Birth of Democratic Citizenship

Mihaela Miroiu, Maria Bucur-Deckard

Description

What is it like to be a woman living through the transition from communism to democracy? What effect does this have on a woman's daily life, on her concept of herself, her family, and her community? Birth of Democratic Citizenship presents the stories of women in Romania as they describe their experiences on the journey to democratic citizenship. In candid and revealing conversations, women between the ages of 24 and 83 explain how they negotiated their way through radical political transitions that had a direct impact on their everyday lives. Women who grew up under communism explore how these ideologies influenced their ideas of marriage, career, and a woman's role in society. Younger generations explore how they interpret civic rights and whether they incorporate these rights into their relationships with their family and community.

Beginning with an overview of the role women have played in Romania from the late 18th century to today, Birth of Democratic Citizenship explores how the contemporary experience of women in postsocialist countries developed. The women speak about their reliance on and negotiations with communities, ranging from family and neighbors to local and national political parties. Birth of Democratic Citizenship argues that that the success of democracy will largely rely on the equal incorporation of women in the political and civic development of Romania. In doing so, it encourages frank consideration of what modern democracy is and what it will need to be to succeed in the future.

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

1. Women from Romania's Past into the Present: A Short Historical Overview

2: Men: Working through Gender Norms at Home

3. Children: The Most Beautiful Accomplishment of My Life

4. Work and Personal Satisfaction.

5. Communities: Beyond the Family

6. Communism as State Patriarchy

7. Facing Capitalism and Building Democracy

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Women's Studies
• Gender Studies
• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Histoire
• Town privileges
• Hunedoara County
• Eastern Europe
• Romania
• History of Europe
• Eastern
• World
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253038494
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

BIRTH OF DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP
BIRTH OF DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP
Women and Power in Modern Romania

Maria Bucur and Mihaela Miroiu
Indiana University Press
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2018 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-02564-7 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-253-03846-3 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-253-03847-0 (web PDF)
1 2 3 4 5 23 22 21 20 19 18
To our 101 coauthors from Hunedoara County
Contents

