CHRISTY GLASS AND E´ VA FODOR
From Public to Private
Maternalism? Gender and
Welfare in Poland and
Hungary after 1989
Abstract
This paper compares the political processes and gendered
outcomes of welfare state formation in Hungary and Poland. We
find both differences and similarities in the extent to which family
and maternity policies in the two countries encourage women’s
paid work, support women’s care giving work in the home, guard
women and their families against poverty, and differentiate among
women based on ethnic/racial classifications and class status. We
argue that while welfare states in Western Europe may be increasingly
characterized by a retreat from maternalist policies,
Hungarian and Polish welfare policies support distinct forms of
maternalism. While maternalism is privatized in Poland, it is publicly
supported and subsidized in Hungary. We attempt to explain
the divergence between the two countries by pointing to differences
in class-based and gender-based political mobilization
around family benefits as well as the timing of welfare reforms.
Despite differences in the substance of the policies, however, we
find that both regimes limit women’s labor market opportunities.
Fall 2007 Pages 323–350 doi:10.1093/sp/jxm013
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Introduction
What types of welfare regimes are emerging in former
state-socialist countries? This analysis compares the processes of
welfare state formation in Hungary and Poland. A great deal of
scholarship has demonstrated the ways welfare policies differentially
advantage or disadvantage social groups according to employment
or family status, race, ethnicity, and gender, among other social
markers (Bane and Ellwood 1994; Esping-Anderson 1990, 1999;
Korpi 2001; Mink 1994; Yuval-Davis 1997). Recent comparative
welfare state scholarship has addressed the ways in which gender
differences in particular are constructed and reproduced by welfare
institutions (Casper, McLanahan, and Garfinkel 1994; Lewis 1993;
O’Connor, Orloff and Shaver 1999; Orloff 1996; 1999, Sainsbury
1994; Sorensen 1999). Researchers have also examined the historical
origins of gendered welfare state regimes, tracing policies back to
their inception (Abramovitz 1996; Gordon 1994; Koven and Michel
1993; Ladd-Taylor 1994; Orloff 1993; Pederson 1993; Ruggie
1984; Sainsbury 1996; Skocpol 1992).
Most comparative research on gender and welfare to date has
focused on advanced capitalist democracies (Lewis 2003). When
scholarship does address post-socialist welfare provisions, most
studies treat Central and Eastern European and post-Soviet countries
as a homogeneous bloc, assuming that transitional processes have
occurred or are occurring similarly and simultaneously in all
countries in the region (Blossfeld and Mills 2003; Esping-Anderson
1996; Offe 1993).
This analysis contributes to a growing literature contrasting
gendered welfare state formation during the transition from state
socialism to capitalism in this region (Deacon 1992a and 1992b;
Deacon and Szalai 1990; Einhorn 1993; Gal and Kligman 2000a
and 2000b; Haney 2002; Jaquette and Wolchik 1998; Neme´nyi
2003). We agree with Esping-Anderson assessment that post-socialist
societies in Central and Eastern European comprise a “laboratory of
experimentation” (1996, p. 267) in which new models of welfare
provision may emerge. Work in this region promises to challenge
existing theoretical assumptions by uncovering empirical realities
that may or may not follow the historical trajectories of welfare
states in developed capitalist societies.
We compare family policy formation in Hungary and Poland. In
particular, we examine the ways in which emergent family, maternity
and childcare policies are restructuring gender relations during
the post-socialist period. Since 1989, policymakers in both countries
have faced significant pressures to implement drastic reductions
324 V Glass and Fodor
in state spending and to meet growing demands from citizens to
strengthen the social safety net. Despite similar pressures and constraints,
however, the emerging welfare provisions in Hungary and
Poland vary a great deal in terms of generosity, eligibility criteria,
and the targeting of benefits. While Hungary has pursued a form of
“public maternalism” where benefits are provided to families
through the state, Poland has pursued a form of “private maternalism”
in which the market and the family have become the primary
institutions of welfare provision. In spite of these differences, both
types of maternalism have had similar negative consequences for
women’s labor force participation.
We begin our analysis by explaining the historical divergence
between these two policy regimes, and describing the resultant
family policy arrangements. Family policies refer to those policies
directed at families to assist with and subsidize the costs of caring
for children, including family benefits, maternity leave, maternity
benefits, parental leave, state provided or subsidized childcare, and
tax credits for children. We then analyze the impacts of these policies
on women’s economic citizenship.
Theoretical Determinants of Policy Formation
According to the “power resource model” of welfare state
formation, working class mobilization played a key role in shaping
welfare policies in Western capitalist democracies (Korpi 1989;
Esping-Anderson 1990). A strong, centralized working class is often
correlated with egalitarian and universal welfare policies, such as
those found in Scandinavia. In contrast, countries with weak and
decentralized unions often developed residual welfare policies, such
as those found in the United States.
Countries with centralized yet conservative labor unions represent
an exception to this pattern. In such countries, working class mobilization
often leads to conservative policy arrangements that privilege
a male breadwinner and offer few supports for women’s paid labor.
For instance, Esping-Anderson argues that Catholicism often
reinforces highly familialistic welfare regimes in which state sponsored
family benefits are underdeveloped and where the majority of
welfare responsibilities are privatized within the family (1999,
p. 45). In such cases, benefits neither replace nor supplement unpaid
work by (mostly female) family members. The state provides little if
any support for maternity leave, childcare, or other types of family
provision. Thus, in addition to looking at the overall political
strength of the working class and/or working class representatives,
scholars of welfare policy formation must also analyze the gendered
Gender and Welfare in Poland and Hungary V 325
content of trade unions’ political goals as well as the gendered
consequences of trade unions’ political alliances.
Feminist scholars of the welfare state have critiqued the power
resources model for its lack of focus on gender relations. Through
comparative analyses of welfare policy regimes, these scholars have
analyzed the links between policies and gender inequalities by examining
men’s and women’s relationships to paid and unpaid work
(O’Connor, Orloff, and Shaver 1999; Orloff 1993; Sainsbury 1994).
