Liberalization and liberation: Gender, *class and the market in the Czech Republic.

Whether women of the post-socialist world are winners or losers of economic transformation is vigorously contested. Western scholars, contemplating gender in (economic) transition, have dominated its discussion with predominantly pessimistic portraits and empirical studies of women's losses, while Central and East European social scientists have tended to counter with defiant optimism. I have found that middle-aged Czech women (of Prague) do not identify as transition's losers, rather they are either its winners or its survivors, but important elements of this tale of triumph vary across classes. Relying principally upon 8 focus groups (48 factory workers) and 45 personal narratives (26 managers, 19 factory workers) as well as 19 interviews with Czech experts (e.g. government officials, labor union representatives) collected between September 1999 and October 2000 and textual sources published during the 1990s, I find these Czech women's stories of liberation to be rooted in a neoliberal narrative dominating the Czech Republic's public discourse throughout much of the 1990s. They, however, reconcile the constitutive social forces of their world with the ideological mandates of this publicly-told story in very different ways. Czech female managers narrate their success in a language that echoes neoliberalism's theoretical (and rhetorical) abstractions. Their assumption of a public logic is not solely an act of accommodation, but also works transformatively, enabling them to alter the conditions of their work and family lives in ways not availed by structural determinants alone. History, culture and gender are, however, obfuscated in a collective narrative in which the guiding mechanism underlying individuals' behavior is ascribed to little more than instrumental rationality. For Czech female factory workers, their immediate realities in the shape of increasing social and economic marginalization are not so easily assimilated; however, this dissonance is met not with their disenchantment but rather a faith in capitalism's realization of a better future for their children. By comparing the narratives of Czech female managers and factory workers, I ultimately offer a more comprehensive portrayal of women's lives in which the complexities, contingencies and contradictions are made recognizable, laying the foundation for more effective theoretical and practical engagements of social inequality.Ph.D.Social SciencesSocial structureWomen's studiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/123744/2/3096238.pd