This study uses a comparative framework to examine the relationship between individual-level attributes and gender-role attitudes in a state-market society and in a capitalist society. Data from the 1988 International Social Science Program indicate significant differences in attitudes between the two populations. Both women and men in the United States were more supportive of women's employment than their counterparts in Hungary, despite the Hungarian government's policy of full employment during communist rule. Nevertheless, the level of agreement between women and men (...) was uniform across national contexts: Women were more supportive of women's employment than men. We also found that individual-level attributes, such as employment status and marital status, differentially affected gender-role attitudes in the two countries. This study contributes to a broader dialogue about the dynamic relationship between social structure and gender ideology. (shrink)

This article examines the transference of the European Union's equal opportunity directives to the new post-socialist accessor states, most especially to Bulgaria and Romania. Drawing upon 13 interviews in Bulgaria and 12 in Romania with local institutional stakeholders — e.g. trade union deputies, ministry officials — the article shows how politico-ideological differences have bred very different gender sensibilities across Europe, East and West. It further reveals how these disparities have been downplayed, if not wholly ignored in the EU's extension eastward. (...) The study concludes that continued disregard of the historical and cultural specificities of power relations between men and women in the formerly socialist, new EU member states threatens the efficacy of the EU's `gender equality agenda' and more generally, the integrity of the EU as a self-purported democratic body. (shrink)

In this article, I try to explore some of the elements of the potential for active citizenship, as conceptualized by Hannah Arendt. Inspired by, but not limited to her work, I attempt to find some important common points of the Arendtian reconceptualization of politics and the prospects for a feminist analysis of the conditions for active citizenship and gender equality within a post-socialist context. On the other hand, I would like to show how, within an East European context, the feminist (...) approach that wants to be useful for a concrete analysis and inspire substantial actions cannot avoid the questions of the relationship between the social and political as argued by Hannah Arendt. (shrink)