This literature suggests that policy arrangements strongly influence a
wide range of gender-specific outcomes, including the gender
poverty gap (Casper, McLanahan, and Garfinkel 1994; Christopher
et al. 2000; Christopher 2002; Kenworthy 1999), labor force participation
rates (Browne 1997; Charles 1992; Quadagno 1990), and
family structure (Orloff 1993).
Historical scholarship in this field has uncovered the ways in
which women’s agency has shaped both the substance and the form
of welfare policies (Bock and Thane 1991; Koven and Michel 1993;
Misra 1998; Skocpol 1992). This literature suggests that women’s
political mobilization—in the form of protests, political campaigns,
and/or electoral behavior—has not necessarily promoted policies
that encourage women’s paid work (Lewis 1993; Misra 1998;
Pedersen 1993). Further historical evidence suggests that policies
resulting from women’s political mobilization have not necessarily
benefited all women or all women equally. Resulting policies often
reflect the class and ethnic/racial biases of women reformers
(Gordon 1994; Mink 1995; Skocpol 1992). Thus, to understand the
gendered consequences of welfare arrangements, scholars must look
at the ways in which women activists frame policy debates, as well
as the ethnic/racial and class characteristics of the activists
themselves.
More recent scholarship has uncovered the mechanisms by which
political mobilization around family policies has shaped the ways in
which gender roles are conceptualized and institutionalized through
state provisions (Morgan and Zippel 2003). For instance, comparing
the emergence of family policies in Britain and France, Misra (1998)
argues that prevailing gender ideologies played a major role in
policy formulation. The degree to which policies addressed women
primarily as workers or as mothers was strongly influenced by political
agents, including women’s organizations and working class
representatives.
Building on comparative analyses of welfare state formation, our
analysis suggests another component critical for policy formation:
namely, the timing of reforms. Time as a variable is important for
policy outcomes for at least three reasons. First, political actors
326 V Glass and Fodor
often time reforms strategically to achieve political, economic, or
social goals. Those with formal power may try to impose changes
early in the reform period to avoid political opposition in the shortrun
or they may delay changes in order to evade political fallout in
the long run. Both of these tactics have been used at various points
during the transition process in Central and Eastern Europe.
The timing of reform may also determine the consequences of
policy changes. Draconian reforms implemented early in the reform
process may lead to rapid increases in poverty and inequality, while
delayed reforms may protect more vulnerable social groups over
time by giving them a window of opportunity to adjust to changing
economic and social conditions. Finally, the timing of reform may
affect the ability of social actors to mobilize from below, and may
determine the degree to which such mobilization influences policy.
Early reforms may serve as an obstacle to mobilization simply
because social actors lack critical resources with which to mobilize
rapidly. Because political opposition was outlawed under socialism,
for instance, it took social groups time to acquire political resources
and to develop social networks necessary for organized political
action. Policy changes that were implemented early in the reform
process were unlikely to face the same degree of opposition as those
that occurred later. Thus, we argue that the timing of policy changes
must be added to the analysis of welfare state formation during
periods of social change.
Political Mobilization in Hungary & Poland
Comparative scholarship suggests that the form and content of
political mobilization affects policy formulation. How might these
factors have influenced the direction of policy reform in Hungary
and Poland during the post-state socialist period? The political
power of working class representatives has been significantly stronger
in Poland than in any other country in the region. The history of
working class resistance to communist rule dates (at least) as far
back as the mid-1950s, when Polish workers protested chronic
shortages. In 1980, Solidarity, a nation-wide trade union, was established
illegally and sponsored massive collective actions by Polish
workers that nearly crippled the communist-led government. The
state responded by violently suppressing the strikes and declaring
martial law. However, Solidarity remained a source of mass, collective
identity and protest, and by the end of the 1980s, the
Communist Party was forced to negotiate with the leaders of what
was at the time an officially illegal organization. Finally, in 1989,
Poland’s socialist regime was forced to cede power to the popularly
elected, post-Solidarity coalition government (table 1).
Gender and Welfare in Poland and Hungary V 327
Since the fall of communism and despite the ascension of
Solidarity to formal political power, Poland has undergone a steady
demobilization of the working class. In fact, trade unions such as
Solidarity and the other major Polish trade union, OPZZ, have
maintained power largely through formal political means. Having
lost much of its mass oppositional support with the fall of communism,
trade unions now influence policy through political parties and
elected positions in legislative bodies. Post-Solidarity parties controlled
Parliament immediately after the fall of communism in 1989
through 1993, and returned again to power in 1997. Despite
gradual demobilization of the working class, the dominance of trade
union representatives in formal political bodies has arguably
increased the role of working class representatives in formulating
welfare policy. Importantly, the politicization of trade unions has
occurred alongside the massive displacement of women from positions
in government.1
Closely linked to Solidarity’s political influence is the social and
political role of the Catholic Church in Polish society. Pope John
Paul II and the church played a major political role before and after
1989, and there is little debate about the close relationship between
Solidarity and the Church (Deacon 1992b). Prior to 1989 both
organizations represented mass opposition to communism, and since
1989 both have cooperated in promoting a return to the traditional
family of Poland’s (re-imagined) pre-socialist era (Zielinska 2001).
The post-1989 Solidarity government was openly pro-Catholic
(Hauser 1995), and immediately introduced targeted welfare
measures that aimed to return men to their position as family breadwinner
and women to their rightful roles as wives and mothers.
