Na ceste k modernej žene: Kapitoly z dejín rodovãch vzt'ahov na Slovensku (Toward the Modern Woman: Chapters from the History of Family Relations in Slovakia) (review)
- Na ceste k modernej žene: Kapitoly z dejín rodovãch vzt'ahov na Slovensku(Toward the Modern Woman: Chapters from the History of Family Relations in Slovakia)
Western historians have been working on gender issues for decades; relatively little is known, however, about the history of women in Central Europe. 1Under Communism, Czechoslovak, East German, and Hungarian women enjoyed constitutionally guaranteed equality with men and the right to work. Yet, society conceived of their role as the traditional one of mother and wife; occupied with family matters during their entire lives, women took care of their grandchildren after retirement.
Einhorn and Waylen vividly described how the political change of 1989 affected women who were marginalized by the new democratic and economic spirit. 2Women were the first to lose their jobs when the privatization of state-owned enterprises began in the 1990s. Another new development was the hitherto unknown phenomenon of sexism. The import of the Western concept of liberty certainly introduced Berlin's two freedoms—freedom from state oppression and freedom to engage in matters common to all, for example, building the polity with the democratic vote. 3But negative phenomena also insinuated their way into the Central European post-totalitarian societies—criminality, pornography, greed, ruthless selfishness, and asocial behavior. A sad consequence of the regime change has been the trafficking of young Eastern European women, who apply for a job in the rich West and often land in brothels, where they are forced into prostitution. 4
Feminism was not popular under Communism. Havel, the most prominent dissident of Charter 77, explained in 1985 that Czechoslovak women considered feminism as "dada, the fear of becoming unintentionally ridiculous when publicly addressing women's oppression by men." 5To a society that oppressed the civil and political rights of all, women's issues were neither interesting nor of vital importance. [End Page 322]
A new historiography free from ideological constraints, as well as the fear of embarrassment, might explain the skepticism about the feminist approach to historiography: Central European scholars started only in the mid-1990s to investigate women's roles and functions in society. 6Given this background, Toward the Modern Womanis a unique contribution to Slovak and Central European historiography. Its interdisciplinary methodology combines analysis of social history, ethnology, art history, literature, historical anthropology, and sociology. The book presents a chronological account of Slovak women's lives from the eighteenth to the twentieth century in a Central European context, referring to the Austrian, Czech, German, and Hungarian women's movements. 7
The fine fabric of social historiography is one of the volume's strongest points. It conveys a vivid picture of the motives, goals, ideas, and everyday reality of Slovak women, who, in the nineteenth century, found themselves in a catch-22. On the one hand, they were eager to engage in gender issues—for example, an attempt to establish educational institutions for girls. On the other hand, they shared men's view that the political situation demanded the nation's unity to resist the Magyar assimilation. Emancipation in the Western understanding of the freedom to choose how to spend one's life would have meant fighting a battle on two fronts—first, against the domination of men and, second, against political oppression. 8
Slovak women had neither the financial means nor the political clout to redress either affront. Moreover, any desire to promote feminist issues was complicated by their particular understanding of feminismand emancipation:"The fact that the Slovak women's movement was weak and lacked decisiveness, indeed, that it was too modest, tells us more about the general conservatism ruling in Slovak society than the conservative orientation of Slovak women. . . . The representatives of the Slovak women's movement were also convinced that, in the long run, a policy of small steps would be more successful than immediate radical actions." 9
After an introductory chapter on Slovak family relations...
