Women, work and equal opportunities in
post-Communist transition
s Anna Pollert
University of Greenwich, UK
ABSTRACT
This article examines gender, work and equal opportunities (EO) in five central
eastern European (CEE) candidates to an enlarged European Union (EU): the
Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia. It demonstrates how cap-
italist transition has eroded women's Communist economic and social legacy, and
considers implications for EO of the EU enlargement process. Analysis of decline
begins with an outline of women's position under Communism, showing both sim-
ilarities in gender inequality to those of capitalism, but also significant differences
and advances. Post-transition is then examined in terms of the UN Gender
Development Index, women's loss of social support, their decline in labour force
participation and changes in employment and political representation. A limitation
in available data is lack of information on unregulated employment and informal
work ­ both major developments in CEE.The objective picture is then set against
subjective responses to change ­ a key factor in gender EO prospects. Finally,
developments in EO monitoring and enforcement agencies are reviewed, with the
conclusion drawing these levels of enquiry together to assess the possibilities of
EU enlargement as a spur to greater commitment to gender equality in CEE.
KEY WORDS
central eastern Europe / employment / equal opportunities / post-Communist /
women / work
331
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Copyright  2003
BSA Publications Ltd
Volume 17(2): 331­357
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033316 Pollert 20/5/2003 10:58 am Page 331

Introduction
his article examines gender, work and equal opportunities (EO) in five cen-
tral eastern European (CEE) candidates to an enlarged European Union
(EU): the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia. It anal-
yses how capitalist transition has eroded the Communist gender equality legacy,
and considers the possibilities for progress and possible impact of the EU har-
monization and access criteria, which include gender mainstreaming in all
aspects of the National Action Plans for Employment.1
Aggregate indicators of decline, such as the United Nations Gender-related
Development Index (GDI), are significant, although these obscure complex pro-
cesses. For example, women left the labour force, and growing poverty and
inequality were largely feminized. Yet the average gender wage gap narrowed ­
at least for a time. Surveys also reveal women's ambivalent attitudes towards
capitalist transition. Democracy has been welcomed, but many feel betrayed by
the loss of former social rights (Lokar, 1999: 3). Previous enforced `emancipa-
tion' has fomented resistance to engaging in gender issues, and an embrace of
conservative sex roles. Yet new women's organizations have emerged too, many
of which promote gender awareness and EO.
Analysis of change begins with an outline of women under Communism,
showing both similarities in gender inequality to those under capitalism, but
also significant differences and advances. Post-transition is then examined in
terms of the GDI, women's loss of social support as mothers/carers, their
decline in labour force participation and changes in employment, the gender
pay-gap, occupational hierarchy and political representation. A major limita-
tion is lack of data on the quality of work, the growth of unregulated employ-
ment and casualization. The objective figures are then set against subjective
responses to transformation and gender relations. Finally, developments in EO
monitoring and enforcement agencies are reviewed, with the conclusion assess-
ing the possibilities for change in the context of EU enlargement and wider
socio-economic policies.
Women under the command economy and capitalism
Similarities in women's domestic and labour market position in capitalism and
the command economies have long been observed. Despite laws guaranteeing
women and men equality in marriage under Communism, women endured the
double burden of primary responsibility for household labour as well as paid
employment. The total workload of women in CEE approximated 70 hours per
week, about 15 hours more than in Western Europe (UNICEF, 1999: viii).
Employment segregation, both horizontal and vertical, has been similar in both
systems, with women concentrated in a limited range of sectors and occupa-
tions, in `light' manufacturing, the services and caring professions, and over-
represented at the bottom of job hierarchies. The male to female wage ratio has
332 Work, employment and society Volume 17 s Number 2 s June 2003
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033316 Pollert 20/5/2003 10:58 am Page 332

also been similar, with women earning between 70 and 80 percent of men's
earnings. In CEE, most of this was due to segregation, but also to discrimina-
tion: in some light industry plants, women earned 24 percent less than men in
the same job because of differences in bonuses (Scott, 1976: 5). Growth in
research on women's disadvantage in the 1960s revealed similar findings to
those in the West: women had to perform better than men to gain recognition,
and even when this was achieved, equivalent posts had poorer conditions.
At the same time, there were significant differences, particularly in
Communist era women's professional work and high education. Western capi-
talist post-war expansion of women's employment was gradual2
and based on
growth in service employment. Widening sexual segmentation by occupation
and sector developed, even in countries such as Sweden with high female
employment and political representation (Anker, 1998: 185; Ruggie, 1988:
181), and between full-time and part-time work, the latter accounting for 30
percent of women's jobs in Sweden, the UK and Canada by the late 1980s
(Jenson et al., 1988: 21). Service sector growth was delayed in the command
economies. State policy was dominated by labour shortage and the imperative
of industrialization and women were absorbed into the labour force rapidly. In
the Czech Republic, women as a percentage of the labour force grew from 38
percent in 1948 to 47 percent in 1969. Between 70 and 90 percent of working-
age women (15 to 55 years) were employed in the Communist countries in
1989 ­ similar to the Swedish level, but much higher than the 50 percent
European average (Einhorn, 1993: 113; UNICEF, 1999: 24). After transition,
sectors such as retail, hotels and catering expanded from 40 percent of employ-
ment to 48 percent in 1992 (Employment Observatory, 1993: 23). Whereas ser-
vice sector work accounted for over three-quarters of women's employment in
most advanced capitalist countries from the mid-1980s, in the Czech Republic
and Hungary it still accounted for only 60­70 percent in 1998 (OECD, 2000:
91). Part-time employment (other than in the informal sector) remains insigni-
ficant.
The impact on women of the `double burden' of responsibility for the fam-
ily and full-time employment ­ and even the `triple burden' including public
office ­ has received widespread attention (Einhorn, 1993; Heitlinger, 1979;
Wolchik and Meyer, 1985). State policy was always ambivalent about treating
women as producers or reproducers, and improvements in state childcare facil-
ities, maternity grants and paid maternity leave were usually conceded only
when pressure from women coincided with policies to address declining birth
rates (Einhorn, 1993: 23). Yet, while western European `second-wave' feminism
arose in the 1960s and 1970s partly in response to failures of EO policies
(Hoskyns, 1996: 25), during Communism a contradictory process entailing
some real progress for women as workers, state polemic on women's emanci-
pation and failure to challenge the sexual division of labour combined to quell
such development. An egalitarian `socialist family' was encouraged in rhetoric,
but women's `natural' responsibilities for reproduction and the family per-
meated public discourse. Furthermore, the actual provision of public service
333Women in post-Communist transition Pollert
033316 Pollert 20/5/2003 10:58 am Page 333