Table 1. Timeline of Working Class Mobilization in Poland Under
Communism
1956 Protest over shortages
1970s Strikes and growing unrest over unmet demands for better
social protection
1980 Emergence of Solidarity and worker strikes
1981 Martial Law declared
1988 New wave of strikes force Communist Party to negotiate with
Solidarity
1989 Elections lead to Solidarity-led coalition government, headed
by Mazowiecki
1990 Solidarity leader Lech Walesa elected President
328 V Glass and Fodor
One example of the tight linkage between Solidarity and the
Church is the nearly constant presence of anti-abortion legislation
on Parliament’s agenda since 1989 (Zielinska 2000). Dating back to
the 1980s, Solidarity has supported a strong anti-abortion platform,
which is strongly endorsed by the Church. Indeed, soon after Lech
Walesa was elected President he disbanded the women’s section of
Solidarity because of their continued efforts to oppose the criminalization
of abortion. This move was hailed by Catholic leaders and
signaled the close political relationship between Walesa’s Solidarity
Government and the Catholic Church.
Far from being an advocate of universal, egalitarian welfare policies,
therefore, Solidarity has consistently sponsored conservative,
familial welfare policies. As joblessness, economic uncertainty, and
poverty have risen dramatically since 1989, Solidarity’s primary goal
has been to protect the employment of male workers, often at the
expense of women’s employment. Thus, while unemployed women
comprise a mere 5 percent of those eligible for the government’s
public works program, they comprise a majority of the unemployed
(Tarkowska 2001).
In contrast to Poland, Hungary is characterized by relatively
decentralized and politically weak trade unions, which were discredited
among workers under state socialism and have been politically
marginalized in the post-socialist era. As a result, working class
interests were not articulated during the policy debates before and
immediately following Hungary’s move towards means tested family
policies in the mid 1990s. Instead, groups of middle class women
mobilized against means tests by voicing their opposition to the
changes in the voting booth, through the courts, and on the streets.
Together with politicians from right wing oppositional parties,
many women turned to the Constitutional Court to challenge the
government’s redefinition of the state’s responsibilities toward the
needs of families.
When the government proposed restructuring the socialist-era
system of maternity and family benefits, women organized and
marched on welfare agencies in Budapest. Haney (1997) argues that
while shouting slogans such as “We Are Still Mothers!” these
women identified themselves as deserving of benefits based on their
status as mothers. The mobilization of middle class women in
1995 and 1996 was legitimated by their perceived entitlement to
“motherhood” benefits, growing out of the maternalist nature of
socialist era welfare policies.2
Unlike maternalist movements in the
formative years of Western welfare states (Gordon 1994; Skocpol
1992), however, these women did not call for policies that would
support their permanent exit from the labor force. Rather, they
Gender and Welfare in Poland and Hungary V 329
called for a return to universal eligibility for the range of family and
maternity policies, including paid maternity and long parental
leaves, that they enjoyed under socialism. The long tradition of
women’s labor force participation went unchallenged; what was
challenged were means tests, which made upper and upper middleclass
women ineligible for benefits supportive of their need to
combine paid work and caring labor.
Despite such opposition, Parliamentary debates over family policy
reform led to a temporary elimination of some parental benefits and
the introduction of means tests to restrict eligibility for other family
benefits beginning in 1996. At stake in this political struggle was the
previously universal guarantee of three years of state-supported
maternity leave for Hungarian women. By mobilizing to protect
such benefits, middle class Hungarian women were demanding that
their roles as workers not diminish their “right” to long maternity
leaves.
In the first elections following the introduction of means tests,
Hungary’s centrist-conservative party, FIDESZ, appropriated middle
class women’s agenda against liberal reforms. This was a smart and
timely political move: since 1990, women were nearly as likely to
vote in parliamentary elections as men, yet their interests were
largely unarticulated until the late 1990s. FIDESZ successfully
appealed to the female electorate; women were traditionally more
likely to vote for this party than men (Fodor 1994). In 1998,
running on a quasi-maternalist platform aimed at restoring maternity
and family benefits for all women, FIDESZ was able to successfully
garner political support from a broad spectrum of constituents,
including many middle class, urban, and professional women. After
handily defeating the Socialists, the newly elected government
restored universal eligibility for family welfare policies and these
policies have remained universally available ever since.
The timing of welfare reform also influenced the form and degree
of class-based political responses in each country. In Poland, the
post-Solidarity government that came to power in 1989 immediately
replaced universal and work-based welfare policies with limited and
targeted measures. Poland led the region in terms of the speed with
which it pursued a neoliberal reform agenda (Hauser 1995), and
this rapid reform strategy—combined with the overwhelming
strength of the Solidarity governments’ political capital in the earliest
years of transition—limited the potential for popular protest
against these changes. This limitation was in part by design. The
reforms introduced by the first democratically elected government in
Poland represented a deliberate, strategic attempt to use the post-89
euphoria to maximum political and economic advantage (Leven
330 V Glass and Fodor
1994). According to the rhetoric of the Polish shock therapy agenda,
if some had to sacrifice in the short-run, all would be well in the
long-run.
Women’s groups remained numerically small and politically
isolated during the earliest years of transition, and those few groups
that were active in the early 1990s were preoccupied by the antiabortion
law that was passed in 1993.3
As a result, many policy
changes occurred in the near absence of women’s political voice
(Leven 1994). This period also witnessed massive removal of women
from formal political office: in 1989 women comprised 20 percent
of Parliamentary deputies but by 1990 this number had fallen to 12
percent (Leven 1994). This decline paralleled the removal of women
from other positions of local and national political power—including
but not limited to the purging of the women’s section of
Solidarity described above—which further facilitated the passing of
reforms that would limit women’s economic independence.
Unlike in Poland, the first democratically elected Hungarian
government delayed reforms until the mid 1990s. The first
conservative-nationalist Hungarian government (HDF) was resistant
to cutting state spending on social welfare despite increasing pressures
from the IMF and World Bank to do so. Instead this administration
sought to increase social spending in order to avoid political
unrest (Cook, Orenstein, and Rueschemeyer 1999). This conciliatory
orientation changed by the mid-1990s with the ascension of the
Socialist Party (the Communist Party successor) to power. Between
1995 and 1996, the Socialist-dominated government introduced
means tests for family and maternity policies in accordance with the
IMF’s heavy-handed structural adjustment policy recommendations
(aka the “Bokros plan”). These policies were instituted half a decade
later in Hungary than in Poland, which increased the political vulnerability
of the reform.
