Czech Feminisms

Description

In this wide-ranging study of women's and gender issues in the pre- and post-1989 Czech Republic, contributors engage with current feminist debates and theories of nation and identity to examine the historical and cultural transformations of Czech feminism. This collection of essays by leading scholars, artists, and activists, explores such topics as reproductive rights, state socialist welfare provisions, Czech women's NGOs, anarchofeminism, human trafficking, LGBT politics, masculinity, feminist art, among others. Foregrounding experiences of women and sexual and ethnic minorities in the Czech Republic, the contributors raise important questions about the transfer of feminist concepts across languages and cultures. As the economic orthodoxy of the European Union threatens to occlude relevant stories of the different national communities comprising the Eurozone, this book contributes to the understanding of the diverse origins from which something like a European community arises.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Gender, Sexuality, and Ethnicity Issues in the Czech Culture: Past and Present / Iveta Jusová
Part 1: Gender Issues in Czech Society Prior to 1989
1. Situating Czech Identity: Postcolonial Theory and "the European Dividend" / Iveta Jusová
2. The Importance of Being Nationalist / Jitka Malečková
3. The Czech 1930s through Toyen / Karla Huebner
4. Women as the Object and Subject of the Socialist Form of Women's Emancipation / Alena Wagnerová
5. Women's Memory: Searching for Identity under Socialism / Pavla Frýdlová
Part 2: Gender Issues in Czech Society Post-1989
6. Contested Feminism: The East/West Feminist Encounters in the 1990s / Simona Fojtová
7. Czech Women's NGOs: Women's Voices and Claims in the Public Sphere / Hana Hašková and Zuzana Uhde
8. Czech Anarchofeminism: Against Hierarchy and Privileges / Linda Sokačová
9. Aspects of Sex and Gender in Romany Communities in the Czech Republic / Karolína Ryvolová
10. The Lives of Vietnamese Women in the Czech Republic / Mária Strašáková
11. Sex Work, Migration, and Law: La Strada and Human Trafficking in the Czech Republic / Simona Fojtová
12. Idle Ally: LGBT Community in the Czech Republic / Kateřina Nedbálková
13. Condemned to Rule: Masculine Domination and Hegemonic Masculinities of Doctors in Czech Maternity Wards / Iva Šmídová
14. Some Issues and Challenges Faced by Elderly and Retired Women in the Czech Republic / Jiřina Šiklová
15. The East Side Story of (Gendered) Art: Framing Gender in Czech and Slovak Contemporary Art / Zuzana Štefková
16. Typological Differences Between Languages as an Argument Against Gender-Fair Language Use? / Jana Valdrová
Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Women's Studies
• Gender Studies
• Social History
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Segunda Guerra Mundial
• World War I
• Women's studies
• Eastern Europe
• World War II
• Première Guerre mondiale
• Seconde Guerre mondiale

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 26 septembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9780253021939
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