was inadequate: although universal health care contributed to women's well-
being (hence high GDI ­ see below), it was not of a high standard, public child-
care was overcrowded, and social support for family crises was lacking
(UNICEF, 1999: viii).
Nevertheless, by comparison with the West, women made inroads into
gender-atypical occupations. In Czechoslovakia, until the 1950s, women were
crowded into two out of 17 sectors (agriculture and health/social welfare ser-
vices), but because of labour shortages, by 1966 they accounted for over half
the employed in 10 out of 18 industries (Scott, 1976: 2). Women's exclusion
from the high pay and status of heavy industry also led to the unintended con-
sequence of their high educational attainment, which drew them into certain
professions. Their only way upwards was through higher qualifications, a route
facilitated by progressive education policies (Einhorn, 1993: 48). Even so, a
male industrial technician or administrator with only nine years of compulsory
education earned almost as much as a woman with a university degree (Scott,
1976: 6). Only particular graduate professions became feminized, however. In
Poland, women moved into medicine, specialized legal areas, business and eco-
nomics, including accountancy ­ occupations with lower status and pay than
those in heavy industry (Bialecki and Heyns, 1993: 116). In Czechoslovakia,
women predominated in nursing, office work, teaching and library work. They
comprised 40 percent of doctors, 60 percent of medical students and 90 percent
of pharmacology students. Yet despite segregation, women entered qualified
professions in larger numbers than in the West.
Finally, in politics, the Communist system combined female representation
with political weakness. The quota system ensured women filled between 23
and 30 percent of parliamentary seats, and guaranteed some positions in the
Party and unions. However, women were excluded from real power. In the
1960s and 1970s in the Soviet Union they never exceeded 5 percent of the high-
est Party organ, the political committee, and fewer than 4 percent of urban and
district Party first secretaries were women (Moses, 1978: 334). The fact that
female representation was conferred by a paternalist state devalued it and con-
tributed to a declining interest in women's emancipation (Heitlinger, 1979: 65;
Musilová 1999: 200), although at times the policy of containment backfired. In
Czechoslovakia, for example, after the 1966 Party Congress, the women's com-
mittee established the Czech Union of Women, which prompted improvement
in paid maternity and childcare leave (Scott, 1976: 114­31). However, this fell
short of strengthening women's position in the labour market and incorporated
only those elements of women's demands that fitted the pronatalist policies.
The parallels between capitalist and command economies' deeply struc-
tured processes of female subordination, but differences in employment and
family policies, have left similarly gendered labour markets but distinctive
household­employment interfaces and complex and varied approaches towards
gender equality goals. These broad patterns make it appropriate to make some
generalizations about Communist and capitalist gender-order legacies and their
futures. However, there is always a danger of glossing over significant national
334 Work, employment and society Volume 17 s Number 2 s June 2003
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variations in such a `systems' approach. Within Western capitalism, there are
diverse state traditions regulating gender, household income, citizenship and
reproduction, as comparative welfare-state studies illustrate (Esping-Anderson,
1990; Pierson and Castles, 2000). There is no evidence that these welfare struc-
tures are converging in the West, nor would it be appropriate to predict which,
if any, of these traditions are being approached by post-Communist countries.
The ensuing discussion traces the trajectory of gender relations change in CEE
and unfolds a complexity and indeterminacy of development which, at this
stage, makes it premature to make a prognosis in terms either of convergence
or divergence both within CEE, and between Western and Eastern Europe. It
does, nevertheless, show how deeply entrenched male power remains across
both systems, and how change is the complex interplay of inherited structures
and attitudes, the current political-economic priorities of `transition' and the
actions of men and women, capital, labour and the state.
Women in post-Communist transition
The Human Development and Gender Development Indices
Despite the flaws and contradictions of policy, women under Communism
enjoyed significant gender equality advantage in comparison with other indus-
trialized countries. This is demonstrated by the United Nations Development
Reports' indicators of development, the Human Development Index (HDI) and
the Gender-related Development Index (GDI).3
From the time a GDI was first
calculated in 1991, it was evident that CEE countries ranked high internation-
ally in gender equality, and 10­15 places higher than their HDI. An alternative
index, the Relative Status of Women, which avoids conflating absolute human
development with gender equality as does the GDI, places post-Communist
countries even higher, outstripping advanced Nordic countries. On these calcu-
lations, using UNDP sources for 1995­96, Estonia came first, followed by
Latvia, the Russian Federation, Lithuania, the Slovak Republic, Finland,
Poland, Hungary and Sweden (Dijkstra and Hanmer, 2000: 69). Other rank-
ings, such as UNICEF's `State of the World's Children' also suggest that UN cal-
culations underestimate the achievement of `transition' countries in key areas of
development pertinent to children and women's welfare (UNICEF, 1999: 3).
There is thus broad consensus on the gender-equality advantage of the com-
mand economy legacy. The UN GDI figures are referred to here, since they pro-
vide the only means of tracking gender inequality over time.4
Table 1 shows that for human development, the nadir of transition for
most CEE countries was 1995, with some recovery thereafter. However, the pat-
tern for gender equality is different (Table 2). Just after transition in 1990,
Czechoslovakia (the only country for which longitudinal tracking is possible)
ranked at eighth place in Gender Sensitive HDI (UNDP, 1991: 17). By 1998 it
had sunk to 33rd. Some of this plunge followed the drop in HDI due to
335Women in post-Communist transition Pollert
033316 Pollert 20/5/2003 10:58 am Page 335

recession, decline in welfare and growth in inequality and poverty, but GDI
ranking continued to drop, whilst HDI began to recover. By 1998­99, the two
indices had converged ­ (a feature of most capitalist economies) ­ indicating
that the relative advantage of gender-related human development became
eroded with capitalist transition. All the CEE countries for which GDI is avail-
able show a similar trend, with some (e.g. Poland) having a steeper decline than
others (e.g. Slovenia). The recent (1999) recovery of GDI is an encouraging sign
and needs tracking, although this remains a long way from return to the 1992
positions.
Some of these changes reflect only relative changes, since from 1992 to
1995 GDI values hardly changed. However, from 1995 to 1998, values actually
dropped (Table 2) showing absolute decline, while from 1998 to 1999 they
rose, although still not back to their 1992 levels. In sum, these trends show that
capitalist transition not only failed to maximize the female human resource
legacy left by the Communist regimes, but damaged it. What are the processes
contributing to this deterioration?
336 Work, employment and society Volume 17 s Number 2 s June 2003
Table 1 HDI Ranking of Five CEE Countries, 1990­1999
Country HDI 1990 HDI 1992 HDI 1995 HDI 1998 HDI 1999
Czech Republic* 27 38 39 34 33
Slovakia* 27 40 42 40 35
Hungary 30 50 47 43 36
Slovenia** 34 ­ 37 29 29
Poland 41 51 52 44 38
*Czechoslovakia until 1993; **Yugoslavia, 1991, 1992 reports.
Source: UNDP Human Development Reports, 1991, 1995, 1998, 2000 and 2001 respectively.
Table 2 GDI Ranking and Values of Five CEE Countries, 1990­1999
Gender
sensitive
index 1990 GDI 1992 GDI 1995 GDI 1998 GDI 1999
Rank Value Rank Value Rank Value Rank Value Rank Value
Czech 8 0.830 15 0.858 25 0.864 33 0.841 32 0.842
Republic*
Slovakia* 8 0.830 16 0.855 26 0.861 36 0.822 34 0.829
Hungary ­ 23 0.836 34 0.834 38 0.813 35 0.826
Slovenia** ­ ­ 24 0.867 28 0.857 27 0.871
Poland ­ 22 0.838 35 0.834 40 0.811 36 0.826
**Yugoslavia, 1991, 1992 reports. *Czechoslovakia until 1993. GDI Figures for 1990 and 1992 indicate new
`gender sensitive DHI' in the years before GDI was systematised in 1995.
Source: UNDP Human Development Reports, 1991, 1995, 1998, 2000 and 2001.
033316 Pollert 20/5/2003 10:58 am Page 336

