Equal Opportunities and EU Enlargement: Women, Work and Transition in Central Eastern Europe

Anna Pollert

This paper focuses on gender and employment in four first-wave' Central Eastern European (CEE) applicant countries to an enlarged European Union (EU): the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia, plus Slovakia, which is likely to join them shortly.

Women's working lives have deteriorated since the transition from the command economies to capitalism, both in relation to their past legacy, and relative to their former high `gender development' ranking compared with many other industrialised countries. The reasons are multi-level. First, they lie in the dilution of the Communist emphasis on women's employment participation and the `worker-mother' infrastructure, which, despite its paternalism and failures, provided protection for motherhood and children crucial to women. Second, the free-market policies adopted in these countries caused sharp declines in employment, in social protection and security in employment, pensions and social assistance and caused growing inequality and poverty - all of which disproportionately affected the most vulnerable, among whom women are the major group. Nevertheless, despite this worsening of overall conditions, women themselves are divided in their responses to these changes. Democratic freedom and memories of enforced `liberation' have led some to endorse the present changes, even to embrace conservative sex roles. At the same time, many feel betrayed by the loss of former rights, and advocate their restitution. Observers of these conflicts have noted, on the one hand, rejection of so-called `Western feminist' aims of equal opportunities (EO) and on the other, the growth of women's EO organisation and activity.

In this paper, after examining the evidence on women's economic and political position in transition in CEE, I evaluate the debate on women's perspectives on EO. I then consider this in the light of the agenda for mainstreaming EO in the EU, and its implications for the applicants in the enlargement process. Three key issues arise. First, positively, the concept of `mainstreaming' allows scope for recasting the `gender-contract' and shifting from an androgenic model of EO. It was this model of EO as `becoming like a man' under Communism, which arguably turned CEE women away from `Western-imposed' EO and led to a conservative back-lash. Few wanted a return to a past which denied or devalued the `private' sphere of family and children. `Mainstreaming', if properly applied, could challenge sexual stereotypes at a deeper level than just equalising the sexual division of labour, by re-valuing nurturing and reproduction, and drawing back into EO political debate those women who were alienated by a male-centred model. However, the second and third issues raised are more negative. My real concern is that EO mainstreaming will be misunderstood, simplified and distorted, and that women's position will continue to deteriorate with enlargement. The reasons are two-fold: the rush for applicant countries to abide by the various acquis (obligations) to join the EU predisposes to superficial, paper commitments to comply. EO mainstreaming is likely to be just one casualty of this process. Secondly, the evidence on progress in EO from Western Europe shows that it is only those countries with social-democratic traditions of strong state intervention in the labour market, which have made real advances - such as the Nordic countries. Other countries, particularly those with free-market policies of non-interference in employers' activities and weak employment legislation (such as Britain), have not turned EO word into deed. For CEE, which is still under the hegemony of free-market policies (both from multi-lateral institutions such as the World Bank and from indigenous political elites), the likelihood of strong state intervention for the promotion of women's rights and EO seems remote at present. The prospects, then, of a combination of new democratic freedoms being combined with the best of the past social rights to reverse the trend in women's deteriorating position are poor without radical political change.