The Ambiguities and Contradictions of the State-Socialist Way of Women’s Emancipation in Hungary (1948–1989). Overview and Search for the Traces of Feminist Resistance

Abstract

The literature about the ex-state-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe raised the questions in what way women benefited from the legislation guaranteeing equal rights and the measures of emancipation during the decades of state socialism. The authors that also argued after 1990, the time of the social, economic and political transitions in the region, that women became the big losers of the changes. The paper aims to reflect on these examinations of gender relations during the state-socialist period and point out the contradictory ways of the introduction of women’s emancipation that led to ambiguous results in the propagated program of gender equality. Furthermore it discusses in which ways women’s positions remained subordinated and how the sexist representations of women increased in public life, the media and culture in Hungary after the 1970’s. A review of the main findings of earlier research accumulated so far concerning women’s lifes and gender relations in Hungary during state socialism will be followed by the question of in what ways these controversies of the system were articulated by the contemporary oppositional voices. Did the activists of the dissident Hungarian democratic opposition embrace the ideas of feminism and women’s issues in their criticism of the one-party system? On the base of contemporary documents and recent interviews with ex-activists it will be examined how feminist voices were articulated, yet controversially marginalized among the dissidents.