Transition and the household­employment interface
While the two-earner household is as essential as ever, the shift away from the
former `worker-mother' state policy has made combining child-care and
employment difficult. Women's family position and number of children are
increasingly affecting their labour market chances (Kucha¢rová, 1999: 180).
Public childcare has been reduced. In Hungary, childcare allowance became
means-tested in 1996, which confined it to only the very poorest women, and
in the Czech Republic privatization has made it expensive: a month's childcare
in 1998 cost around 10 percent of the average monthly wage (¢Cermaková,
1999: 129).
In employment, the legal continuation of other benefits, such as extended
maternity and sick child leave,5
has become a pretext for employers to discrim-
inate against women as `expensive', `unreliable' and `poorly attached to the
labour market'. In the context of weak trade unionism, women are left to
enforce their social rights individually and fear of victimization or job loss
deters them from trying (LaFont, 2001; Nowakowska and Sw^edrowska, 2000:
5; UNICEF, 1999: 54). If they do take up their entitlements, many are discour-
aged from returning to work (Lakatos, 1998: 6). Full-time work remains the
norm and comprises a long working week (for example 42.5 hours in the Czech
Republic) and case study evidence shows not only that former tolerance of
informal time-off for domestic reasons has disappeared, but women are also
pressurized to work overtime (Pollert, 1999: 208­26). With the increase in the
unpaid work burden resulting from the cutbacks in social services and with-
drawal of state benefits (UNDP, 1999: 7), the `double-burden' has become even
heavier.
As well as suffering new pressures in employment, women as providers and
carers bear the brunt of managing reduced household incomes. Average real
wages have only just returned to their pre-1989 levels in two countries ­ the
Czech Republic and Poland. Growing inequalities, both of earnings and of
household incomes have created greater relative poverty in CEE (Flemming and
Micklewright, 1999: 56­66).6
One recent examination of Hungary estimated
that 30 percent of the population now lived on `minimum subsistence' levels
(Galgóczi, 2000: 15) and even absolute poverty7
has grown. For example, in
1987­88 in Hungary, only 1 percent of the population lived in poverty, and by
1993­95 this had grown to 7 percent (UN/ECE, 2000: 126). Throughout CEE
there has been an erosion of cash benefits, such as family allowance, which
replaced Communist-period non-cash support, such as price subsidies.8
Apart
from dealing with material problems, women as carers also deal with greater
family stress and health problems, and spending cuts in health have made mat-
ters worse. In Hungary, between 1990 and 1998, health care expenditure as a
percentage of GDP almost halved, from 9.8 percent (just above the EU average)
to 5.6 percent (Galgóczi, 2000: 21). There has also been a rise in violence
against women and a rise in the divorce rate from over one in three marriages
in Hungary and the Czech Republic in 1989, to over half in 1997 (UNICEF,
337Women in post-Communist transition Pollert
033316 Pollert 20/5/2003 10:58 am Page 337

1999: 53, 129). There is also a higher incidence of depression among women
than previously (UNICEF, 1999: 75).
Women's job loss and changes in employment
Although changes in labour statistics make comparisons of employment rates
over the transformation period difficult, it is clear that while both men and
women suffered from the recession, women were disproportionately affected.
Women's share of the labour force (i.e. employed and unemployed), as well as
of employment, has declined from 1985 to 1997, while their share of registered
unemployment (and long-term unemployment) is higher than their share of
employment (except for in Hungary, see Table 3).
In the Czech Republic, women's unemployment increased further relative
to men's between 1997 and 1998, and in Hungary, although unemployment
went down, the women's rate began to approximate the men's. Only in Poland
did a general rise in unemployment in this latter period affect men slightly more
than women ­ although the female rate remains 3.1 percent higher than the
male rate (Table 4).
However, it is change in the size of employment, rather than unemploy-
ment, that shows the relative deterioration in women's employment most
clearly, because this figure includes those who have not registered as unem-
ployed but have left the labour force (Table 4). In Hungary women's employ-
ment declined by 40 percent from 1985 to 1997, although their unemployment
rate was lower than men's. In the Czech Republic, the decline in female employ-
ment (11.8%) was almost 10 times the decline in male employment (1.2%).
Female job loss followed large cuts in public services (which were and con-
tinue to be highly feminized) and gendered patterns of sectoral change. Between
1992 and 1997, agriculture declined faster than total employment in most
338 Work, employment and society Volume 17 s Number 2 s June 2003
Table 3 Share of women in labour market indicators in selected CEE transition countries, 1985
and 1997 (percentages)
Women as % Women as % Women as %
employment unemployment long-term
unemployment
1985 1997 1997 1997
Czech 46.2 43.4 57.0 53.9
Republic
Hungary 47.9 44.0 38.6 35.8
Poland 46.2 44.7 53.8 59.7
Slovakia ­ 45.0 49.0 50.6
Slovenia 46.5 46.3 47.0 43.2
Source: UN/ECE, 1999: 138, based on UN/ECE secretariat estimates based on national labour force surveys,
statistical yearbooks and direct communication with statistical offices.
033316 Pollert 20/5/2003 10:58 am Page 338

countries, and within this, women's employment dropped more than men's
(UN/ECE, 1999: 138). In manufacturing the pattern varied between countries.
In the Czech Republic, women suffered in light industries, such as textiles,
which contracted as a result of trade deregulation and competition, although in
Poland, women took an increased share of labour-intensive branches of textiles
(UN/ECE, 1999: 138). Women's labour force activity (the share of the working-
age population participating in the labour force) has also declined, partly
because of higher enrolment rates in education among young women and partly
because of difficulties with childcare. Women over 50, who would normally
have worked until 55, are increasingly taking on the role of childcare, or are
being encouraged to take early retirement9
(UNICEF, 1999: 26). In Hungary,
for example, the female participation rate was 75.8 percent in 1989 but had
dropped to 57.4 percent by 1994 and 53.2 percent by 1997 (Frey, 1998: 2).
However, a general feature across CEE was that many women left the labour
force because employment became uneconomic due to the combination of the
drop in real wages and loss of social benefits and services associated with
employment (UN/ECE, 1999: 135). This does not mean that these women
ceased working. There are no accurate figures on the growth of the informal
economy, but research on clothing production in Poland, for instance, estimates
that around Lodz and Katowize, 50 percent of manufacture is in the grey econ-
omy (Clean Clothes Campaign, 2001: 7).
Post-transition employment decline for both men and women was partly
compensated for by growth in services, but in contrast to the West European pat-
tern, male job growth was greater than female. Although women still make up
over half of service sector employment, their share has not increased overall and
has actually declined in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, especially in
trade and repair, hotels and restaurants, and transport and communication
339Women in post-Communist transition Pollert
Table 4 Male and Female Labour Force and Employment change, 1985­1997, and Unemployment
1997, 1998
Labour force* Employment Unemployment rate Unemployment rate
change % change % % 1997 and female % 1998 and female
1985­1997 1985­1997 minus male rate minus male rate
M F M F M F F­M M F F­M
Czech 2.9 ­5.5 ­1.2 ­11.8 4.00 6.7 2.7 5.0 8.2 3.2
Republic
Hungary ­22.5 ­35.1 ­29.8 ­40.1 9.5 7.8 ­1.7 8.1 6.9 ­1.2
Poland 0.4 ­1.6 ­8.3 ­13.4 8.7 12.0 3.3 9.5 12.6 3.1
Slovakia 10.8 12.5 1.7
Slovenia ­9.2 ­9.7 ­15.6 ­16.2 7.0 7.2 0.2
*Labour force = employed + unemployed.
M = male, F = female.
Source: Selected countries from UN/ECE, 1999: 136 and 137 and UNDP Human Development Report, 2000: 259.
033316 Pollert 20/5/2003 10:58 am Page 339