Following Misra (1998), we also attempt to discern the content of
the rhetoric articulated by political actors, including working class
representatives and women activists, regarding women’s roles as
workers and mothers. Polish working class representatives, committed
to a male-breadwinner model of social policy consistent
with the Church’s conservative agenda, controlled government
during the period in which family policies were reformulated. Thus
family, child-care, and maternity benefits were heavily shaped by—
and indeed reflected—the ideology of these class-based actors.
Conservative attitudes about women’s roles in the home and family
led to the formation of policies that encouraged mothers’ exit from
the labor force and reinforced their reliance on their families for
support.
Gender and Welfare in Poland and Hungary V 331
Hungarian middle-class women who mobilized to protect universal
family benefits influenced prevailing ideology in a different manner.
Class and ethnic/racial hierarchies within Hungarian society shaped
this maternalist ideology, as did middle-class women’s reliance on
socialist-era tropes regarding the value of motherhood in Hungarian
society. In contrast to Poland, the state rather than the traditional
family was held responsible for supporting mothers and children,
and the value of women’s labor force attachment, if not direct participation,
was better preserved.
Contrary to predictions of homogeneity or convergence, policy
outcomes in post-socialist countries are contingent on national level
political and social constraints that affect the timing and character
of policy changes (see table 2 for a summary of these factors). Policy
responses reflect external pressures as well as internal dilemmas and
therefore are likely to vary widely across space and time. We now
briefly review the content of family policies during socialism and
analyze how policies have evolved since 1989.
Divergence in Policy Outcomes
Family Policies Pre-89
Socialist regimes enjoyed a near monopoly over the definition of
needs, the implementation of welfare policies, and the distribution
of state resources. This level of centralized control meant that the
state could define social needs in a way that served its evolving political
and labor supply requirements. Family policies were central
components of the state’s overall social engineering project, and
despite some cross-country variation, there were a number of similarities
in the ways in which family policies were formulated in this
region prior to 1989. For instance, family policies tended to support
national pro-natalist goals. While specifically pro-natalist policies
varied by country and over time—in some instances dramatically
(see Kligman 1998)—generous maternity leave benefits and state
subsidies for child rearing enabled the state to achieve high female
labor force participation with equally high fertility rates.
Table 2. Mechanisms of Policy Formation
Political power of
trade union reps.
Influence of
catholic church
Women’s
mobilization
Timing of
reforms
Hungary Low Low Medium 1994 1998
Poland High High Low 1990/91
332 V Glass and Fodor
Communist rhetoric identified gender equality and a strong
nuclear family as the central building blocks of socialist society.
Although both men and women were expected to work outside the
home—a radical break with gender roles in pre-war Europe—policy
makers failed to transform the sex-based division of labor within the
family. Family policies were targeted specifically at enabling women
to balance paid and unpaid labor. For instance, following the birth
of a child, women were expected to withdraw from the labor force
for a specified period and to return full time thereafter. Other
family-based provisions, such as subsidized childcare, further supported
this goal. In this way, family policies enforced a gender-based
division of labor within the family, which enabled women’s participation
in paid work while simultaneously limiting the quality of that
participation (Fodor 2003).
State subjects were unable to directly influence social policy due
to the lack of formal civil, political, or economic rights under social-
ism.4
Absent citizenship rights and in the face of a centralized state
apparatus that effectively suppressed social protest, state subjects
played a minimal role in articulating needs from below and influencing
social policy in a direct way.5
At the end of the socialist period,
these societies lacked a tradition of collective mobilization aimed at
formulating and articulating political interests. However, the introduction
of a democratic electoral process created a mechanism
through which citizens could begin to make claims on the state. The
introduction of democratic institutions also created a context in
which political mobilization could occur from below. However, it
took a period of time before the necessary resources and social networks
could be developed in these societies through which citizens
could articulate their political, economic, and social interests.
Family Policies Post-89
Our comparison of Polish and Hungarian family policies reveals
substantial differences in terms of eligibility, support for women’s
paid labor, and the degree of differentiation among women by class
status and racial/ethnic classification. However, despite significant
cross-country differences in the design of family policies, both serve
to constrain women’s economic citizenship. By “class status” we
refer to systematic differences in access to and control over resources
(Acker 2006). To the extent that policies distinguish among women
based on their class position in terms of eligibility or generosity of
benefits, we argue that such policies risk reinforcing class-based hierarchies.
By “ethnicity” we refer to cultural distinctions among populations
based on social differences. In the post- socialist context, the
primary ethnic group is the Roma minority. However, we include
Gender and Welfare in Poland and Hungary V 333
the term “racial classifications” to refer to the process of racialization
of the Roma that is currently taking place throughout the region.
Racialization occurs when distinctions based on social differences
(i.e., ethnicity) are increasingly constructed by the ethnic majority as
biologically-based (Emigh, Fodor, and Szelenyi 2001; Smedley 1993;
Williams 1989). To the extent that racial/ethnic classifications
become institutionalized in terms of distribution of and eligibility
for social benefits, we argue that such policies risk reproducing
racialized ideas about the ethnic minority (Abramovitz 1996; Amott
1990; Quadagno 1994), in this case the Hungarian Roma.6
Eligibility
Even before 1989 there existed differences in terms of the bases of
entitlement to parental and family benefits in Hungary and Poland,
although these differences were mostly technical in nature. In Poland
women could claim maternity benefits on the basis of employment.
Since practically all women were employed, however, this criterion
was no different from the situation in Hungary after 1985, when
maternity benefits became universally available. As noted above, the
term “entitlement” is somewhat ill fitted to describe the paternalist
welfare provisions under socialism. However, by the mid 1990s,
people came to understand their rights (or lack thereof) as citizens
of an increasingly economizing state apparatus. During this period,
important differences in the basis of eligibility for family benefits
emerged in the two countries.
