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Unraveling a Tradition, or Spinning a Myth? Gender Critique in Czech Society and Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 March 2017

Extract

The hostility that met feminist ideas and gender equality issues in east central Europe (ECE) after the demise of the Communist regimes was accompanied by a notion that feminism was imported to these societies after 1989. In the Czech Republic, the record of the publishing output by feminist scholars in the 1990s, however, speaks against this myth. Drawing on existing scholarship and the author's own research on cultural discourses of gender and on socialist state science policies and censorship, this article argues that there has been a long tradition of gender critique that was present in a variety of discourses even during late state socialism. It proposes that the feminist impulse began in the 19th century and continued in some form throughout the 20th century. It then examines how the myth of the feminist import came to exist and what were the possible sources of the hostility toward feminism in the 1990s.

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Articles
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2016

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References

I first sketched out some of the ideas presented here in the introduction to a collective volume co-authored with Hana Havelkova (“Expropriated Voice: Transformations of Gender Culture under State Socialism; Czech society, 1948–1989,” in The Politics of Gender Culture under State Socialism: An Expropriated Voice, eds., Havelkova, Hana and Oates-Indruchova, Libora (London, 2014), 327 Google Scholar. I would like to thank all the authors from that team for providing the essential sparks for the present argument, as well as to the anonymous reviewers of this article whose suggestions were immensely helpful in improving the text.

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13. Women also had women's sections in most political parties (Wolchik, “Elite Strategy,” 128). The Czech women's movement was present in the state school curriculum—I draw here on an oral history interview conducted in 2004 with my own grandmother (born 1921), who graduated from a state gymnázium (an academically-oriented secondary school and a pre-requisite for university entry) shortly before the outbreak of WWII. She stated that the list of questions for the fi nal examination included a question on the history of the Czech women's movement.

14. Skilling, H. Gordon, “T. G. Masaryk: A Radical Feminist,” Cross Currents: A Yearbook of Central European Culture 10 (1991): 195212 Google Scholar.

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19. The magazine has been in existence without interruption, albeit with changing editorial policies and content, until the present day.

20. Milada Horakova was arrested in 1949 for her uncompromising attitude to the Communist Party's actions, charged with treason, convicted in a show trial, and executed in 1950.

21. Havelkova, Hana, “Dreifache Enteignung und eine unterbrochene Chance: Der ‘Prager Fruhling’ und die Frauen- und Geschlechterdiskussion in der Tschechoslowakei,” L’Homme 20, no. 2 (2009): 3149 Google Scholar. Havelkova identifi es three stages of this expropriation: replacing the diverse pre-war women's associations organized in the Council with a single organization subordinated to the Communist Party, dissolving this organization in 1952, and fi nally, placing the “woman question” in the custody of “experts” in the 1960s. By this last stage, she means the transfer of the responsibility for issues of women's participation in society from women's organizations to state social science research establishments (ibid.). What she does not say, perhaps because it was a given in the process of communist takeovers of all civic associations, is that the new communist rulers also took over the property of the women's organizations, expropriating them in the literal sense of the word.

22. Nečasova, Buduj vlast, 266–96.

23. Barbara Havelkova demonstrates through her comprehensive analysis of Czechoslovak legislation that “despite the eff orts toward the improvement of the status of women, gender equality was never a priority in the socialist period” (Barbara Havelkova, “Genderova rovnost,” 205). Eva Fodor, researching Hungary, shows how the records of Politburo meetings discursively defined women as citizens unsuitable for politics due to their family commitments, see “Smiling Women and Fighting Men: The Gender of the Communist Subject in State Socialist Hungary,” Gender & Society 16, no. 2 (April 2002), 241.

24. Havelkova, Hana, “Naměty k diskusi o českem genderovem kontextu,” in Knotkova-Čapkova, Blanka, ed., Ročenka Katedry genderových studií FHS UK v Praze 2005– 2006(Prague, 2007), 108–24Google Scholar.

25. Jan Matonoha, for example, illustrates the steadfast insistence on traditional portrayals of gender order in canonic Czech literary texts written after the 1950s. See: “Dispositives of Silence: Gender, Feminism, and Czech Literature between 1948 and 1989,” in Hana Havelkova and Libora Oates-Indruchova, eds., The Politics of Gender Culture under State Socialism: An expropriated voice (Abingdon, 2014), 162–87).