(Table 5). The only major increase has been in financial intermediation in Poland,
probably as a result of the legacy of women's high qualifications in finance and
economics. Otherwise, occupational change data suggest that within services,
women hold the same types of low-level, routine jobs, as they do in the West,
although more qualitative research on women's experience of work, both in the
formal and informal sectors, is needed.
Employment segregation and the wage gap
Changes in sexual segregation can partly be gleaned from the International
Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-88),10
which has been used in
some CEE countries since 1993, and in all since 1995. Calculations, based on
ILO data, of women's spread across occupational groups between 1995 and
1999, show a similar distribution in CEE as in western European countries,
such as Sweden and the UK. The majority of women workers are spread across
technical and associate professionals, service work and clerical and elementary
occupations. Group 4 (Clerks) is 75 to 90 percent female and Groups 5 and 9
(shop workers and elementary occupations) are between 50 and 66 percent
female. By contrast, only a quarter to a third of Group 1 is female, although in
some countries a slightly higher percentage of women have entered Groups 1
and 2 (Slovakia and Slovenia), and in several countries there are higher pro-
portions of women in these higher groups than in western Europe, possibly
reflecting the legacy of women's presence in the professions discussed above.
Whilst the gender pay gap between men and women is remarkably similar
across CEE, and similar to that in the West (in 1997, women's average monthly
earnings were between 78 and 81% of men's), the situation is in flux (Table 6).
Although there has been a narrowing of the gender gap since Communist times,
subsequently there appears to have been some variation between countries. In
Slovenia, where the gender pay gap was narrow by western European standards
340 Work, employment and society Volume 17 s Number 2 s June 2003
Table 5 Share of women in selected services, 1992­1997
Czech
Republic Hungary Poland Slovakia Slovenia
1993 1997 1992 1996 1993 1997 1994 1997 1993 1997
Total Services 54.8 54.4 54.2 52.6 56.4 55.0 56.5 57.3 55.8 56.0
Trade, repair 57.0 55.1 58.2 51.4 56.9 52.2 56.2 57.7 56.3 52.3
Hotels, 56.7 55.8 57.9 50.7 70.4 67.7 64.7 64.0 64.3 65.8
restaurants
Transport and 35.0 31.1 29.8 26.3 28.6 24.9 30.4 30.6 25.5 19.6
communication
Financial 66.8 67.8 76.0 66.3 58.2 70.3 77.0 72.5 68.8 66.7
intermediation
Source: from UN/ECE, 1999: 141.
033316 Pollert 20/5/2003 10:58 am Page 340

in the 1980s, after some improvement in 1992, it widened again in 1996. In
Hungary, after early improvement, women's wages dropped again in 1997 to
78 percent of men's, while in Poland there has been no change since 1992. In
the Czech Republic and Slovakia the gender gap narrowed until 1996, but by
1997 had widened again in the former ­ back to women earning 73.4 percent
of men's earnings (¢Cermaková, 1999: 132).
Initial conclusions were that the pay gap was narrowing in CEE and was
not due to a `selectivity bias', because of the exclusion from the labour force of
low-paid female workers (Brainerd, 2000; UNICEF, 1999: 33). However,
Brainerd's data refer to 1992 and recent research suggests that the narrowing of
the gap was a temporary phenomenon of early transition due largely to deteri-
oration in men's pay and employment. A study of the gender pay gap in Poland
(Grajek, 2001) found that 80 percent of the change between 1987 and 1996
occurred in 1989, when managers of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were first
free to reduce labour costs. Since men were in the majority in the SOE indus-
trial sector, they were particularly exposed to early job and wage cuts. In this
early period there was also a brief window of opportunity for educated women
to use their `human capital' advantage, and some did enter better-paid jobs. Yet
after this initial narrowing of the gap, the pattern was reversed after 1992, with
women suffering pay and job losses, particularly through economies in the pub-
lic services (Grajek, 2001: 13). Similar processes may have occurred elsewhere.
The gender pay pattern in Hungary is similar, and it is plausible that draconian
bankruptcy laws early in transition may also have similarly affected men's jobs
and wages. In the Czech Republic, where SOEs were protected by the state for
longer (Pollert, 1999: 77), this process may have been delayed, which would
partly explain the continuing improvement in the gender wage gap, but its later
widening. These speculative hypotheses need further research in order to fore-
cast future trends. The current gap remains wide and is roughly equal to the EU
15 countries, where women's average full-time gross hourly earnings were 75
percent of men's in 1995.11
341Women in post-Communist transition Pollert
Table 6 Gender pay ratios, selected countries, 1987, 1992, 1996
Country Female monthly wages as a percentage of male monthly wages
1987 1992 1996
Czech Republic 66.1 73.0 81.3 (73.4%[1997])
Slovakia 66.1 73.3 78.2
Poland 73.7 79.0 79.0
Hungary 74.3 80.8 78.1 (1997)
Slovenia 87.0 88.6 85.4
Source: selection from UNICEF, 1999: 33; NB monthly figures do not give information on hours worked and are
less satisfactory than average gross hourly earnings, the basis for the 1995 European Structure of Earnings Survey
(EOC, 2001).
033316 Pollert 20/5/2003 10:58 am Page 341

A further factor in CEE likely to exacerbate gender pay disparities is the
emergence of the private sector, and women's under representation in it. It
appears that the public­private sector divide is more significant in terms of pay
than, for example, occupational grade. In Hungary, private sector women
workers earn 10 percent more than those in the public sector, which is almost
three-quarters female (Lakatos, 1998: 11). The role of discrimination has been
demonstrated across the region (UNICEF, 1999: 31). Although the pay gap nar-
rows when the effect of labour-market segregation is taken into account, its
main component remains. Comparative research based on 1993 Social
Stratification Survey data concluded that half of the gender wage gap was due
to discrimination at the point of recruitment, with women equally qualified to
men lower down the hierarchy (Pailhé, 2000: 514).
Recent econometric analysis in the Czech Republic and Slovakia using 1998
hourly wage rates isolated the significance of discrimination. In the private sec-
tor, the Czech gender pay gap was about 30 percent and was slightly lower in
Slovakia. Two thirds of this was due to `gender differences in wages that remain
after accounting for most forms of workplace segregation as well as for other
explanatory variables' (Jurajdna, 2001: 24). Qualitative research exposed the
discriminatory process. In Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia managers
were not `systematically hostile' to women, but thought them `docile' but `hard-
working', while men were `technically competent' with `supervisory skills'. More
than three-quarters of respondents considered their female workforce posed a
problem due to family responsibilities (Pailhé, 2000: 517).
Education does not seem to be helping women's labour market chances, as
human capital theory in the new market economy might predict. Across CEE
female educational enrolment in primary, secondary and tertiary education
improved from 1995 to 1997 (for instance, from 76 to 82 percent in Slovenia
and 68 to 75 percent in Hungary) (UNDP HDI and GDI ranking 1998, 2000),
but women still suffered disproportionate employment loss. Analysis of Czech
educational data between 1994 and 199712
suggests a consistent pattern of dis-
advantage. At almost every level of educational attainment, the percentage of
women unemployed is almost twice that of men. While apprenticeship attain-
ment for men and women remained roughly static over the period (around 47%
and 31% of the labour force respectively), unemployment for men in this group
rose only slightly (from 3 to 4%), but for women, it rose further from 5 to 7
percent. While women university graduates' percentage of the labour force rose
from 8 to 9 percent over this period, female graduate unemployment doubled
from 1.3 to 2.6 percent. The male graduate percentage remained at 11 percent,
as did the male graduate unemployment at 1.4 percent. The explanations are
likely to lie partly in the segregation of the labour force, and declining job
opportunities in feminized graduate professions (retrenchment in the public sec-
tor, including teaching and medicine), but also in lack of entry through dis-
crimination.
Czech research on women graduates also shows that the higher up the edu-
cational ladder women reach, the more likely they are to suffer pay inequality,
342 Work, employment and society Volume 17 s Number 2 s June 2003
033316 Pollert 20/5/2003 10:58 am Page 342