Following a brief period of means-testing, Hungary reinstated
universal entitlements for parental leaves and family allowances.7
Universal benefits tend to be advantageous for recipients because
they are less stigmatized and politically vulnerable and allow individuals
to claim benefits independent of family relations or employment.
Thus, coverage for both family leave and allowances is
significantly higher in Hungary than in Poland. However, despite
universal eligibility, the value of these benefits has declined significantly
since 1989. The value of family allowances declined over the
course of the 1990s from 40 percent to approximately 20 percent of
the net average income. In 2000, parental leave benefits were about
80 percent of the minimum wage or about 30 percent of net average
earnings (Lukacs and Frey 2003). Thus, while all women are entitled
to long parental leaves, the financial costs of doing so are steep and
rising.
In Poland, neither benefit may be claimed on the basis of universal
rights, both are means tested, and parental leaves/allowances can
only be claimed by women who have spent at least a year in the
labor force. Because means tested benefits have a greater potential
334 V Glass and Fodor
for stigmatizing recipients and because parental leave is used nearly
exclusively by women, eligibility restrictions threaten the social and
political status of mothers. Indeed, women are increasingly dependent
on families (and/or on the labor market) for income maintenance
in Poland; the state intervenes only in cases of family and
market failure (see table 3 for a breakdown of eligibility differences
in Hungary and Poland).
Recent survey data provide some evidence of the consequences
of the divergence between Hungary and Poland in terms of eligibility
criteria. While the percent of Hungarians and Poles who
report eligibility for poverty assistance, old age and disability
benefits, and unemployment benefits is comparable, only 6 percent
of Polish respondents report they are eligible for childcare and
maternity leave benefits, compared to 30 percent of Hungarian
respondents (see table 4). This disparity is striking given that 20
percent of households in both countries include a child under age
six. In Hungary, the percentage of households receiving maternity
and childcare benefits is actually greater than the percentage of
households with young children due to the availability of (1) a
third type of maternity leave, GYET, available to women with
three or more children and (2) extended leaves for single mothers
and parents with sick or disabled children. Thus while the majority
of Polish families with young children receive no benefits whatsoever,
a certain proportion of Hungarian families with older children
as well as a larger proportion of families with young children
receive benefits (see table 5).
Table 3. Basis of Entitlement
Hungary Poland
Family benefits Universal Means tested
Parent benefits Universal Means tested
Coverage High Low
Parental leave Universal Means-tested and
insurance-based
Expected
consequences
Inclusive and thus
minimally stigmatizing
to recipients. Level of
benefits limits effective
balance between paid
and unpaid labor.
Highly restrictive and
potentially stigmatizing
eligibility requirements.
Encourages dependence
on unpaid family
members.
Gender and Welfare in Poland and Hungary V 335
Support for Paid Work
State policies, particularly those that directly address child
rearing, strongly influence women’s ability to combine work and
family obligations. Parental leave policies therefore regulate women’s
relationship to the labor market, sometimes encouraging mothers to
withdraw from the labor force, and sometimes allowing a balance
between work and family obligations.
Hungary, unlike Poland, allows women on maternity leave to
work part time after their child’s first birthday. At least in theory,
this permits women to retain some of their ties with the labor force
and facilitate a potential return. Both countries allow time spent on
maternity leave to count as paid work toward pensions. However,
while this benefit is available to all mothers in Hungary, only a fraction
of Polish women can take advantage of the same regulation
because this benefit is both means tested and insurance-based.
Table 5. Percent of Households with Children in 2000
Any child At least one child
age six or younger
Hungary 42 20
Poland 48 20
Source: Poverty, Ethnicity and Gender during Market Transition Surveys, 2000.
Authors’ calculations.
Table 4. Eligibility and Receipt of State Transfers in 2000a
Hungary Poland
% Eligible % Received % Eligible % Received
Childcare/Mat’y Leave 30 30 6 5
Poverty Assistance 4 3 3 3
Old Age/Disability 32 30 35 34
Unemployment 10 9 10 10
N 474 451 404 384
% of population 76 72 53 52
Source: Poverty, Ethnicity, and Gender during Market Transition Surveys, 2000.
Authors’ calculations.
a
Eligibility is the percent of respondents who report they are eligible to receive each
benefit. Received is the percent of respondents who report that they actually received
each benefit for which they are eligible.
336 V Glass and Fodor
Middle-class Polish women who are ineligible for paid maternity
leave must rely financially on their husbands or other family
members while out of the labor force to rear children.
Affordable childcare represents another benefit critical for
women’s labor force participation. While precise numbers on state
spending on childcare facilities are unavailable, cross-country differences
in the number of children in nursery school (for 0–3 year
olds) and kindergarten (3–6 year olds) are instructive. Neither state
provides public care for children under age three: only 2 percent of
Polish children and 10 percent of Hungarian children under age
three are enrolled in nursery school. However, wide variation
appears when we consider state-funded day care for children aged
3–6 years. In Hungary, the vast majority of such children—over 85
percent—are in public kindergartens (a slight percentage increase
from 1990). While some private day care centers exist, fewer than
10 percent of Hungarian children are enrolled in private facilities.
The majority is enrolled in state-run, state-subsidized kindergartens.
In Poland, only 33 percent of children are cared for in public kindergartens.
Polish women must make their own arrangements within
the family or on the market; however, the costs of private childcare
are prohibitive for most Polish women. Following the reforms of
1989–90, which drastically reduced state subsidies for childcare, the
average monthly costs of private childcare quadrupled, equaling over
80 percent of women’s average monthly wages (Leven 1994). Thus,
while the state provides only minimal childcare for Polish women,
the market remains an impractical alternative.
In sum, state policies in Hungary and Poland encourage and
enable women’s labor force participation to different degrees.
Neither country provides support for those who care for children
under the age of three. In Hungary, women are allowed up to three
years of parental leave following the birth of a child, while in
Poland working women must drop out of the labor force to care for
their children or depend on non-working or retired relatives. Thus,
few women in either country are able to return to work a few
months after childbirth, should they need or want to. In Hungary,
state supports are provided to all mothers who wish to stay at home
and rear their children. However, given the declining value of the
benefits, women who accept this option potentially assume significant
economic risk.