26. Garver, “Women in the First Czechoslovak Republic”; Feinberg, Elusive Equality.

27. Wolchik, “Elite Strategy,” 134–39; B. Havelkova, “Genderova rovnost,” 193.

28. The concepts of the dominant, the residual and the emergent in this sense were defined by Williams, Raymond, Marxism and Literature (Oxford, 1977)Google Scholar.

29. Roubal, Petr, “The Body of the Nation: The Czechoslovak Spartakiades from a Gender Perspective,” in The Politics of Gender Culture, 146–50Google Scholar.

30. Musilova, Dana, Na okraj jedné návštěvy: Simone de Beauvoir v Československu (Usti nad Orlici, Czech Republic, 2007)Google Scholar; Hana Havelkova, “Dreifache Enteignung.”

31. Petra Hanakova, “The Feminist Style in Czechoslovak Cinema: The Feminine Imprint in the Films of Věra Chytilova and Ester Krumbachova,” in The Politics of Gender Culture, 211–33.

32. The book was then published again in 2002, which testifies to the continued existence of an audience for the text.

33. Věra Sokolova, “State Approaches to Homosexuality, Sexological Discourse and Non-heterosexual Lives in Socialist Czechoslovakia, 1948–1989” (Habilitační práce [Habilitationschrift], Univerzita Pardubice, 2013), 145–46.

34. Oates-Indruchova, “From Raisa to Hillary: Gender Discourse in Political Speeches and Selected News Coverage of the Perestroika and Early Transition Years,” in Jiřina van Leeuwen-Turnovcova and Nicole Richter, eds., Mediale Welten in Tschechien nach 1989: Genderprojektionen und Codes des Plebejismus (Munchen, 2005), 57–71.

35. Gustav Husak, “Z projevu soudruha Gustava Husaka,” Rudé právo, March 8, 1988, 1–2. Emphasis added.

36. Ibid. Emphasis added.

37. Barbara Havelkova, “The Three Stages of Gender in Law,” in The Politics of Gender Culture, 31–56.

38. Petra Hanakova,,”The Feminist Style”; Kateřina Kolařova, “The Aids-ed Perestroika: Discourses of Gender in Negotiations of Ideological Consensus in Late-socialist Czechoslovakia,” in The Politics of Gender Culture, 234–56. Matonoha, “Dispositives of Silence,” in The Politics of Gender Culture (162–87).

39. Haman, Aleš, Literatura z pohledu čtenářů (Prague, 1991)Google Scholar.

40. The two novels were John, Radek, Memento (Prague, 1986)Google Scholar, and Frybova, Zdena, Z neznámých důvodů (Prague 1988)Google Scholar.

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43. Oates-Indruchova, “The Beauty and the Loser: Cultural Representations of Gender in Late State Socialism,” Signs 37, no. 2 (Winter 2012): 357–83.

44. Sokolova, “State Approaches to Homosexuality,” in The Politics of Gender Culture, 82–108.

45. Oates-Indruchova, “The Ideology of the Genderless Sporting Body: Refl ections on the Czech State-socialist Concept of Physical Culture,” in Naomi Segal, Lib Taylor, and Roger Cook, eds., Indeterminate Bodies, (Basingstoke, 2003), 48–66.

46. Nolte, “Every Czech a Sokol!,” 79–100.

47. Oates-Indruchova, “The Ideology of the Genderless Sporting Body” in Segal, Taylor and Cook, Indeterminate Bodies.

48. Jiřina Šmejkalova, Marie Čermakova, Hana Havelkova and Libora Indruchova, “Democratisation, Social and Political Change and Women's Movements: Final Report— Czech Republic,” British Research Council Award Ref. No. R 000 23 4258, unpublished, n.d. [1995].

49. Kateřina Zabrodska, “Between Femininity and Feminism: Negotiating the Identity of a ‘Czech Socialist Woman’ in Women's Accounts of State Socialism,” in The Politics of Gender Culture, 109–32.