suggesting a `glass ceiling' similar to that experienced by British women
(Hansard Society, 1990). Women doctors earn 76 percent of the salary of their
male colleagues, university lecturers 85 percent, lawyers 91 percent, chemists
73 percent, and programmers 82 percent (¢Cermaková, 1999: 136). In general,
women university graduates have the same earnings as men with a secondary
school certificate ­ i.e. one level of education lower. At this top level, little seems
to have changed.
Women's political representation and involvement
The decline of female representation in politics since 1989 has been widely
observed (Havelková, 1999; ¢Sa¢sI´c ¢Silovi´c, 2000: 472; UNICEF, 1999: 94). In
1996, the poorest female political participation rates at ministerial level in CEE
were in the Czech Republic (0%) and Hungary (5%), although the average at
sub-ministerial level was 11 percent ­ just slightly below the OECD average of
14 percent. After 1996, there were some improvements at ministerial level,
notably in the Czech Republic, but also some declines in Slovakia and Slovenia
(Table 7).
Some have argued that the decline in women's political representation
allows greater transparency about real gender power relations, which is an
advance on former tokenism (UNICEF, 1999: 95). However, women's absence
at senior levels early in transition left the path clear for conservative policies
that undermined women's social protection, as well as sexism in the media and
public discourse (Havelková, 1999; Lokar, 2000: 75). The post-Communist
aversion to quotas and `special treatment' EO also flows against the current in
the EU, where gender disadvantage has been confronted with positive action
343Women in post-Communist transition Pollert
Table 7 Senior government positions held by women pre- and post-1996 (percent) and sub-
ministerial level, selected countries
Ministerial
level post-1996
Ministerial Election Sub-ministerial
level 1996 % date % level, 1996 % Total, 1996 %
Central Europe 7.2 11.4 10.7
Czech 0.0 1998 15.0 12.6 10.6
Republic
Slovakia 15.0 1998 12.7 15.7 15.6
Poland 8.3 1997 13.0 10.1 9.8
Hungary 5.6 1998 8.3 7.1 6.9
Slovenia 9.1 1996 7.8 19.7 16.9
OECD 16.8 ­ ­ 13.8 14.6
Nordic 33.1 97/98 38.0 19.0 22.3
Source: UNICEF, 1999: 97 for 1996 figures. UNDP, 1999: 66 and Appendix II, compiled by Inter-Parliamentary
Union for post-1996 figures.
033316 Pollert 20/5/2003 10:58 am Page 343

initiatives13
and increased the number of countries where over 20 percent of
parliamentary seats were female from six to 10 between 1980 and 2000 (Lokar,
2000: 74).
At the municipal council and local authority levels, women fare better
(UNICEF, 1999: 100), and they have been crucial in the creation of `civil soci-
ety' in forming NGOs. These vary in nature, but include gender equality,
women's business, cultural, human rights organizations and those concerned
with children, family, health, education, community and ecological issues. The
Network of East­West Women has over 2000 members in 40 countries
(LaFont, 2001: 216) and its website lists around 30 NGOs in the Czech
Republic, 20 in Slovenia, and 6 in Poland, including several, such as the Prague
Gender Studies Centre and the Women's Rights Centre Warsaw, which have
produced important research on women and transformation.14
In Hungary,
there are at least 30 women's `civil organizations', including feminist networks,
an Equal Opportunities Society, Society of Romany Women in Public Life,
Women's Federation for World Peace, and Green Women. These grassroots
activities are fertile areas for research.
Women have also become organized in professional organizations and
women's sections of political parties and trade unions (ILO-CEET, 1998). At
executive level, CEE women's position is not markedly inferior to the still poor
female representation in trade unions across the rest of Europe (Table 8).
Although they comprise between a third and half of union membership, their
representation at congress and in union leadership varies between 11 and 28
344 Work, employment and society Volume 17 s Number 2 s June 2003
Table 8 Women's Representation in Trade Unions, 1998
Trade union Women Executive
Trade union membership % delegates to committee %
organization women congress % women
Czech Republic CMKOS 43 20 18
Slovakia KOS SR 48 25 11
Hungary LIGA 30 31 14
MSZOSZ 50 28 18
Poland Solidarity 42 9 10
NSZZ
Austria OGB 32 21 13
Germany DGB 24 28 24
DAG 55 41 25
France CFDT 46 25 25
Norway LO 44 40 20
AF 44 30 42
UK TUC 38* 33 19
Source: ETUC 1998, 23­25. *Figure for UK TUC from `Labour Research', March 2000: 17. NB no figures for
Slovenia.
033316 Pollert 20/5/2003 10:58 am Page 344

percent (except for in Poland's Solidarity NSZZ, where women have no more
than 9­10 percent of decision-making posts).
In spite of (and because of) the general inertia towards gender issues in the
union movement, women have been involved in grassroots self organization
(Musilová, 1999: 201; ©a¹I´c ©ilovi´c, 2000: 471). In 1997, women from CEE, the
Balkans and the Baltic states formed an International Confederation of Free
Trade Unions (ICFTU) Women's CEE Network. In spite of organizational bar-
riers, the Network, together with the International Labour Organization's
Central Eastern Europe Team, set out a programme in 2000 to strengthen gen-
der awareness in trade unions, ensure a gender dimension in trade union pro-
grammes and build a gendered database of trade union members (Petrovi´c,
2000).
Contradictory attitudes towards gender and transition in
post-Communism
Post-Communist attitudes toward gender relations are nuanced and contradic-
tory. This complexity stems both from pre-Communist legacies, and the tainted
Communist experience of politically imposed `emancipation' and continuing
sexual subordination. Such layered views and ideologies have differing
national, historical legacies, and while the Czech composition is alluded to here,
similar constellations of views in which `conservative' gender relations stereo-
types co-exist with desires for greater gender equality, have resulted elsewhere.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Czech women's movement fought
for universal suffrage, which was achieved in the declaration of Czechoslovak
independence in 1918 (Musilová, 1999: 199). At the same time, however, there
was strong public support for the middle-class model of the male breadwinner
family (Rendlová, 1999: 168). While the later Communist promotion of
women's public engagement favoured the emancipatory legacy of the First
Republic, `traditional' views on women's domestic roles now thrived, both as a
form of resistance to state rhetoric on women's emancipation and as a response
to experience which added little to support the `liberation' of paid work
(Musilová, 1999: 200). The family was now the social/political refuge in which
women were the centre of support, whilst female networks supplemented inad-
equate state welfare and poor consumer goods supplies.
Since capitalist restoration, the rise in conservative gender attitudes has
received widespread attention in the transition literature. Most studies of gen-
der attitudes reveal a spectrum from indifference to hostility to women's liber-
ation and feminism (Heitlinger, 1996; Limanowska, 1993; Rendlová, 1999:
169; Watson, 1993). Questions of gender equality (in pay and job opportuni-
ties) have been regarded as superfluous luxuries in the serious business of tran-
sition ­ a male prerogative (Watson, 1993, on Poland). In the Czech Republic,
a number of surveys between 1994 and 1999 found that women had `virtually
no sensitivity to the question of gender differences or the perceptions of dis-
345Women in post-Communist transition Pollert
033316 Pollert 20/5/2003 10:58 am Page 345