In theory, Hungarian women are also permitted a slow reintegration
into paid work towards the end of their leave, although in practice
this option is unrealistic for most women (Fodor and Glass 2007).
While women are guaranteed job security during maternity leave,
interviews with Hungarian employers suggests that few women are
Gender and Welfare in Poland and Hungary V 337
rehired by their former employers.8
Thus, while long paid leaves
enable women to care for children in the short run, these benefits
hurt women’s employment chances in the long run.
In Poland, sixteen weeks of birthing leave is obligatory; Article
180 of the Polish Labor Code stipulates that employers may face
sanctions if female employees continue to work during this period.9
However, following this period, most women must return to work
or quit their jobs, depending on their ability to pay for private childcare
or to rely on non-working relatives. The proportion of children
in state daycare is extremely low, as is the proportion of women eligible
for maternity leave. Overall, therefore, maternity and childcare
policies in Poland encourage women to drop out of the labor force
following childbirth and to remain out until their children reach
school age. These policies place women in highly dependent positions;
they must rely on their spouses or other family members for
their well being while rearing children (see table 6).
Class and Ethnic/Racial Hierarchies
State policies often create distinctions not only between men and
women, but also among women based on class, ethnic and/or
Table 6. Support for Paid Work
Hungary Poland
Eligibility for parental
leave
All workers Poor workers
Leave allows part-time
work?
Yesa
No
Leave counts as paid
work toward
pensions?
Yesb
Yes
% Children in
kindergartenc
85% 33%
Consequences In theory enables
balance between
paid/unpaid work
Minimal support for
balance between
paid/unpaid work
a
After child’s first birthday.
b
All women are eligible in Hungary, whereas only a small fraction is eligible in
Poland.
c
Children under age three in both countries are cared for at home. While all
Hungarian working women can rely on guaranteed maternity leave, non-insured,
non-poor Polish women must drop out or rely on family members to care for
children until age three.
338 V Glass and Fodor
racial distinctions (Mink 1994, 1995; Quadagno 1990, 1994). The
emerging social policy regime in Hungary, while more inclusive
and generous than Poland, is more extreme in its efforts to track
women into different tiers of eligibility and to distribute benefits
accordingly.
Family benefits are given as a lump sum to all families in both
countries, although in some instances distinctions are made according
to family size. For instance, family benefits in both countries
increase up to the third child and remain constant thereafter. Such
distinctions exacerbate class differences in both countries and bear
distinctly racialized undertones in Hungary where the Roma minority
is disproportionately likely to fall in the large family category.
In her recent work on Hungarian welfare practices, Szalai found
that policies are inscribed with “covertly racialized rules” that distinguish
among “deserving” and “undeserving” recipients in the eligibility
screening process, often disqualifying large Roma families.
Not only are large Roma families less likely to pass the pre-screening
process but Roma families that do receive benefits receive smaller
amounts of aid (Szalai 2005).
As the real value of family benefits has declined, they have been
gradually replaced with another type of child rearing benefit in
Hungary: child tax credits. However, tax credits are available only
for those who earn enough to claim them—particularly middle class
families with sufficiently high taxable incomes. Thus, only 42
percent of Hungarian families are unable to take full advantage of
what is essentially a middle class (and non-Roma) form of family
support (Mo´zer 2001).
In addition to child and family benefits, distinctions are also
made in the availability of maternity leave benefits. Both countries
provide a more generous insurance-based payment immediately following
the birth of a child (100 percent of pay in Poland and 70
percent of pay in Hungary). After birth maternity benefits become
single-tracked in Poland and multi-tracked in Hungary. In Poland
the primary distinctions are made between women eligible for
maternity leave and those who are not; those who are ineligible are
left out of the system altogether. In 1999, however, Hungary instituted
a three-tier system of maternity benefits. The first is a two-year
insurance based benefit for employed women. The second tracks are
both universal tracks: one is a three-year leave available to all
women and the second is a special track for career housewives,
defined as mothers with three or more children with at least one
under the age of eight.
The first insurance-based track is linked to past income and provides
wage replacement at a rate of 70 percent. This benefit replaces
Gender and Welfare in Poland and Hungary V 339
wages more generously than the other two benefits, both of which
equal the sum of the minimum pension. Middle-class, non-Roma
women are better able to take advantage of this benefit, while poor
women and minority women receive a less generous—albeit universally
available—provision. In Hungary, as compared to Poland,
family policies reinforce class and ethnic/racial distinctions among
women regarding the types and generosity of benefits women may
receive (see table 7).
Empirical Consequences of Policy Formations
At the end of the state socialist period, female employment rates
in Hungary and Poland were among the highest in the world.
Following the birth of a child, women would drop out of the labor
force for up to three years and return to their previous jobs. How
have policy changes affected women’s employment opportunities?
In Poland, policy changes have increased women’s dependence
within the family; women must depend either on wage-earning husbands
or non-working (usually female) family members to care for
children. The decline of public childcare in 1989 contributed to a
new private, familial system of care, what Siemienska calls “an intergenerational
resource flow,” in which non-working parents and
grandparents care for children (2002, p. 193). Simienska (2002)
found that over the course of the decade from 1985 to 1995, the
proportion of women who rely on family help (particularly grandmothers)
has increased from 10 percent to nearly 60 percent.
Furthermore, the proportion of women who leave work without
benefits has tripled, from 5 percent to 15 percent. Most new
mothers have two choices: return to work immediately following
Table 7. Are Class and Ethnic/Racial Differentiation Inscribed in Policy?
Hungary Poland
Tax credits for children? Yes No
Multiple tiers of leave Three-tier systema
Single-tier system
Multiple tiers of benefits Three-tier system Single-tier system
Distinctions among
recipients
Class and
ethnicity
Class and employment
status
a
First tier is a two-year, insurance-based benefit tied to previous earnings. Thus this
benefit serves a wage-replacing function for workingwomen. Unlike the first tier, the
second and third tiers are universal. There is a three-year benefit guaranteed for all
women and third tier benefit for “career housewives”—those women with three or
more children under the age of eight. Both universal tiers provide benefits equal to
the sum of the minimum pension.
