Abstract
The article explores gender roles in Czech society during the 1990s, seeking in them continuity with the socialist past as well as divergence from it. The state-socialist construction of social space brought women (and men), in the course of 40 years, into a post-feminist situation - they got beyond the second-wave claim of the public sphere for women. The communist epoch gave birth to an illusory gender equity while it preserved a specifically modified public/private divide and ’empowered’ attitudes of the population that were characteristic of pre-feminist consciousness. This complex legacy has been used by the (male) political power of Czech ’neoliberal’ democracy post-1989, while it has disadvantaged women, who have been becoming rapidly unequal to men. The article examines whether Czech accession to the EU will enhance gender equality in a post-communist society. Feminist action (of which there are some signs in Czech society), the study concludes, is needed more than ever.
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