crimination. Qualitative research also demonstrates an almost universal lack of
knowledge of feminist or gender perspectives, among, for instance, women doc-
tors or teachers' (Èermaková, 1999: 132). There are similar findings in Poland
(Nowakowska and Sw^edrowska, 2000: 9). Lack of interest in gender issues is
associated with the legacy of accepting `innate' difference, with the sexes hav-
ing complementary roles. A Czech study found that, while men recognized
women's `rights and abilities', they were unwilling to `relieve' them of domestic
work, and while women aspired to some relief from domestic burdens, they also
stressed their irreplaceable position in the family (Kuchaøová, 1999: 184).
Anecdotally, interviews with Czech women have revealed essentialist views of
female superiority in the domestic sphere and the pointlessness of trying to
involve men in what they are not good at ­ a sexual politics of difference (own
research). A European comparative study of gender attitudes in 1994 noted that
Czech replies expressed fairly strong beliefs in the damage to children and fam-
ily life of female employment and in women's greatest fulfilment being in home
and family life, and were considerably more conservative than British and
Norwegian ones (Crompton and Harris, 1997: 186).
The rise in conservative gender attitudes has prompted some to assume a
widespread post-Communist anti-feminism. Watson, for example, argued that
this is a symptom of capitalist transition as a `masculine' project, since bour-
geois democracy was historically a male project, with the addition that in post-
Communism, men appropriated the newly opened up public sphere of `civil
society' in reaction to former state control of the `public domain'. Opening of
the public sphere allegedly allowed men to `recapture' their oppressed mas-
culinity and unleashed a `nostalgia' for `traditional' sexual roles (1993: 477),
whilst eliminating the need for the family as a source of independence and thus
undermining the foundations of women's former power-base. Yet an alternative
interpretation of men's appropriation of political and economic power, which
avoids essentialist views on `masculinity', is that deeply structured Communist-
era male strongholds were perpetuated and encouraged by capitalist transition,
rather than there being some `recapturing' of masculinity. Post-Communist
transformation as a `male project' also obscures its class dimension as a capi-
talist project ­ an omission recently acknowledged (Watson, 2000).
Preoccupation with anti-feminism also distorts a much more complex real-
ity. In particular, numerous attitude surveys belie any universal desire for
domestic retreat and demonstrate women's strong attachment to paid employ-
ment. Women expect EO at work and are committed to their jobs, not only for
financial independence, but also for self-fulfilment (Daszy´nska, 1998: 1;
Kuchaøová, 1999: 185; Nowakowska and Sw^edrowska, 2000: 14; Paukert,
1993). Both men and women regard women's absence from politics as detri-
mental to society (Rendlová, 1999: 168). Inconsistencies, such as those allow-
ing men and women simultaneously to have `a sense of equal rights', but not to
view equality issues as problems requiring solutions have been characterized as
part of the `post-communist syndrome' (Musilová, 1999: 198). However, they
can be seen to express a wider `fragmentary, incoherent and inconsequential'
346 Work, employment and society Volume 17 s Number 2 s June 2003
033316 Pollert 20/5/2003 10:58 am Page 346

consciousness in Gramsci's `common sense' (1971: 419), also observed in soci-
ological studies of developed capitalism (e.g. Nichols and Armstrong, 1976:
148; Pollert, 1981: 87).
Once the complexities of gender attitudes are acknowledged, the fact that
women's response to transition has varied ­ with some embracing traditional
gender values, others pressing for change and many holding contradictory
views ­ becomes more explicable. Withdrawal, as well as activity, are possible
responses (Lokar, 2000: 75). Women are also heterogeneous and there are
national, regional and other lines of difference. Female union activism, for
example, is regionally diverse. Among the three regional sub-groups of the
ICFTU-CEE women's trade union network described earlier, it has been the
Baltic and the Balkan groups which have developed the fastest, with CEE coun-
tries remaining slower to effect change (Petrovi´c, 2000: 126).
CEE and EU gender mainstreaming
Possibilities for the politics of mainstreaming
The prospects for EO in post-Communism rest both on gender attitudes and
practices and institutional structures to promote and monitor change. It is
apparent that gender issues are surfacing in the proliferation of NGOs and gen-
der studies centres. Entry to the enlarged EU, in which gender mainstreaming
has formally become part of the social dimension of harmonization, could
become a further incentive for progress.
In terms of the post-Communist erosion of state benefits, affordable child-
care and `worker-mother' policies, EU policies for reconciling work and family
life could address new tensions experienced by women in CEE. Second, the
National Action Plan guidelines facilitating reintegration into the labour mar-
ket are pertinent to CEE women's disproportionate job-loss, and are in tune
with `active' labour market policies for employment promotion already in
place. The gender pay-gap may not immediately seem as great a problem as the
general fall in real wages, and may initially be experienced as the gap between
the public and private sectors, but it is likely to become increasingly perceived
as a gender issue. Finally, certain aspects of mainstreaming gender could have a
particular resonance in CEE. Where EO implies `becoming like a man', it is
rejected, but where it involves a paradigm shift in which caring and parenting
are valued beyond the private sphere, and where the implicit gendering of orga-
nizational structures and cultures is questioned, it may alter the hostility to
`feminism'.
However, while these espoused agendas appear promising, there are serious
barriers to their achievement. Apart from EO remaining low in the political and
economic priorities of CEE, where it is addressed, the fact that it is merely
instrumental in the pursuit of another agenda ­ that of joining the EU ­ may
weaken commitment further. Another factor that may fuel antipathy, is the fact
347Women in post-Communist transition Pollert
033316 Pollert 20/5/2003 10:58 am Page 347

