Hostages of destiny: gender issues in today's Poland
- PDF / 150,340 Bytes
- 21 Pages / 536 x 697 pts Page_size
- 40 Downloads / 175 Views
76 hostages of destiny:
gender issues in today’s Poland Monika Platek
abstract In an e-mail of June 2002, some women on Gender Link noticed that in Polish there is an expression, ‘husband of trust’, used to describe a person in the workplace appointed to represent workers’ interests. This role is more often than not given to women, and yet they are called ‘husbands of trust’. ‘Isn’t that strange,’ they said. ‘Isn’t it time to change this?’. It is. The change in gender role identities has started with questioning the language. It has started with asking who has produced and is reproducing the language, and for whom. The journey has not stopped there. From looking at language it has continued through social stereotypes, work, labour, money and the division of power, and reached the law and legal system itself. In Poland, the path has been rather circuitous and uneasy for we are, more than many other countries, bound by Catholic tradition mingled with apparent freedom. We had the ethos of Solidarity, and Lech Wa"esa. Wa"esa had a badge of the Virgin Mary, Mother ‘ ‘ of Jesus on his jacket, which somehow helped label all Polish women, even those still very young, a ‘Mother Pole’. To resist that identity one needed to look beneath the image and be brave enough to call oneself just a woman. This article will try to analyse that process.
keywords gender sensitivity; political equality of men and women; Poland; historical changes in gender equality
feminist review 76 2004 c 2004 Feminist Review. 0141-7789/04 $15 www.feminist-review.com (5–25)
5
On 8 March, International Women’s Day, Polish women still receive a tulip, a rose and a kiss. More and more often, however, instead of baking a cake to express their gratitude, they go out to participate in a demonstration. Demonstrations in big cities take the form of happy yet political events, during which demands are made that the 8 March flower is accompanied by equal work, equal pay, equal rights and equal participation in political life. Inevitably, these demonstrations are met with amazement and indignation by some: ‘What do these women want? Their equal political rights are guaranteed.’ At the same time, special programmes to celebrate International Women’s Day are organised and linguists are invited as guests. After analysing the word ‘crone/hag’, for example, they conclude that, generally, women are not appreciated in the Polish language in the same way that men are. In fact they are far less appreciated, apart from in their role as mothers. ‘But isn’t this all women are for?’ they say. It has nothing to do with male domination, it is pure nature, pure destiny. And in fact although women lack equality where language is concerned – politics are a totally different matter. Let us, therefore, begin with politics and end with language – which is, after all, closely linked to politics.
do women have political equality guaranteed? The realization of political rights requires more than legal guarantees. It is not enough to declare in the Constitution that women and men
Data Loading...