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

1 Women from Romania s Past into the Present: A Short Historical Overview

2 Men: Working through Gender Norms at Home

3 Children: The Most Beautiful Accomplishment of My Life

4 Work and Personal Satisfaction

5 Communities: Beyond the Family

6 Communism as State Patriarchy

7 Facing Capitalism and Building Democracy

Conclusion

References

Index
Acknowledgments
T HIS BOOK CAME into being because of the kindness of the 101 women we interviewed in Hunedoara County. They opened their homes and hearts to us and patiently answered every question we posed. Knowing how valuable their few moments of spare time are in their busy lives, we are grateful for the generosity they extended to us. We are thankful especially to Emilia B rsan and Otilia David for all their help with the focus groups. We will treasure the memories of the whole experience far beyond the scholarly goals of our research.
Our research was made possible by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX). All errors, factual and interpretive, are those of the authors.
We owe a debt of gratitude to our research assistants, Diana Neaga and Cristina R doi, who interviewed many of our respondents and labored over the transcriptions of the interviews. For assistance with transcriptions, we express our thanks also to Valentin Niculescu Quintus. Crisia Miroiu, Andrei Miroiu, and Elena Popa were very helpful with translations. Alex Tipei provided invaluable work editing the translations and providing critical feedback. We are very grateful to Jeffrey Isaac for his comprehensive and critical reading of the manuscript. We wish to thank our peer reviewers and the editorial team of Indiana University Press, who contributed significantly to the improvement of the manuscript.
Finally, two men sustained us through their affectionate support over the decade-long path of this project from idea to final manuscript. As with our previous work, we couldn t have done it without Dan Deckard and Adrian Miroiu.
Abbreviations BOB Bureau of the Base Organization CCEO County Councils for Equal Opportunity CYU Communist Youth Union DLP Democratic Liberal Party DP Democratic Party EIGE European Institute for Gender Equality EU European Union IMF International Monetary Fund IUFR International Union of Free Romanians NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NCCD National Council for Combating Discrimination NCW National Council of Women NGO Nongovernmental organization NLP National Liberal Party NPP National Peasant Party NSF National Salvation Front PISA Program for International Student Assessment RCP Romanian Communist Party SDP Social Democratic Party
BIRTH OF DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP
Introduction
T HROUGHOUT MODERN HISTORY , women have pushed for recognition as full human beings, morally and intellectually, and as full citizens, politically and civically. 1 Globally, countless women still do not enjoy full citizenship or gender equality. This book examines women s road toward democratic citizenship over the past seventy years in one country-Romania. It explores this history through the stories of 101 women from Hunedoara County, a region thoroughly transformed by the communist regime. Some were born in the 1920s, an era when women in Romania had very limited civil and political rights. These women subsequently saw the total suppression of democracy under communism-a loss that more dramatically impacted their male counterparts. Most of our subjects were born during the communist period (1947-89). This regime served as a context for a significant portion of their adult lives. Before the fall of communism, moreover, none of the women we interviewed understood their political and civic rights in terms of feminist self-positioning. 2
For the 101 women we interviewed, democratic citizenship began on May 20, 1990, when, for the first time in Romanian history, women gained unrestricted access to the vote and participated in free multiparty local and national elections. When we conducted our research in 2009-10, these women already had a two-decade-long experience of democratic citizenship. A handful of them had assumed feminist positions, engaging as active citizens and political critics.
Democratic Citizenship
Our study begins with a normative definition of democracy and democratic citizenship. We define democracy broadly as a political system in which all members of the community have the same rights and responsibilities in relation to political decision-making and policy implementation, enjoy the same legal protections against discrimination, and succeed in maintaining this equality through active engagement in the life of the polis. Historically, eligibility for membership has differed based on age, education, race, ethnicity, place of birth, religion, and gender. In such cases, one can speak about limited democratic regimes. It is also true that historically, formal democratic measures (e.g., voting rights) have not necessarily translated into actual power, as can be seen in the history of one-party states like communist Romania.
Finally, there are cases where communities with democratic institutions that facilitated the exercise of democratic rights have brought about nondemocratic or illiberal outcomes. In an illiberal democracy, there is a tendency for political parties to develop as cartels and capture state institutions. Economic inequalities are high, and the freedom of association and collective action become very limited for most people. Freedom of expression, even if it exists, is also limited by private and public media oligopolies and monopolies. Economic inequalities are deep enough to generate enormous insecurity and result in a low capacity to fully exercise legal rights for many segments of society. Even if the necessary legal provisions for gender equality exist as a matter of principle, society remains patriarchal in its politics and practices. Finally, politicians treat national security as more important than democracy (Krastev 2016).
In a consolidated democracy, where eligibility is based only on reaching the age of maturity, and both institutions and individuals are assumed to participate in bolstering the democratic goals of that political regime, we define democratic citizenship as an individual s membership in a community, whether national or multinational (such as the European Union [EU]) where he or she has full political and civil rights. The citizenry exercises its will through electoral votes in a pluralist political regime, referenda, pressure group lobbying, protests, and other means of political expression. Laws and public policy result from this process of negotiation in which citizens play an active, essential role. The people s will is bound, however, by a respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms (e.g., of self-expression), and the rule of law. The legitimacy of representatives and institutions in a liberal democracy derives from the will of the people to protect these rights. Being monist and authoritarian, communist regimes are incompatible with this definition of democratic citizenship.
In addition to constitutional and voting rights, democratic citizenship requires that access to the economic, social, and civic life of the community be free of gender or biologically based discrimination. To be a democratic citizen is to accept and act according to the principles of tolerance and human rights and to shoulder the moral-political duty of actively protecting these values in the polis. Democratic citizens assume rights and responsibilities. They balance what the state rightfully owes them (in a liberal-individualist view) and what they offer as citizens to the political community (in a communitarian-republican view), two modes of engagement that go hand in hand (Walzer 1995, 217).
Democratic citizenship begins to flourish only when all citizens have the opportunity to translate their personal experiences into a political agenda and offer policy solutions. Human agency rests at the heart of this concept of democracy. The feminist sociologist Ruth Lister, whose work has greatly informed our approach, distinguishes between being and acting as a citizen. Being a citizen, she contends, simply requires access to political participation: To act as a citizen involves fulfilling the full potential of the status. Moreover, in practice, political participation tends to be more of a continuum than an all or nothin