340 V Glass and Fodor
their sixteen-week maternity leave and rely on family members to
care for young children or, if no family members are available, drop
out of the labor force to care for their children themselves. Given
already low wages and high job insecurity, even low-wage workers
who are eligible for childcare leaves often cannot risk taking long
leaves for fear of losing their jobs.
In Hungary, the major consequence of policy reform has been a
reinforcement of women’s dependence on the state. All working
women in Hungary are eligible for three years of paid maternity
leave and most women continue to take long leaves. There is almost
no day care provision for children under three, thus women who
desire shorter leaves have limited options for childcare. In theory,
the state guarantees job security for mothers. However in practice,
the state does little to enforce this law and women are often terminated
upon their return from leave. While both men and women are
eligible for leave, in practice men rarely leave work to care for children.
Thus, by granting women long leaves, family policies reinforce
women’s roles as caretakers and mothers and potentially undermine
their opportunities in the labor market. These policies also increase
the likelihood that women will be limited in their employment
choices. They may be pushed into “feminized” jobs or sectors where
turnover is less costly for employers (e.g., low paid service jobs) or
they may be slotted into “mommy tracks” within more lucrative,
professional jobs, thus limiting their wage earning capacity and promotion
potential. Finally, by not enforcing women’s right to return
to their jobs, state policies support women’s employment in theory
only. In practice, long, underpaid, universal childcare leaves undermine
women’s ability to sustain paid employment and to achieve
full economic independence.
How are these differences reflected in female employment rates in
Poland and Hungary? Between 1989 and 1993, women’s employment
rates dropped much more sharply in Poland than in Hungary.
Job loss was particularly severe for Polish women with children age
six or younger; only 64 percent of women with young children continued
to work, compared to about 83 percent of women with
young children in Hungary. Furthermore, while only about 12
percent of Hungarian women were either unemployed or keeping
house in 1993, nearly 30 percent of Polish women were out of a
job. The sharp differences that emerged between Hungary and
Poland by 1993 are indicative of the speed and timing of reform in
Poland. Whereas Poland instituted major cutbacks in supports for
women and families in 1989 and 1990, Hungary delayed such
reforms until the mid to late 1990s. By 2000, employment rates in
Hungary and Poland once again converged and the employment
Gender and Welfare in Poland and Hungary V 341
rates of women with young children continued to drop significantly
in both countries. The difference remains, however: in Hungary 41
percent of women with young children are in paid employment
while in Poland the figure is 34 percent. The fact that women with
young children were hardest hit by changes in welfare policies
suggests that while the structure of welfare benefits varies a great
deal in the two countries, both nascent regimes hurt women’s ability
to sustain paid work and achieve financial independence.
Discussion and Conclusion
How do emerging gender welfare regimes in Hungary and Poland
compare with trends in welfare policy formation in Western Europe?
Several scholars have observed trends in the European Union, which
increasingly support women and men’s full employment outside the
home. Orloff (2006) argues that welfare regimes in Western Europe
and North America are increasingly moving away from social supports
for women’s full-time care giving toward requiring paid employment
for all—a trend she describes as “a farewell to maternalism”
throughout the advanced capitalist world. Indeed, public supports
for women’s full-time childcare responsibilities have all but disappeared
in Scandinavian countries and all European Union countries
are facing growing pressure to support women’s entrance into paid
employment (Orloff 2006).
In sharp contrast, our analysis suggests that emerging policy
regimes in Hungary and Poland show marked continuity with socialist
era maternalism, which supported women’s extended retreat from
paid work following childbirth. However, the content and form of
maternalist policy formation vary between these countries. Hungary
developed a form of “public maternalism” where the state in principle
continues to provide support for children in the form of parental
paid leaves and public childcare for children over age three. In
contrast, Poland has pursued a distinctly “private maternalism,”
characterized by declining public supports and increasing privatization
of care work in the family. Hungarian mothers as well as grandmothers
are paid by the state to care for children full-time in the
home, whereas the privatization of welfare in Poland—including the
disappearance of public childcare since the early 1990s—has forced
most mothers to either depend on wage-earning husbands, to purchase
child care on the market (although the prices are prohibitively
high for many), or to depend on unpaid, retired grandmothers to
provide care (table 8).
According to Morgan and Zippel (2003), long maternity leaves in
Western Europe were shaped by a combination of conservative social
342 V Glass and Fodor
policies promoted by reforming governments, high unemployment
rates that supported women’s retreat from paid work, and resulting
political and social tensions around family policies and women’s
roles. Similarly, both public and private forms of maternalism
described above were shaped by the social conservatism of the political
elites in power at the time policy changes were implemented. In
Hungary, the strength of political support for maternalism among
middle class women reinforced the trend towards protecting public
supports for mothers. In Poland, very little political mobilization
among women took place around these issues. Instead, the leaders
of the Solidarity government with the strong support of the Catholic
Church pursued social policies that both reinforced pre-socialist
gender norms and protected men’s employment during periods of
rapid job loss. This government also instituted rapid reductions in
state spending, which further justified cutbacks in social supports for
women’s work and caretaking.
Our characterization of Hungary as a public and Poland as a
private maternalist regime aligns somewhat with Mahon’s characterization
of new familialism in European countries such as France and
Finland (Mahon 2002). According to Mahon (2002), these childcare
regimes were shaped by conservative ideologies regarding gender
roles that support long parental leaves for women and subsidies for
stay-at-home mothers. Whereas Mahon’s description of the new
familialism corresponds to the pattern of welfare provision in
Hungary, it does not describe the private maternalism we discovered
in Poland. Instead, this form of private maternalism is more similar
to the male breadwinner model of social welfare found in Germany
or Austria through the 1980s. However, what distinguishes Poland
Table 8. Family policy regimes in Hungary and Poland
Hungary Poland
Public maternalism
Universal public support for women
to care for young children at home.
