Читать книгу Seven Czech Women - Josette Baer - Страница 12

Western historians have been working on gender issues for decades; little is known, however, about the history of women in Central Europe. In the 19th century, Czech women found themselves in a difficult situation. On the one hand, they were eager to engage in what we call gender issues today, for example, to found educational institutions for girls. On the other, they shared men’s views that the Czech national movement opposing Austrian rule required the nation’s united resistance.

Female 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. Of crucial importance to women in the Habsburg monarchy in the 19th century was the opening up of the public sphere, contextualizing women’s public appearance in the national and cultural spolky[10] (associations, clubs) such as choirs and reading circles. The main activities of women were traditional female activities: social care, charity, literature, and the teaching of cooking and sewing. The education of girls was not a burning issue since a labour market for women did not yet exist, save, of course, for the lowest class, the servants. Farmers’ girls from the countryside sought to improve their families’ income with employment in the city. Few women of social standing engaged in the international women’s movement; the majority still adhered to the conservative view that women represented the values of faith, modesty, industriousness and, above all, passivity and obedience to men.

In general, the liberation and self-liberation of women in Europe began around 1900. In this regard, Switzerland, one of the oldest democracies, holds a sad record: Swiss women achieved the vote only in 1971[11] – yet on the grounds of a referendum, that is, Swiss women fought for their political equality, convincing the men to vote for their future right to vote. In terms of procedural ethics, the Swiss women’s vote was achieved in a democratic fashion following the rules of the Swiss constitution; female and male citizens fought for female political equality, it was not bestowed on them.

Regardless of their national identity, European women had to face the same prejudices of the male-dominated societies, which ascribed to them only a limited space: charity and the family. For the purpose of this volume, I would like to specify what I consider the five most important aspects of female emancipation in Europe:

1.The conquest of the public space = being visible in society, clubs, associations and organisations; second half of the 19th century;

2 .The right to higher education = the access to high schools and universities; after WWI, early 20th century;

3.The right to political participation = the right to vote and run for office; after WWI, early 20th century;

4.The right to work and earn one’s salary = financial independence; early 20th century;

5.The right to prevent pregnancy with the contraceptive pill and the right to legal abortion = autonomy of the female body; 1960s and 1970s.

In WWI and WWII women had replaced the men in the work force and contributed to the war effort; after the war they were increasingly demanding equal status. The fourteen women portrayed in my two volumes were and are active in crucial areas of a modern European society. Their life stories illustrate how much women and the progressive men who supported them achieved in the last hundred and fifty years in their fight for gender equality in all spheres of society:

1.Literature: Elena Maróthy-Šoltesová (1855–1939), Slovakia in Upper Hungary;

2.Music: Ema Destinn (1878–1930), the Czech lands in the Austrian part of the Habsburg Empire and Czechoslovakia;

3.Politics: the Czechs Eva ‘Mimi’ Jiránková (*1921) and Nataša Lišková (*1949) as historical witnesses; the Slovaks Magdaléna Vášáryová (*1948) and Iveta Radičová (*1956) as politicians;

4.Political resistance: Chaviva Reiková (1914–1944), the Slovak state; Milada Horáková (1901–1950), Czechoslovakia;

5.Science: Mária Bellová (1885–1973); Slovakia in Upper Hungary and Czechoslovakia;

6.Social care, NGO, media: Alice Garrigue Masaryková (1879–1966), Czechoslovakia; Tereza Maxová (*1971), Czech Republic; Adela Banášová (*1980), Slovak Republic;

7.Sports: Vera Čáslavská (*1942), Czechoslovakia.

Unlike Slovak women, Czech women enjoyed a much more liberal atmosphere in the last decades of the 19th century, as their language was not threatened. The Czechs had their own journals, newspapers and a market for books in Czech; this was the reason why the Czech national movement could successfully negotiate the establishment of a Czech section of the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague. From 1882 on, Czech and also Slovak students, who did not speak German or Hungarian, could get a university degree in Prague. The physician Vavro Šrobár (1867–1950) and the astronomer and general of the French Army Milan Rastislav Štefánik (1880–1919), two Slovak adherents of Masaryk’s, had graduated at Charles-Ferdinand University and became principal figures in the building of the Czechoslovak Republic.[12]

Under Communism, Czechoslovak women enjoyed constitutionally granted equality with men. Because of the duty to work under Socialism, women liberated the men from the role of the principal nurturer of the family. Yet, society still conceived of their role as the traditional one of mother and wife. Women were occupied with family matters during their entire lives; after retirement, they took care of their grandchildren.

In the first two decades of its rule, the Communist Party was eager to mobilize women; since the Party identified the concept of ‘feminism’ with Western Capitalism and the ‘bourgeois’ women’s movement in the First Republic, it invented the concept “working among women (práce mezi ženami)” in its mobilizing effort.[13] “Feminism” was not a popular term among critically minded intellectuals either, since the Socialist regime was not popular, in particular after the invasion of August 1968 and the politics of normalization. Václav 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”.[14] In a political system that oppressed the civil and political rights of all, women’s issues were neither interesting nor of vital importance.

The political change of 1989 affected women who were being marginalized by the new democratic and economic spirit.[15] They were the first to lose their jobs when the privatization of the large state-owned enterprises began in the 1990s. Besides criminality, pornography, greed, and asocial behaviour, the hitherto unknown phenomenon of sexism wormed its way into the post-Communist societies: a sad consequence of the regime change is the trafficking of young women who apply for a job in the rich states of the West and often land in brothels where they are forced into prostitution.[16]

For political reasons, Czech and Slovak scholars started only in the mid-1990s to investigate women’s roles and functions in society.[17] In the years after the Velvet Revolution of 1989, Czech citizens allegedly rejected feminism; pioneers of gender studies, such as the former dissident Jiřina Šiklová and Hana Havelková did not reject feminism but explained why Czech women rejected a feminist view.[18] Also, as Oates-Indruchová points out, the assertion that Czech women rejected feminism has never been critically analysed by empirical research. The media, publishers and academic institutions of the post-socialist state played a major role in demonizing gender studies in the early 1990s; there was no funding available, the interest of the universities to offer feminist topics in the curricula was very low, and some institutions expressed their doubts about the scientific legitimacy of the field. Since then, much has changed in the academic landscape of the Czech Republic, and a second generation of gender scholars is at work.