Czech Society in-between the Waves

ABSTRACT The article explores gender roles in Czech society during the 1990s, seeking in them continuity with the socialist past as well as divergence from it. The state-socialist construction of social space brought women (and men), in the course of 40 years, into a post-feminist situation – they got beyond the second-wave claim of the public sphere for women. The communist epoch gave birth to an illusory gender equity while it preserved a specifically modified public/private divide and ‘empowered ’ attitudes of the population that were characteristic of pre-feminist consciousness. This complex legacy has been used by the (male) political power of Czech ‘neoliberal ’ democracy post-1989, while it has disadvan-taged women, who have been becoming rapidly unequal to men. The article examines whether Czech accession to the EU will enhance gender equality in a post-communist society. Feminist action (of which there are some signs in Czech society), the study concludes, is needed more than ever. KEY WORDS accession ◆ Czech ◆ equality ◆ European Union ◆ gender ◆ policies ◆ post-communism ◆ post-feminist ◆ pre-feminist ◆ state socialism Although the 1990s only ended recently, which does not give us much of an analytical distance, I would still like to attempt a historically grounded feminist reflection of gender roles in Czech society during the past decade. I seek across those years continuity with the not too distant social-ist past as well as divergence from it. My focus is mainly upon Czech society, but issues of broader relevance for Eastern and Central Europe are also touched upon. The question central to this article is: do Czechs live in a pre-feminist or post-feminist society? My argument is that it is both: some characteristics point to a pre-feminist stage, others to a post-feminist era