Now that they are more potent elected bodies, they are almost nowhere to be seen. The few that infiltrated these august institutions are relegated to "soft" committees (social issues, usually) devoid of budgets and of influence. It is very much like under communism whendecision making party echelons were predominantly male. The only influential women then were dissidents but they seem to have rejectedfruit of their labour, democracy, in favour of tranquility and peace of mind - or to have been usurped byemerging male establishment. Despiteeducation in economics, they are under-represented among business executives,owners of privatized enterprises andbeneficiaries of favourable pay regulations and tax systems.
This erosion of their economic base coupled withdrastic decreases in child benefits, inlength of maternal leave, innumber of public and, thus, affordable child care facilities and in other support networks led toswift deterioration insocial status and leverage of women. With their only effective contraceptive - abortion - restricted, maternal mortality exploded. So did teenage pregnancy -result ofcurtailing or absence of sex education. The rate of sexually transmitted diseases went throughroof. Violence against women - rape, spousal abuse, date rape - became epidemic. So did skyrocketing street prostitution. Widowed women -ever more common phenomenon in CEE - are destitute and reduced to begging aspensions oflucky ones are ground to nil byrising cost of living and IMF prodded stinginess. There are also more quotidian problems (often neglected bymedia hungry and soundbite craving feminists) like pitiful divorce maintenance payments or decrepit maternity wards in crumbling hospitals.
Yet, women's reaction to all this was notable in its absence. After decades of forced activism and imposed altruism,imported Western individualism mutated in CEE to malignant egotism. A sliver offemale population did well in local government and as entrepreneurs. The rest (especiallyold,rural,less educated) stayed at home and seemed to fancy this novel experience of dependence. A generational divide emerged. Younger women discoveredjoys of conspicuous consumption and mind numbing pop "culture". They constitutedmasses of career opportunists,new managerial class, shareholders and professionals -pale imitation ofyuppies of America. Older women retreated - heavingsigh of relief - into home and family, seeking refuge fromintrusion of tedious public matters. Economic realities still forced them to seekjob and steady income (often infamily business or ininformal economy, with no job security or regulated labour conditions) but their activism vanished into newfound and demonstrative reclusiveness.
Yet, evenyoung entrepreneurs often fare badly. They lacknecessary business skills,knowledge,supportive infrastructure, oraccess to credit. The older women cannot work long hours, lack skills and, when officially employed, are expensive, due toburden ofstill effective social benefits. Thus, women can be mostly found in services, light industry and agriculture -most non lucrative sectors ofdilapidated economies of CEE. And speaking ofsocial benefits not yet axed - their quality has deteriorated, access to them has been restricted and supplies are often short. The costs of public goods (mainly health and education) have been transferred from state to households either officially (a result ofcommercialization of services) or surreptitiously and insidiously (e.g., patients required to purchase their own food, bed sheets and medication when hospitalized).
To blame it all onbotched transition is now in vogue. Yet, many ofproblems facingwretched women of CEE were evident as early as threezero years ago. The feminization of poverty is notnew phenomenon, nor isfeminization of certain professions andattendant decline in both their status and their pay. Under communism, women felt as exhausted and as guilt-ridden as they feel today. They were considered unreliable workers (which they were, what withlifetime average of onezero abortions and two children). Their offspring enduredalienated childhood inbrutal and faceless gulag of day care centres maintained by indifferent bureaucrats. Juvenile delinquency,high divorce rate, single motherhood and parasitic fathers were all swept underideological carpet by communism. Even communism's only achievement -inclusionary workforce - waselaborately crafted illusion for consumption by wide-eyed Western intellectuals. Inagrarian societies which preceded communism, women worked no less. And women were not allowed to work night time or shifts or in certain jobs, nor were they paid as much as men in equal functions. Job advertising is sex-specific and sexist to this very day (in stark violation of dead letter Constitutions).
Discardingbaby withleaking bathtub has beenhallmark of transition. Communism has donelot for women (one of its very rare achievements). Some of these foundations were sound and durable and should have been preserved to build upon. Yetapathy of women andzeal of power hungry men converged to yieldold new world: patriarchal, discriminatory and iniquitous. The day of CEE feminism will come. But first, CEE has to become more Westernized.
Aboutauthor:
Sam Vaknin isauthor of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited" and "AfterRain - HowWest LostEast". He iscolumnist in "Central Europe Review" andeditor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory, Suiteonezeroone, Go.com and searcheurope.com He isEconomic Advisor toGovernment of Macedonia. His web site: http://www.geocities.com/vaksam/
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