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 disadvantaged 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.