This article is a contribution to the debate on the role and character of women’s organizations in Eastern Europe after 1945, including the role they played in the process of women’s emancipation. The purpose of the article is to offer insight into the relation between the communist party (that is the PPR and its successor – the PZPR) and the women’s movement in Poland in the years 1945–89 and to provide a new interpretation of the movement’s history under state socialism. I contend that women’s organizations should be viewed as part of the communist system and the roles they played should be understood in the context of the policies pursued by the communist states.
The article discusses the impact of women’s work on relations in marriage. The source basis of the study are original personal memoirs written for three competitions organised in 1964, 1965, and 1974. I argue that professional work, especially related to education and professional position, raised the status of women in marriage, even though the women’s employment was regarded as of secondary importance. Another factor changing the role of women in marriage was the popularisation of the partnership model of marriage, which is also mirrored in the analysed.
PL
Artykuł omawia wpływ pracy zawodowej kobiet na stosunki w małżeństwie. Podstawą źródłową analizy są oryginalne pamiętniki konkursowe pochodzące z trzech konkursów z lat 1964, 1965 i 1974. W artykule stawiam tezę, że praca zawodowa, szczególnie związana z wykształceniem i pozycją zawodową, wpływała na podniesienie statusu kobiety w małżeństwie, choć była rozumiana jako drugorzędna. Innym czynnikiem wpływającym na zmianę pozycji kobiety w małżeństwie było upowszechnianie się partnerskiego modelu małżeństwa, co także pokazują omawiane pamiętniki.
The article discusses the issue of female unemployment in Poland between 1945 and 1970 – the scale and reasons of the phenomenon and the attempts to eliminate it. The joblessness history is a pretext for showing the role of gender in the shaping of the labour market in the People’s Republic of Poland. The general reason behind the difficulties faced by women in finding a job was that gainful employment, or career, was in the case of females perceived as secondary, and less productive. Women were to perform certain roles in the family, and there was a prevalent conviction that a number of jobs were inappropriate or inadequate for women.
Artykuł zwraca uwagę na dyskurs na temat kobiet formułowany przez partię komunistyczną w powojennej Polsce. Podstawą wyodrębnienia i rozumienia bardzo istotnej dla PPR/PZPR kategorii „kobiety” były zarówno przesłanki ideologiczne, jak i tradycyjnie rozumiane różnice płci. Kobiecość nie została odrzucona, lecz przedefiniowana. Dyskurs o kobietach zasadzał się na tezie, że równouprawnienie i równość nie są sprzeczne z tradycyjnie rozumianą kobiecością. Partia starała się go wykorzystywać do mobilizacji kobiet do „budowy socjalizmu”. Short course on the history of “women”. Women in the vocabulary of the communist party in Poland 1945–1989The purpose of the article is to analyse the discourse formulated by the communist party in postwar Poland (1944–1989) on the category of “woman”. The author attempts to answer the question about what was understood by this category, what traits were attributed to women, in what way their social roles were perceived and what roles were postulated for them. Women in the understanding of the party and its activists made a separate group with its own identity. The way in which this category of “women” was constructed was based on the party’s ideology, but also on quite traditional concepts of gender, which resulted in certain contradictions: on the one hand the fight against stereotypes of women and their roles was proclaimed, while on the other some of them were shaped and strengthened. This was to serve political purposes: to mobilise women to “build socialism” in areas seen as “feminine” (for instance health and social care, household management, etc.). Conclusions drawn from the analysis lead us to a different thesis than the one formulated by Eva Fodor for Hungary; she claims that the “female subject/communist personality” was subordinate to that of male. In Poland the discourse of the communist party sought to incorporate values and roles it saw as female into the construction of a socialist society, without suggesting the inferiority of women.