50. Ibid., 126, 127.

51. Oates-Indruchova, “Discourses of Gender in Pre- and Post-1989 Czech Culture” (PhD dissertation, Lancaster University, 2001).

52. I fi rst argued against the perspective on feminism as a western import and instead proposed the approach to 1990s texts on gender and the form and agenda of east central European feminism(s) written by Czech scholars, namely by Hana Havelkova, Jitka Malečkova, Jiřina Šiklova and Jiřina Šmejkalova-Strickland, as developing a home-grown gender theory, rather than rejecting feminism, in a footnote to a small article in Czech ( Oates-Indruchova, Libora, “Tak pěkně od začatku: o vztahu sociologie a kategorie gender,” in Oates-Indruchova, Libora, ed., Tvrdošíjnost myšlenky: od feministické kriminologie k teorii genderu (Publikace na počest Prof. Gerlindy Šmausové) (Prague, 2011), 7686 Google Scholar) and sketched it out further in the introduction to The Politics of Gender Culture (Hana Havelkova, Libora Oates-Indruchova, “Expropriated Voice”, 3–27). This perspective on the eastwest discussions on feminism served as the starting point for the writing of the present article. The idea was recently echoed by Simona Fojtova in “Contested Feminism: The East/West Feminist Encounters in the 1990s”, in Czech Feminisms, 111–25.

53. Barbara Einhorn mentions 37 registered women's organizations by early 1991 (“Where Have All the Women Gone? Women and the Women's Movements in East Central Europe,” Feminist Review 39, no. 1 (1991), 30); Haškova cites their number as 70 by the early 1990s (“Czech Women's Civic Organising,” 1083).

54. Data from the author's archive. In the mid-1990s I researched and collected all gender-related syllabi since 1990.

55. Čermakova, , Gatnar, Lumir and Nechvatalova, Eva, ed. Sborník překladů z evropské a americké feministické sociologie I, II (Prague, 1992, 1993)Google Scholar.

56. Iniciály 2, no. 25 (Feminismus … Ano?, 1992).

57. Hendrychova, Soňa, “Z historie ženskeho hnuti v Československu,” in Havelkova, Hana, ed., Lidská práva, ženy a společnost (Prague, 1992), 915 Google Scholar; Horska, Pavla and Peškova, Jaroslava, “Rozhovor mezi filosofkou a historičkou o ženske otazce v Čechach,” Filosofi cký časopis 40, no. 5 (1992): 757–68Google Scholar.

58. See Havelkova, Hana, “ ‘Patriarchy’ in Czech Society,” Hypatia 8, no. 4 (Fall 1993): 8996 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Havelkova, Hana, “Transitory and Persistent Diff erences: Feminism East and West,” in Scott, Joan W., Kaplan, Cora, and Keates, Debra, eds., Transitions, Environments, Translations: Feminism in International Politics, (London 1997), 5662 Google Scholar; Šiklova, Jiřina, “Backlash,” Social Research 60, no. 4 (Winter 1993): 737–49Google Scholar; Šmejkalova-Strickland, Jirina, “Do Czech Women Need Feminism?: Perspectives of Feminist Theories and Practices in Czechoslovakia,” Women's Studies International Forum 17, no. 2–3 (1994): 277–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Šmejkalova-Strickland, Jiřina, “Revival? Gender Studies in the ‘Other’ Europa,” Signs 20, no. 4 (Summer 1995): 1000–06CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Malečkova, Jitka, “Gender, Nation and Scholarship: Refl ections on Gender/Women's Studies in the Czech Republic,” in Maynard, Mary and Purvis, June, eds., New Frontiers in Women's Studies: Knowledge, Identity and Nationalism (London, 1996), 96112 Google Scholar.

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65. Havelkova, H., “Patriarchy”; Šmejkalova-Strickland, “Do Czech Women Need Feminism?”; Šiklova, “Feminism and the Roots of Apathy in the Czech Republic,” Social Research 64, no. 2 (Summer 1997): 258–80Google Scholar.

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69. Květa Legatova, Jozova Hanule (Prague, 2002); Želary (Prague 2001).

