Women’s Ambivalence Toward Democracy in Postcommunist Europe

• In Event: The Pull of Tradition: When Women Challenge, or Resist, Change

Abstract

Although women participated in the opposition movements of the late 1980s which contributed to the fall of communism in Central and East Europe, women were also less supportive and more ambivalent about democracy compared to men over the following two decades. Existing research exploring women’s role in the postcommunist transformation of politics and economy tends to focus on women’s decreased representation in democratized political institutions and the structural shifts associated with liberalizing markets which push women out of formal employment into more informal and vulnerable work. However, these factors are generally constant over time whereas the gender gap in attitudes about democracy has been narrowing over the same period; specifically, women’s feelings of ambivalence towards democracy have decreased and their support for democracy increased to levels approaching parity with men’s sentiments. Consequently, explaining the gender gap in preferences for democratic government in postcommunist Europe by appealing to individuals’ satisfaction with the performance of democracy is an insufficient account of the variation observed in comparisons of men’s and women’s attitudes.

This paper addresses the gender gap in attitudes towards democracy which followed the dual transitions to democratic politics and liberal economics by developing a theory that centers on the legacy of the communist period and mode of democratic transition. Both of these factors represent experiences that are unique to each gender, and the salience of which diminishes with the passage of time in congruence with the shrinking difference between men’s and women’s opinions of democracy. I argue that women’s experiences of communist rule generally and party-state feminism in particular constitute a lens through which democratization, economic liberalization, and the activities of Western feminist NGOs are evaluated. To the extent that these postcommunist transformations reflect the political economic impositions of communism and instrumentalizations of women by party-state feminism, I suggest that women are likely to be more ambivalent and less supportive towards democracy than men. Further, this effect decreases as the memory of the communist legacy fades due to attrition and lower frequencies of mnemonic activation by political actors.

To test this theory, I use a mixed method approach covering six postcommunist states—the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Narrative analysis examines first-hand accounts of women’s experiences of communism and the ensuing democratic transition. Then, using European Values Survey data from the years 1999 and 2008, multi-level logistic regression controls for alternative explanations and tests the significance of variables related to the mode of democratic transition (whether it was relatively elite- or mass-driven), the density of international women’s organizations active in each country, and the public invocation of the communist legacy by political elites.

This research has important implications for scholars of regime change, gender, and postcommunism. First, it echoes the call of Georgina Waylen (1994) to seriously consider the role of women in studies of democratization by prompting questions of how regime change is understood as an analytical concept. This paper suggests the value a gendered conceptualization of regime change which requires an evaluation of gender relations before, during, and after transitions. Second, it argues for recognition of alternative forms of feminist activism and women’s political engagement. Rather than equate ambivalence towards democracy and abstention from formal avenues of political participation with apolitical attitudes, this research reframes behaviors that are ostensibly politically neutral or withdrawn as acts which indirectly contest the hypermasculine structure of political competition itself.

Author

• Michael FitzGerald, Rutgers University, New Brunswick