Preliminary Programme

The memory and the history of the activities of oppositional dissident groups during state socialism in Hungary has been created so far mostly by neglecting gender aspects. The scholars in the analyses of the emancipation politics of the East Central European ex-Soviet block countries after the transition mobilise gender aspects, yet in Hungary the activites of women and their critical literature have not received much attention yet.
The recent paper aims to examine if the gender inequalities, the facts of discrimination and subordinating mechanisms in public and private life which prevailed during state socialism actually formulated part of the discourse of the oppositional circles, the so called “secondary”, samizdat publicity and if not, why? Some oppositional groups genuinely formulated their feminist criticism towards the state-socialist establishment in Soviet block countries in the 1970s and 80s in several countries (including e.g. ex-Yugoslavia, Russia)
Thus the question can be raised: in what way women activists took part in the counter-culture and oppositional initiatives and discussions in Hungary and in what way and why their contribution is left out from the history of these oppositional movements so far?
The research is based on primary sources: including contemporary publications, samizdats, and personal interviews with ex-activists and participants.

Proposed network:
Women and Gender

Short biography:
Judit Acsády, PhD, sociologist, senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology at the Centre for Social Sciences of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Her PhD in Sociology was obtained in 2005 (University ELTE, Budapest). Disssertation: ‘Emancipation and Identity’. (2005). She attended post-graduate courses at University of Amsterdam (1990-91) and at EHSS in Paris (1995-96). Her main research fields include gender studies, social history, feminism and social movements. She took part in several international research projects ( e.g. EIGE, GENDERWISE ). She is member of an international research network ‘Aftermath of war’ organized by Ingrid Sharp and Matthew Stibbe. She published journal articles and book chapters in several languages. She organized workshops and international conferences. She gave courses as guest lecturer at Corvinus and ELTE Universities. She is member of the Editorial Board of the Interdisciplinary eJournal of Gender Studies. Mother of a twenty-one year old son.
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Working-class life under socialism has been an uneasy topic for many reasons. The first is clearly political: the Eastern European intellectuals – having rid of the state socialist system – tended to connect the „working class” with the failed regime or at best the Marxist-Leninist ideology, which had been discredited well before the actual collapse of state socialism. Another reason is the nature of sources: contemporary sources were often regarded as biased or outright falsification, which rendered working-class life and culture under socialism a topic, which attracted little scholarly attention. In recent years, however, there has been a moderate change of this intellectual climate in Eastern Europe, and there followed a new direction in labour studies in the region, which seeks to (re-)write working-class histories from a less ideologically oriented perspective.
The paper strives to contribute to this new school by re-reading contemporary literature on labour sociology and analysing source materials, which have not yet resulted in an academic publication – either under state socialism or later. The aim of the re-reading is to highlight the complex interactions between politics and science and detect the intellectual origins of post-socialist liberalism in Hungary. I also intend to show that while intellectuals challenged the official Marxist-Leninist ideology, the category of gender was remarkably missing from the dissident writings and also from the mental map of contemporary social science in Hungary. To highlight this point, I also examine working-class life-history interviews, which were conducted in the framework of an extensive survey and oral history project (Working-class culture) in the mid-1970s. While women workers were more disadvantaged in several fields (skills, wages, household and childcare duties, educational opportunities, etc.), than men, the analysis of the interviews will show us that women workers internalized the conservative gender roles and adjusted their dreams to their “lesser” social reality. To illustrate this point, I will also use men narratives to highlight the essential gendered difference between the life chances of men and women.
Most interview ended with a short, “psychological” summary of the relevant researcher, who conducted the interview. These summaries allow us to study the language of contemporary social science and the question as to what extent the researchers were sensitive to the gender differences. The analysis of the researchers’ reports testifies to the opposite; namely, that not only were they blind to the gendered discourses but they also displayed a remarkably patriarchal attitude not only to the workers in general but to the women workers in particular. Through the analysis of these materials the paper demonstrates that it was not only the workers, who harboured conservative social and cultural attitudes to gender roles but the mainstream contemporary social science was also blind to the category of gender and the conceptualization of gendered difference. (Show less)

The “second wave” feminism of the late 1960s and 1970s is commonly understood as socialist and radical, and the “Swedish model” of gender equality has mostly been credited to the social democratic party.
This project explores centre-right women’s engagement with new feminist impulses and the analysis of gender power that the second wave brought, examining the three women’s federations of conservative Moderaterna, agrarian Centerpartiet and liberal Folkpartiet. These women’s federations contributed to the institutionalisation of gender equality as well as to modernising their political parties and mobilising female votes for the centre-right's election win in 1976. The federations have, however, not received much attention in political history, nor in women’s and gender history.
The project examines alternative definitions of “women’s interests” that were formulated in the political centre-right, challenging socialist and radical feminism’s right to represent women, and emphasising the individualist potential of the second wave motto “the personal is political”.
Through studying the rework and remodelling of feminist concepts and ideas that the women of the centre-right performed and implemented in their respective parties, this project provides a deeper understanding of the mainstreaming and de-radicalisation of gender equality policy and politics from the 1980s.
Through the study of Sweden with its comparatively early institutionalisation of gender equality, the project contributes to a critical international research field on feminism in power, examining the institutionalisation of feminist ideas. Methodologically, the project uses Carol Bacchis (2009) analytical model ”What´s the problem represented to be?”. (Show less)