Leave encourages/requires long
parental leaves for all women.
Long leaves create obstacles for
women’s labor market participation,
despite job protection.
Women as mothers claim benefits as
universal entitlements.
Private maternalism
Non-generous benefits and
highly-restricted eligibility.
Little or no public support for
balancing work and family.
Family provides welfare rather than
the state or market.
Dependence on nuclear family
encouraged for mothers of young
children; paid work discouraged.
Gender and Welfare in Poland and Hungary V 343
from these earlier models is that male incomes are largely insufficient
to support families. Thus, the lack of state supports for caregiving
responsibilities, declining public and political support for women’s
paid employment, and men’s relatively low wages create a far
greater degree of vulnerability for Polish as compared to German or
Austrian families.
Despite wide variations, both types of maternalist regimes impede
women’s participation in paid work and limit their occupational and
professional mobility. Both the lack of paid leave and public childcare
in Poland and the extended leaves in Hungary reduce mothers’ overall
labor force participation rate, create barriers for women’s reentry into
the highly competitive labor market, and push women into lowerpaying
sectors of the economy. As long parental leaves have done in
Western Europe (Morgan and Zippel 2003), both private and public
maternalist policies reinforce the gender division of labor in the
family and increase women’s dependence on wage-earning husbands.
During a period of high job insecurity, declining real wages, and cutbacks
in social spending, women’s paid employment remains vulnerable
and tenuous. As women’s incomes have become increasingly
vital to the economic stability of families, social policies have moved
away from securing and protecting women’s paid employment.
NOTES
Christy Glass is an assistant professor of sociology at Utah State
University. Her research and teaching interests include comparative social
change, work and labor markets, welfare state institutions and gender. Her
current research compares intra-firm processes, employer preferences and
work-based outcomes during the transition to capitalism in formerly state
socialist societies in Central and Eastern Europe.
E´ va Fodor has a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Los
Angeles, and is now associate professor of Gender Studies at the Central
European University in Budapest, Hungary. She is interested in exploring
how the meaning, ideology, practice, and social consequences of women’s
work change under shifting social conditions. Her first book, Working
Difference: Women’s Working Lives in Hungary and Austria, 1945–1995
(Duke University Press 2003) theorizes the differences between state socialist
and capitalist gender regimes at paid work. Next she turned to analysis
of the feminization of poverty in post socialism, and currently she is
working on a project that explores social, and especially gender inequalities
in work, leisure, and political participation in a comparative international
context.
Direct all correspondence to Christy M. Glass, Department of Sociology,
Social Work, and Anthropology, Utah State University. Mailing address:
0730 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT, 84322-0730. E-mail: cglass@hass.usu.edu.
344 V Glass and Fodor
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the
American Sociological Association, Chicago, IL, August 2002.
The authors would like to thank Ivan Szelenyi, Lynne Haney, Gail
Kligman, Livia Popescu, Janette Kawachi, Silke Steinhilbert, and all participants
of the Comparative Research Workshop at Yale University for helpful
comments and critiques. We are also grateful for the research assistance of
Dorota Lepianka and comments and suggestions from members of the
Feminization of Poverty workshop at Yale University. grant from the
Nelson C. Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College helped finance some of
the data collection.
1. Following the first free elections in 1989, women’s representation in
Parliament dropped from 20 to 13 percent, declining even further to 10
percent in 1993 (Fuszara 2000).
2. Hungarian family benefits became universal rather than employment
based in 1985. This change was motivated by the state’s dual desires to
reduce the overall labor force during a period of economic recession and to
increase birthrates (especially among middle class, educated women). By
reducing female labor force participation through generous and universal
benefits, the state avoided unemployment and, by extension, any threat to
the legitimacy of the socialist regime (Haney 2002).
3. The authors thank Silke Steinhilbert for emphasizing this point.
4. T.H. Marshall considered three types of citizenship: civil, political, and
social. By civil rights, Marshall referred to “rights necessary for individual
freedom” including freedom of speech, freedom of religion, property rights,
contractual rights, etc. Political rights included “the right to participate in
the exercise of political power as a member of a body invested with political
authority or as an elector of the members of such a body.” Finally, by
social rights, Marshall referred to rights to economic well-being, economic
security, and material equality with others (Marshall (1950) 2000, p. 32)
5. This is not quite precise. State policy makers did indirectly respond to
perceived pressures from below and occasionally solicited opinions from
experts and political advisors. However, the absence of democratic elections
and the state’s demonstrated willingness to suppress political organization
outside the party—sometimes violently—meant that demands from
below could not be articulated in a way that would have achieved serious
influence on policy outcomes.
6. The Roma represent a relatively sizeable minority in Hungary but not
in Poland. Our analysis of class-based distinctions encoded in policy will
consider both regimes, whereas our analysis of ethnic/racial distinctions
will focus exclusively on Hungarian social policy.
7. Paragraphs 2 and 19 of LXXXIV/1998 “Law on Family Support”
declare that all Hungarian citizens and legal refugees can claim parental
leaves, parental allowances, and family allowances.
8. In 2004, the authors interviewed over thirty employers in the
Hungarian finance sector who argued that by guaranteeing women long
maternity leaves, state policies provided employers with incentives to fire
female employees upon their return. To circumnavigate legal job
Gender and Welfare in Poland and Hungary V 345
guarantees, employers rely on authorized stipulations that allow employers
to dismiss workers if their job has been eliminated during the period of
leave. Administrative renaming of positions enables employers to fire
women with impunity. The employers in our sample estimated that 70–
100% of workers are not rehired following maternity leave.
9. Several women’s groups, including the Women’s Rights Center, have
fought the labor code’s obligatory clause on the grounds that it creates
inflexibility for female workers who must negotiate the terms of their leaves
with employers (Nowakowska and Swedrowska 2000).
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