ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
WOMEN AND POLITICS
Volume 2
GENDER POLITICS AND
POST-COMMUNISM
GENDER POLITICS AND
POST-COMMUNISM
Reflections from Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union
Edited by
NANETTE FUNK AND MAGDA MUELLER
First published in 1993 by Routledge
This edition first published in 2019
by Routledge
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1993 by Routledge, Inc.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-138-36393-9 (Set)
ISBN: 978-0-429-39879-7 (Set) (ebk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-38811-6 (Volume 2) (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-42577-6 (Volume 2) (ebk)
Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.
Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.
G ender Politics and
Post-Communism
REFLECTIONS FROM EASTERN EUROPE AND
THE FORMER SOVIET UNION
EDITED BY NANETTE FUNK
AND MAGDA MUELLER
INTRODUCTION BY NANETTE FUNK
ROUTLEDGE New York London
G ender Politics and
Post-Communism
REFLECTIONS FROM EASTERN EUROPE AND
THE FORMER SOVIET UNION
EDITED BY NANETTE FUNK
AND MAGDA MUELLER
INTRODUCTION BY NANETTE FUNK
ROUTLEDGE New York London
Published in 1993 by
Routledge
29 West 35th Street
New York, NY 10001
Published in Great Britain by
Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane
London EC4P 4EE
Copyright 1993 by Routledge, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gender politics and post-communism / edited by Nanette Funk and Magda Mueller.
p. cm. (Thinking gender)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-415-90477-3 (hard).ISBN 0-415-90478-1 (pbk.)
1. WomenEurope, Eastern. 2. WomenFormer Soviet republics.
3. FeminismEurope, Eastern. 4. FeminismFormer Soviet republics.
5. Post-communismEurope, Eastern. 6. Post-communismFormer Soviet republics.+mI. Funk, Nanette. II. Mueller, Magda.
III. Series.
HQ1590.7.G46 1993
| 30S.420947--dc20 | 92-36334 |
| CIP |
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data also available.
Contents
We would like to thank the series editor, Linda Nicholson, for her generous support and for her extremely intelligent and timely cooperation. Her insightful suggestions on the Introduction are deeply appreciated. Above all, we want to thank her for making this book possible and for having seen, early on, the importance of such a project. We also want to thank our editor, Maureen MacGrogan, for her great help in facilitating this projectfor her support, cooperative manner, and helpful suggestions.
Ann Snitow and Sonia Robbins and the Network of East-West Women (NEEW) provided indispensable solidarity, made available the names of many active postcommunist women and provided innumerable opportunities for many personal meetings between East-West women. We want to thank Krisztina Mnicke-Gyngsi, Siegrid Meuschel, Herta Nagl-Docekal, Alison Jaggar, Rayna Rapp, Susan Buck-Morss, Gail Kligman, Martha Lampland, Gail Lapidus, and Agnes Heller, all of whom helped put us on the trail of women currently writing in this area. We thank Manuela Dobos for sharing her knowledge of the region and its many languages. It was only though the cooperative sharing of information that this book became possible. Most important, we want to thank the many wonderful women from Eastern Europe whose cooperation, energy, knowledge, intelligence, and commitment were so important to this project.
We are grateful to Lucy Komisar for her technical support and for broadening the editors technological horizons, without which this book would not have been possible. Her generosity is deeply appreciated.
Nanette Funk also wishes to thank Robert Roth for his intellectual support, friendship, and encouragement when it was particularly needed, and for his insightful suggestions and comments at various stages in this project. She also wants to thank Jack Feder for his ongoing support and Matthias Weiss for his help in understanding the changes under way in Germany.
She would also like to thank the staff of the Computer Center of Brooklyn College and Tony Chambers and Raul Morales of the MicroLab at the CUNY Computer Center. She is grateful to the PSC-Cuny Research Foundation for their support during 199192.
Magda Mueller also wishes to thank Pat Herminghouse, Ruth-Ellen BoetcherJoeres, Heidrun Suhr, and Silvia Schlenstedt for intellectual support and advice.
We are grateful for permission to reprint the following:
Hildegard Maria Nickel, Frauen auf dem Sprung in die Marktwirtschaft, Ypsilon, no. 2 (1990), published in English in German Politics and Society no. 2425 (Winter 199192).
The photograph on p. 173, by Jens Hbner of Berlin.
Eastern European Male Democracies: A Problem of Unequal Equality, which appears as part of Zillah Eisenstein, Reclaiming Democracy: Sex, Race and Rights (University of California Press).
Finally, Nanette Funk dedicates this book to her parents, grandparents, and their parents, etc., who were scattered throughout the lands of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
This collection is a joint venture of women from post-communist countries and Western feminists. The essays, mainly by post-communist women, discuss the gender politics of the turbulent transformation to post-communism and help to make sense of the transformation as a whole. The discussions offer Western readers a sense of the extremely different philosophical and cultural as well as economic and political context in which these changes are taking place. The essays will hopefully forestall Western and U.S. misunderstanding and further divisions among feminists East and West, such as those that have surfaced between East and West German women. These essays may also help alleviate the difficulty women in post-communist countries experience in creating a public discourse about women, one shaped by women themselves and committed to helping women become subjects on their own behalf.