that it is a requirement imposed from the West. In the Czech Republic, the soci-
ologist Jiøina ©iklová accused Western feminists of `insensitive conduct' towards
the East (1993: 10). Minimal and resentful conformity with political require-
ments of EO policy creates the danger of legislation and practice stagnating at
the level of a proclamation (Musilová, 1999: 199).
Formal institutional conformity to EO requirements could also become a
substitute for real change. Gender equality has been legally guaranteed across
CEE since the Communist period, both in national constitutions and ratifica-
tion of international conventions.15
In the post-transition period, CEE countries
have also been signatories to the Beijing Platform of Action in 1995 and their
commitment to democracy includes guarantees for gender equality (©a¹ic
©ilovi´c, 2000: 472).16
Where national laws are inadequate on EO issues, inter-
national law can theoretically take precedence. Yet without enforcement agen-
cies, the chances of this happening are remote.
EO monitoring and enforcement agencies
EO policy institutions at Government or Ministry level have been developed
with varying degrees of complexity and overlap. A well as forming policy, they
report to the ILO on compliance with Convention 111 and 100 and to other
relevant UN treaty monitoring bodies. Research on their effectiveness is uneven.
Slovenia appointed a Women's Policy Office at government level in 1992 to
monitor the position of women, discuss regulations and legislation, prepare
analyses and liaise with national women's organizations, and it appears a rela-
tively unified structure (Milivoija, 1998: 30). The Czech Republic developed
several institutions later in 1998, under pressure to join the EU, but their com-
plexity may fragment responsibility and influence. A Department for the
Equality of Men and Women in the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs coor-
dinates ministerial and national gender equality policy, but although EO laws
have been improved, it appears not to have greatly affected other state institu-
tions, such as other ministries, Parliament, the Senate and the courts (Musilová,
1999: 201). Other institutions dealing with EO include a Government Council
for Human Rights (with representatives of members of the public and NGOs),
with a gender equality section to evaluate the fulfilment of international obli-
gations, including CEDAW. There is also a parliamentary Commission for
Equal Opportunities and Family within the Committee for Social Policy and
Health Care to conduct research and promote policies on family-relevant issues
such as social security and pensions (ILO, 2001). In Slovakia, there are very
similar institutional developments (Placintar, 1998: 17).
Hungary has a similarly complex system, but there have been cases of suc-
cessful interventions into breaches of EO law. A Secretariat of EO in the
Ministry of Social and Family Affairs has responsibility for employment issues
and for drafting and enforcing labour-related legislation. There is a
Parliamentary Commissioner for Civil Rights, which can also investigate equal
pay cases, and a Human Rights Policy Cabinet made up of government minis-
348 Work, employment and society Volume 17 s Number 2 s June 2003
033316 Pollert 20/5/2003 10:58 am Page 348

ters. These deal with human rights issues, including equal opportunities for
women, and co-operate with groups formed after the 1995 UN conference in
Beijing. There is also a Hungarian Gender Databank sponsored by the Ministry
of Social and Family Affairs, which contains information on women's issues
(ILO, 2001). Hungary also benefited from participating in an international EO
programme in 1996, having been selected from CEE to join an ILO training and
information dissemination project funded by the Netherlands Government. The
project's outcomes included a comprehensive report, `Women in the World of
Work' (ILO-CEET, 1998), the development of 30 EO trainers, and the first suc-
cessful litigation against a company for infringing the prohibition of discrimi-
nation in job recruitment in 1997. Its experience demonstrates the importance
of international support and involving women in EO training and research.
In Poland, political changes made the advancement of women's cause
erratic. In 1991, the government established the office of the Plenipotentiary for
the Family and Women, which operated under the vigorous leadership of Anna
Popowicz until 1992, including a challenge to the legal restrictions on abortion
and contraception (Nowakowska, 2000: 1). However, Popowicz was recalled in
1992, and under Hanna Suchocka, the first woman prime minister of Poland,
no further appointment was made of a plenipotentiary for women. The office
was not recreated until 1995, and even then did not address women's issues,
concentrating on youth instead. Only after the 1995 UN Beijing conference was
the title of Plenipotentiary for Family and Women recreated ­ but the officer
appointed admitted she had no interest in gender equality issues. Her
Democratic Left Alliance successor was more committed and formed alliances
with women's NGO's as well as dealing with the hostility of the Catholic
Church. However, following the 1997 electoral victory of the conservative
Solidarity Electoral Alliance, the title of the office was again changed to
Plenipotentiary for Family and shortly afterwards, the entire staff of the previ-
ous bureau were dismissed. Although the office continued to be officially
obliged to honour the previously agreed National Action Plan for Women, only
certain parts, such as the National Statistical Office's objectives to include more
gender data, remained. There is also an Ombudsman for Human Rights who
monitors the rights of women. Whether the post-2000 election victory of the
socialists makes any difference remains to be seen.
In all countries, revisions of the Labour Code included gender equality,
although the pace of progress is uneven. Poland's 1996 Labour Code still only
guarantees equal pay for equal work, whereas the Czech Labour Code of 2000
now includes the concept of equal pay for work of equal value. The Czech
Republic also prohibits discrimination (both direct and indirect) in employment
on grounds of sex, marital and family status and family duties, and dismissal of
pregnant women or parents having care for a child under three. However, as
argued earlier, these de-jure rights may become a pretext for discrimination.
They also encourage law avoidance strategies in `hide and seek' between
employers' evasion strategies, attempts to overcome these by further legislation,
and new evasions (Kollonay Lehoczky, 1998: 4).17
The legacy of gendered
349Women in post-Communist transition Pollert
033316 Pollert 20/5/2003 10:58 am Page 349

legislative tone also remains as a problem. Childcare leave, for instance, has
been extended from maternity to parental leave, but in Poland, the 1996 law
addresses women, and it is mothers who are offered a further three years of
extended leave (beyond the first three), if a child has a chronic illness or dis-
ability (Nowakowska and Sw^edrowska, 2000: 4).
Finally, the new EO institutions have not yet affected wider language and
practices, such as advertising. In the Czech Republic EO issues are still satirized
or undermined in the mass media and political discourse (Havelková, 1999),
and in Poland, discriminatory behaviour, such as stating the preferred gender of
a job candidate, is common practice (Nowakowska and Sw^edrowska, 2000: 9).
Nevertheless, progress has been made both in the legislatures of CEE, and in the
activities of women on the ground in NGOs and trade unions.
Conclusion and discussion
The foregoing analysis has demonstrated the failure of capitalist restoration in
CEE to build on the gender equality advantage of the Communist legacy. The
recession caused by the neo-liberal transition programme, and the ensuing
growth of unemployment, poverty and inequality, was both a class and a gen-
dered process in which the most vulnerable, including women and children, suf-
fered. But the `command-equality' of the past has left little nostalgia, and
women's responses to their changed world have been contradictory and varied.
Equality of opportunity to live like a man was part of the old agenda, and the
new one replacing it is not popular. Gender mainstreaming, interpreted as a
change in paradigm, may hold some promise.
Institutionally, there have been both advances and barriers to EO. But in
drawing together the threads of social and economic change, ideologies of gen-
der relations and institutional and legal developments, the prospects for change
now need contextualizing in a wider political economy. So far, changes in polit-
ical parties in CEE have made little difference to the neo-liberal policies of
reducing state spending, privatization and deregulation. This must be set
against evidence that progress on EO in western Europe has been poorest in
countries following free-market tenets. The UK, the leading proponent of a
European flexible labour force, has one of the worst gender pay-gaps in the EU,
30 years after passing its Equal Pay Act in 1970.18
The limitations of volun-
tarism as an EO strategy are also poignantly illustrated by an ILO attempt to
conduct an internet company survey of EO policies in 2000­2001, to provide a
database for its Gender Promotion Programme. Out of 5000 companies con-
tacted and followed up with phone-calls, emails and faxes, only 100 completed
the brief questionnaire ­ a two percent response rate, providing too little data
for analysis (personal communication with ILO, 2001). Advances in gender
mainstreaming have been greatest among countries with social democratic tra-
ditions, such as Sweden, Denmark and Finland, and where EO has been pro-
moted by active state intervention, public spending and involvement of trade
350 Work, employment and society Volume 17 s Number 2 s June 2003
033316 Pollert 20/5/2003 10:58 am Page 350

