Women's Emancipation in Politics and State Socialism in Central and East Europe

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Women's emancipation is one of the important aspect of liberation in modern society. The panel is focused on the Central and Eastern European region during the period of state socialism, when women's emancipation was considered the key demand for the transformation of society and currently is a part of the concept of state feminism. The sphere of politics is understood not only in the narrow sense of women's representation in political parties and state bodies, but also as a broader space of political engagement and representation in the public sphere. The left-wing ideological backgrounds of women's emancipation, its contemporary reflections and representations, women's self-reflections and empowerment, concrete practices and processes of implementation as well as theoretical concepts linked with the issue will be analysed.

Sub Unit

• History: 1945-1990

Chair

• Denisa Necasova, Masaryk U (Czech Republic)

Papers

• Thinking Political Participation between Feminism and Socialist Emancipation - Zsófia Lóránd, U of Vienna (Austria)

• From Female Tractor Driver to Feminist Activist: The Legacy of State Socialism and the Independent Women’s Movements in Poland in the 1980s and 1990s - Katarzyna Maria Stanczak Wislicz, Institute of Literary Research, PAS (Poland)

• 'Party Meetings Will No Longer Be Beer Idyll': Communist Party of Czechoslovakia Women Functionaries in Party Schools after 1945 and Their World of Thinking - Václav Kaška, Masaryk U (Czech Republic)

• Politics of Representing Women Scientists in Socialist Yugoslavia - Jovana Mihajlovic Trbovc, Slovenian Academy of Sciences & Arts (Slovenia)

Discussant

• Denisa Necasova, Masaryk U (Czech Republic)