Abstract
Studies of women’s political roles in many societies have concluded that women are less politically active than men.1 Although higher educational levels close the gap between the sexes regarding their concern for and interest in politics, it remains generally true that women are less likely than men to enter ‘fully into the political realm’.2 Such an assessment is valid as well in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Notwithstanding encouragement of female participation in principle by ruling Communist parties, data at the national level indicate that women are not politically emancipated in Eastern Europe; they constitute, at most, 30% of Communist party membership, while one in four or five Central Committee members or governmental ministers may be a woman. Even after the purposeful recruitment of women into the Romanian Central Committee during the 1970s, for example, a six-fold increase brought their presence in the Central Committee to just 24.5%.3
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Notes
Sidney Verba, Normal Nie, Jae-on Kim, Participation and Political Equality: A Seven Nation Comparison (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979) p. 256.
George Cioranescu, ‘The New Romanian Communist Party Central Committee’, RFE Background Report/24 (5 Feb. 1980) p. 10.
Barbara W. Jancar, ‘Elite Analysis in Applied Research on Women in Communist Society’, Women and Politics 1, no. 2 (Summer 1980) p. 51;
Sharon L. Wolchik, ‘Eastern Europe’ in Joni Lovenduski and Jil Hills (eds), The Politics of the Second Electorate: Women and Public Participation (London: Routledge liheng Kegan Paul, 1981) pp. 261–2.
See Gail W. Lapidus, Women in Soviet Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978) for a discussion of the Soviet case and the essays in Lovenduski and Hills for discussions of similar trends in the United States and Western Europe.
See Wolchik, and Barbara W. Jancar, Women Under Communism (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978) for overviews of women’s political roles at the national and local levels in Eastern Europe.
The sample was biased towards urban-based deputies that, in turn, raised the educational level and skewed the occupational distribution of the sample. These are discussed with weighting procedures to ‘correct’ for sampling biases in Daniel N. Nelson, Democratic Centralism in Romania (Boulder, Col.: East European Monographs, 1980), Appendix C.
These data and other statistics cited in this paragraph are from Jacek Tarkowski and Krzysztof Zagorski, Radni i Czionkowie Prezydiow Rad Narodowych 1958–1969 (Warsaw: Glowny Urz4d Statystyczny, 1972) p. 23.
See Mary Ellen Fischer, ‘Women in Romanian Politics: Ceausescu, Pronatalism, and the Promotion of Women’ in Alfred Meyer and Sharon Wolchik (eds), Women, State, and Party in Eastern Europe (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1985) pp. 121–37.
Marcia M. Lee, ‘Toward Understanding Why Women Hold Public Office: Factors Affecting Participation of Women in Local Politics’ in Marianna Githens and Jewel L. Prestage (eds), A Portrait of Marginality (New York: Mackay, 1977) p. 126.
Krzysztof Jasiewicz, Role Spoteczne Radnych Wojewodzkich Rad Narodowych (Wroclaw: Zadlad Narodowy im. Ossolinskich, 1979) p. 63.
These characterizations are based on data reported in Gheorgheta Dan-Spinoi, Factori Objiectivi si subjectiv In integrarea Profesionala a Femeii (Bucharest: Editurâ Academiei, 1974).
Another study, which suggests limitations on female participation in Yugoslavia is Milan Mesic, ‘Politilihengko kultura samoupravijanja zagregackih radnica’, ŽLena 2 (1978) pp. 47–61.
The conflict of values between those ascribed to women and those of political activism has been researched in depth in the American context. See, for example, Judith M. Bardwick and Elizabeth Douvan, ‘Ambivalence: the Socialization of Women’ in Vivian Gornick and Barbara Moran (eds), Women in Sexist Society (New York: Basic Books, 1971)
and Ralph H. Turner, ‘Some Aspects of Women’s Ambitions’, American Journal of Sociology, 70, no. 3, (Nov. 64) pp. 270–85.
The limitations imposed on women’s political activity because of children are considered, for the US case, by Cornelia B. Flora and Naomi B. Lynn, ‘Women and Political Socialization: Considerations of the Impact of Motherhood’ in Jane S. Jacquette (ed.), Women in Politics (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1974) pp. 37–53. One must add that men, too, regard the familial roles of women as primary, thereby adding an expectation and socialization ‘pressure’ towards deference to them in political life.
See, for example, Jerry Hough’s summaries of conversations with women in the scholarly community in The Soviet Union and Social Science Theory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977) pp. 150–1 indicating rather (in my judgment) traditional views of women’s roles.
Alex Inkeles and H. K. Geiger, ‘Critical Letters to the Soviet Press’ in Alex Inkeles (ed.), Social Change in Soviet Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968) p. 309. Their findings were based on research undertaken in the early 1950s.
Jan Adams, ‘Critical Letters to the Soviet Press: An Increasingly Important Public Forum’, in Donald E. Schulz and Jan S. Adams (eds), Political Participation in Communist Systems (New York: Pergamon, 1981) p. 124. See also Hough, p. 151.
Numerous studies in Eastern Europe indicate that women have much less leisure time than men. See Heitlinger, Women and State Socialism (London: Macmillan, 1979) pp. 86–96 and 144–6;
and Wolchik, ‘The Status of Women in a Socialist Order’ in Sharon Wolchik and Alfred Meyer (eds), Women, State, and Party in Eastern Europe (Durham: Duke University Press, 1985) pp. 596–7 for summaries of several of these studies and discussions of their implications for women’s political roles. See Lapidus, Women in Soviet Society pp. 280–4, for the Soviet case.
A few of these studies include Marjorie Lansing, ‘The American Woman: Voter and Activist’ in Jacquette pp. 5–24; Naomi B., Lynn and Cornelia Butler Flora, ‘Motherhood and Political Participation’, Journal of Political and Military Sociology, 1, no. 1 (Mar. 1973)
Veronica Heiskanan, ‘Sex Roles, Social Class, and Political Consciousness’, Acta Sociologica 14, nos 1–2 (1971) pp. 83–95
Bardwick and Douvan; Anthony Orum, Roberta Cohen, Sherri Gramsmuck and Amy W. Orum, ‘Sex, Socialization, and Politics’, American Sociological Review 39, no. 2 (Apr. 1974) and Lee pp. 118–38.
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© 1988 Daniel N. Nelson
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Nelson, D.N. (1988). Women in Local Communist Politics in Romania and Poland. In: Elite-Mass Relations in Communist Systems. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09104-1_4
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