unions and collective bargaining (European Foundation, 1996; Lemire and
Silvera, 1999: 515). In CEE, however, social democracy, trade unions and the
wider labour movement are weak (Crowley and Ost, 2001; Pollert, 1999).
It is thus in the broader political-economic context that the likely effective-
ness of new EO policies needs to be assessed. Whilst CEE countries are tied to
free-market policies, commitment to EO, however genuine, and whatever the
arguments for the `business case for EO' in capitalist transition, will be hemmed
in by lack of public funding and a neo-liberal trajectory now also part of the
EU integration programme. Not all the responsibility for success, therefore, lies
within CEE. Unless the European Commission is serious in the substantive con-
tent of the social aspects of the acquis communautaire, including those of gen-
der equality, with EO gaining prominence within enlargement policy, then there
is little to force genuine integration and levelling-up of practice. EO policies
could remain paper declarations to satisfy enlargement criteria and the oppor-
tunity to rebuild CEE's gender equality would be lost. More widely, unless
social democracy gains ascendancy within the EU, then the future of EO main-
streaming is endangered in both the `old' and the `new' Europe.
Notes
1 The National Action Plans for employment were first devised at the European
Summit on Employment in Luxembourg, 1997, and gender mainstreaming was
integrated following critiques of the latter in 1999 (Lemire and Silvera, 1999:
504).
2 In 1950, women comprised between 20 and 35 percent of the labour force in
OECD countries such as Canada, France, Germany, Sweden, the US and the
UK. In 1982, this had risen to between 33 and 46 percent (Jenson et al., 1988:
18).
3 The HDI was created in 1990, to give a measure of the well-being of the nation
beyond GDP, and included social welfare. It uses life expectancy at birth (rep-
resenting a long and healthy life); a composite indicator for educational attain-
ment (the adult literacy rate and educational enrolment) representing
knowledge; and real per capita income (based on GDP and more recently, US$
purchasing power parity), representing standard of living. In the UNDP 1991,
separate HDIs were calculated for men and women based on life expectancy,
adult literacy, wage rates, employment levels and mean years of schooling and
an overall gender-sensitive HDI was developed for 30 countries. The GDI was
introduced for all countries in 1995. The greater the inequality, the lower the
GDI value. Another measure representing gender equality in the area of politi-
cal power is the Gender Empowerment Measure (UNDP, 1995).
4 However, using these figures longitudinally is problematic, as the data used to
formulate the index for any one year refers to different previous years. Thus,
HDI ranking in the 1991 UN Human Development Report uses 1990 data,
while in the 1995 report, it is for 1992. The GDI values and rankings for 1995,
the first year gender disaggregated data was provided on a regular basis, are
based on data from 1990 and 1992, while the GDI for 1998 is based on figures
351Women in post-Communist transition Pollert
033316 Pollert 20/5/2003 10:58 am Page 351

from 1995. Other problems, which are discussed in the reports themselves, are
associated with changes in methodology. In 1998, the difference between men
and women's income was presented as `share of earned income, %', whereas in
2000 it was presented as `GDP per capita, in purchasing price $'. Further dis-
cussion in UNDP, 2001: 245).
5 Previous (Communist period) maternity entitlements (generous by international
standards) have remained, and extended childcare or parental leave until the
child is two or three years old and guaranteed re-employment (in formal terms)
have been provided.
6 The growth of inequality is nowhere as severe in CEE as in Russia. For details
of the complexities of defining and measuring changes in earnings and income
distribution see Milanovic (1998), Flemming and Micklewright (1999),
UN/ECE (2000: 128). There is a difference between employees' earnings and
household income (the latter will be sensitive to household composition corre-
lated with job loss and to self employment and subsistence activities). This dif-
ference is illustrated by the fact that earnings inequality grew fastest between
1989 and 1997 in Hungary, followed by Poland, and in the Czech Republic, it
widened in 1993­95, then narrowed again in 1996­97. Slovakia showed no
change (Flemming and Micklewright, 1999: 56). However, household income
inequality (dispersion of individuals' per capita income) grew most in Poland
and the Czech Republic (although this was less than for employees' earnings),
while Hungary registered only a modest rise in dispersion. Few explanations
are offered other than changes in tax transfers.
7 Research is based on Milanovic (1998) and bases absolute poverty at $4 (at
1990 international prices), per capita per day.
8 In 1997, the Czech Republic spent only 0.8 percent of GDP on family
allowance, half of what it had spent before 1989. Across CEE the value of
child-benefit in relation to average wages has declined ­ in Hungary to less than
half its 1990 value by 1997 (UNICEF, 1999: 50).
9 Paradoxically, this occurs in spite of the official retirement age being raised, e.g.
in Hungary, for women, from 54 to 55 in 1997 (Frey, 1998: 1).
10 The ISCO-88 provides information on vertical segregation ­ ranging from
Group 1 (legislators, senior officials and managers), to Group 9 (elementary
occupations), as well as gender distribution across different sectors and occu-
pations, and gender composition of occupational groups.
11 EU figures may over-estimate the wage gap, because they excluded the public
sector where pay equity may be higher (Grimshaw and Rubery, 2001: 15). CEE
data include the public sector.
12 Own calculations from `Labour Force and its Structure by Education, Age
Group and Region', Statistical Year Book of the Czech Republic, 1995, 1997,
1998.
13 EU positive action has largely been confined to training (Rees, 1998: 29­40), but
social democratic parties in the 1980s and 1990s in Norway, Denmark and
Sweden introduced quotas to ensure that both sexes had at least 40 percent rep-
resentation at elections (IDEA, n.d.: 4). In 1993, the British Labour Party intro-
duced women-only short-lists for candidates in certain `safe' constituencies, and
although it was forced to abandon this in 1996 because it allegedly contravened
the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act, in 2000 it was again considering a legal change
to permit positive action of this type (The Guardian, 8 March 2000).
352 Work, employment and society Volume 17 s Number 2 s June 2003
033316 Pollert 20/5/2003 10:58 am Page 352

14 An example is `Polish Women in the 90s', covering women in education, work,
politics and government mechanisms for the advancement of women
(http/free.ngo.l/temida/power.htm).
15 For example, ILO Equal Remuneration Convention (No. 100) and
Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention (No.111), the UN
Human Rights Convention and the 1979 UN Convention on the Elimination
of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
16 For example, the Czech Republic's constitutional order, the Charter of
Fundamental Rights and Freedoms of 1993, regulates basic legal provisions safe-
guarding human rights. Gender equity is contained in Article 1, which provides
that all people are free and equal in their dignity and in their rights, and Article
3(1), which provides that fundamental human rights and freedoms are guaran-
teed to everybody irrespective of sex, social origin, or other status (ILO, 2001).
17 In Hungary, employers' unwillingness to employ women because of their
responsibilities towards them in the case of pregnancy and parental leave, was
challenged with `positive action' in a 1997 Act, which required pregnant
women and mothers of a young child to be given preference in hiring (all other
conditions being equal). However this was sabotaged by employers while the
authorities turned a blind eye, or was overcome by issuing only short-term con-
tracts.
18 The UK ranked 12th out of the 15 countries surveyed, with full-time women
workers earning 74 percent of the male average (average for the EU was 75 per-
cent), but when part-time workers were included in the calculation, the gender
pay ratio dropped to 66.4 percent compared to the EU average of 72.7 percent
(Grimshaw and Rubery, 2001: 15­17).
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Anna Pollert
Anna Pollert is Professor of Employment Relations at the University of Greenwich.
She works on labour relations, gender issues and post-Communist transformation, and
recently published Transformation at Work in the New Market Economies of Central
Eastern Europe (Sage 1999).
Address: University of Greenwich Business School, Old Royal Naval College, Queen
Anne Court, Park Row, Greenwich, London SE10 9LS, UK.
Email: a.pollert@gre.ac.uk
Date accepted 11 October 2002
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