Introduction

How can we understand the nature of the welfare regime emerging in Poland in terms gender and of social policies relating to gender? In Chapter Two we examined and mapped (Figure 2.1) policies in paid work, income, time, care and voice, examined their implications for women and for gender equality, and asked whether the dual earner system of the communist era has survived the transition or brought a male breadwinner model in Poland? This chapter explores mothers’ perceptions of these policies and their ideas about what should happen. How should men and women work in households? How should governments support households?

First, what are the implications of the transition for changes in the assumptions that governments are making about gender? The communist expectation was for dual earner households with women in paid jobs. While in this respect they bore some resemblance to Scandinavian regimes, they were very different in other ways. As Ferge comments, “women did not feel liberated by systems which imposed paid work on them, allowed no freedom in civil society, and burdened women with household work” (Ferge, 1997a, 1998). The lack of individual choice, of feminist organisations and an unreconstructed domestic division of labour made key differences between the Scandinavian and the CEE models. However, these regimes achieved high levels of women's participation in paid work, with parental leave and childcare (especially kindergartens), family allowances, education and health care, and represented a level of state support for families that was high by comparison with Western Europe.

What are the implications of transition from communism for the gender regimes in CEE countries? There is a lot the countries have in common, with a common history of legislation that treated women as individuals rather than as dependent within families, and a common history of women's participation in the labour force. Their continuing core family responsibilities as mothers were supported in some measure by state policies: in CEE countries, this was particularly through kindergartens for pre-school children aged three to six. The lack of political rights to participate as citizens was common across the region, to men as well as to women.