70. Feinberg, Elusive Equality, 10.

71. H. Havelkova explicitly divided her own writing in the 1990s into the kind aimed at a western audience (texts mainly challenging western theoretical concepts) and at a Czech audience (texts explaining the usefulness of feminist concepts and the category of gender). See “Affi damento,” in Marie Chřibkova, Josef Chuchma and Eva Klimentova, eds., Nové čtení světa I: Feminismus devadesátých let českýma očima (Prague, 1999), 58–59.

72. Sociologický č asopis 31, no. 1 (Gender v sociálních vědách a otázky feminismu 1995).

73. Funk and Mueller, ed., Gender Politics and Post-Communism. Google Scholar lists 444 citations of the book at the time of writing.

74. Ibid., ix. Emphasis added.

75. Funk, introduction to Gender Politics and Post-Communism, 3.

76. Ibid.

77. Ibid., 14.

78. Šmejkalova-Strickland, “Revival?,” 1001.

79. Šmejkalova, “On the Road: Smuggling Feminism across the Post-Iron Curtain,” in Margit Feischmidt, Eniko Magyari-Vincze, and Violetta Zentai, eds., Women and Men in East European Transition (Cluj, 1996), 28.

80. Šiklova, “McDonald’s.”

81. Šmejkalova, “Co Je Feminismus: Kam s ni/m?, Part 1–5.” Tvar 2, no. 37–41 (1991).

82. I have drawn this conclusion from my own media archive that I systematically collected in the fi rst half of the 1990s, the newspaper clipping service commissioned by the Gender Studies Center in Prague from the same period, and also from my own participation in this NGO.

83. Horska, Naše prababičky feministky, 90.

84. Bahenska, Počátky emancipace, 144.

85. Matonoha, “Dispositives of Silence.”

86. Libora Indruchova, “Women in the Czech Press,” personal archive of the author, unpublished, 1993.

87. Jaroslav Spurny, “Sila soudcovskeho zvyku,” Respekt, September 21–27, 1992, 12. The phrase “excessive feminization” being associated with a critical state of aff airs in some industries was not new in 1992. For example, in 1972 it was used in a radio broadcast on the shortcomings of the publishing industry by the Deputy Head of the Department of Culture of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Vladimir Solecky, “Komentař [Commentary],” Prague, 1972).

88. Indruchova, “The Construction of Femininity in Contemporary Billboard Advertising in the Czech Republic,” in Marie Čermakova, ed., Women, Work and Society (Prague, 1995), 69–78; “Žena na ulici. (Stereo) typizace ženy v současne velkoplošne reklamě v Česke republice,” Sociologický časopis 31, no. 1 (1995): 85–104.

89. H. Havelkova, “A Few Pre-feminist Thoughts,” 62; Heitlinger, “The Impact of the Transition from Communism on the Status of Women in the Czech and Slovak Republics,” in Gender Politics and Post-Communism, 103.

90. Indruchova, “Western Feminist Literary Theory vis-a-vis Czech Literature and Culture” (MA thesis, Lancaster University, 1992).

91. Josef Škvorecky, “Je možne mluvit a psat spravně bez diskriminace?: dobrodružstvi americkeho feminismu,” Respekt, November 16, 1992, 13; “Je možne mluvit se ženou bez pohlavniho obtěžovani?: Dobrodružstvi americkeho feminismu,” Respekt, September 28, 1992, 13; “Je možny sex bez znasilněni?: Dobrodružstvi americkeho feminismu,” Respekt, August 10, 1992, 10; Ota Ulč and Vladimir Stwora, “O velkem sexualnim harašeni,” Mladý svět, January 15, 1993, 40–41; Ulč, “Přizrak sexualniho harašeni,” Mladý svět, March 4, 1994, 44.

92. Harašit as a verb literally means “to rattle” and fi guratively “to lose [one’s] marbles.” To my knowledge, however inimical to feminism and sexist Škvorecky's articles are, he always ever used sexuální obtěžování (the correct translation of “sexual harassment”) in his work.

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97. Jiři Houška and Vojtěch Tlusty, “Ke kritice soudobe buržoazni sociologie,” Tvorba, September 13, 1972, 12–13; Siracky, “Začiname.”

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