Subtitle:

Polska 1944/45-1989 : studia i materiały 15 (2017)

Contributor:

Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Publisher:

Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Place of publishing:

Warszawa

Description:

p. 241-259 ; Summary in English. ; Projects co-financed by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education

Type of object:

Journal/Article

Abstract:

The 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.

References:

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Fidelis M., Women, Communism, and Industrialization in Postwar Poland, Cambridge 2010
Fodor E., Smiling Women and Fighting Men. The Gender of the Communist Subject in State Socialist Hungary, „Gender and Society” 16, 2002, nr 2
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Scott J.W., Gender. A Useful Category of Historical Analysis, „The American Historical Review” 91, 1986
Stańczak-Wiślicz K., Od neomatriarchatu do szpitala-pomnika Matki Polki. Ideologie macierzyństwa w dyskursach władzy i opozycji w Polsce (1945–1989), w: Niebezpieczne związki. Macierzyństwo, ojcostwo i polityka, red. R. Hryciuk, E. Korolczuk, Warszawa 2015
Verdery K., What Was Socialism and What Comes Next?, Princeton, New Jersey 1998
Wood E., The baba and the comrade. Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia, Bloomington 1997

Relation:

Polska 1944/45-1989 : studia i materiały

Volume:

15

Start page:

241

End page:

259

Detailed Resource Type:

Article : original article

Format:

application/pdf

Resource Identifier:

oai:rcin.org.pl:64925 ; 2450-8357 ; 10.12775/Polska.2017.12

Source:

IH PAN, sygn. B.155/15 Podr. ; IH PAN, sygn. B.156/15 ; click here to follow the link

Language:

pol

Language of abstract:

eng

Rights:

Creative Commons Attribution BY-ND 4.0 license

Terms of use:

Copyright-protected material. [CC BY-ND 4.0] May be used within the scope specified in Creative Commons Attribution BY-ND 4.0 license, full text available at: ; -

Digitizing institution:

Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Original in:

Library of the Institute of History PAS

Access:

Open