CZECH FEMINISMS
CZECH FEMINISMS
Perspectives on Gender in East Central Europe
Edited by
Iveta Jusov and Ji ina iklov
Indiana University Press
Bloomington and Indianapolis
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
2016 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 Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
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 Z 39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Jusov , Iveta, [date]- editor. | iklov , Ji ina, [date]- editor.
Title: Czech feminisms : perspectives on gender in East Central Europe / edited by Iveta Jusova and Ji ina iklov .
Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016011654| ISBN 9780253021892 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253021915 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253021939 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH : Feminism-Czech Republic. | Women-Czech Republic. | Sex role-Czech Republic.
Classification: LCC HQ 1610.3 . C 94 2016 | DDC 305.42094371-dc23
LC record available at https:// LCCN .loc.gov/2016011654
1 2 3 4 5 21 20 19 18 17 16
This book is dedicated to all those who have come before us .
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Gender, Sexuality, and Ethnicity Issues in the Czech Culture: Past and Present Iveta Jusov
PART 1: GENDER ISSUES IN CZECH SOCIETY PRIOR TO 1989
1 Situating Czech Identity: Postcolonial Theory and the European Dividend Iveta Jusov
2 The Importance of Being Nationalist Jitka Male kov
3 The Czech 1930s through Toyen Karla Huebner
4 Women as the Object and Subject of the Socialist Form of Women s Emancipation Alena Wagnerov
5 Women s Memory: Searching for Identity under Socialism Pavla Fr dlov
PART 2: GENDER ISSUES IN CZECH SOCIETY POST -1989
6 Contested Feminism: The East/West Feminist Encounters in the 1990s Simona Fojtov
7 Czech Women s NGOS : Women s Voices and Claims in the Public Sphere Hana Ha kov and Zuzana Uhde
8 Czech Anarchofeminism: Against Hierarchy and Privileges Linda Soka ov
9 Aspects of Sex and Gender in Romany Communities in the Czech Republic Karol na Ryvolov
10 The Lives of Vietnamese Women in the Czech Republic M ria Stra kov
11 Sex Work, Migration, and Law: La Strada and Human Trafficking in the Czech Republic Simona Fojtov
12 Idle Ally: The LGBT Community in the Czech Republic Kate ina Nedb lkov
13 Condemned to Rule: Masculine Domination and Hegemonic Masculinities of Doctors in Czech Maternity Wards Iva m dov
14 Some Issues and Challenges Faced by Elderly and Retired Women in the Czech Republic Ji ina iklov
15 The East Side Story of (Gendered) Art: Framing Gender in Czech and Slovak Contemporary Art Zuzana tefkov
16 Typological Differences between Languages as an Argument against Gender-Fair Language Use? Jana Valdrov
Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T HE AUTHORS WOULD like to thank Indiana University Press, and especially Raina Polivka, the music, film, and humanities editor, and Darja Malcolm-Clarke, the project editor and manager, for believing in this project and helping us bring this work from an enthusiastic proposal to a thoughtfully considered book. We were fortunate to benefit from the close reading and attentive work of the copyeditor Margaret Hogan. And Janice Frisch has been of great help with copyright-related questions.
We would also like to express our appreciation to the two anonymous external readers whose feedback on the earlier version of the manuscript helped sharpen our focus and led to a number of improvements with both structure and individual pieces.
Finally, we are grateful to Iveta s partner, Dr. Dan Reyes, who took time away from teaching philosophy to his students and from his own writing projects to read through and comment on several drafts of the manuscript. His feedback and suggestions significantly improved both the content and language fluency of the present book. As well, we are grateful for Dan s help with translation of several of the chapters originally prepared in Czech.
CZECH FEMINISMS
INTRODUCTION
Gender, Sexuality, and Ethnicity Issues in the Czech Culture: Past and Present
IVETA JUSOV
I T WAS IN the late 1980s, while studying British and Czech literatures at Palack University in Olomouc, Czechoslovakia, that I first became aware of feminism and decided to focus my undergraduate thesis on U.S. and British feminist theory. The country was still a socialist state, and feminism was decidedly not considered an appropriate subject of study, nor were there any resources readily available on this topic. But I was in luck. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the Iron Curtain was about to come apart. Through the revolutionary months of 1989, I became acquainted with one of the few scholar-activists in the country who could understand my hunger for anything feminist and could help me with my research: Ji ina iklov , the coeditor of this volume. I wrote my thesis in 1990 using the books available at the Gender Studies Library set up in Ji ina s famous apartment-turned-Gender Studies Centre in Prague, likely one of that facility s first beneficiaries. Traveling between Olomouc and Prague to visit the library and center, it did not take me long to develop admiration for the energetic iklov .
The early 1990s were times of heated feminist exchanges and public discussions about feminism, and iklov s role in making these debates both compelling and possible cannot be overstated. In the context of many prominent male Czech migr s returning from the West, all nearly uniformly having only derogatory things to say about feminist ideologues, iklov drew on the considerable respect that she wielded with the Czech public (as a dissident and Charta 77 signatory 1 ) to speak favorably about women s issues. At the same time, in perceiving mismatches between then widely assumed universals prevalent in Western feminist discourse and the specific situation of the Czech post-socialist context, iklov , along with Jana Hrad lkov , Hana Havelkov , and others, developed a consistent critique of Western-style feminism. In the essays they published throughout the 1990s, iklov and Havelkov stressed the need to study Czech women s issues in their specific historical, political, and social contexts (Havelkov 1993, 64; iklov 1993, 80).
Two decades later, in a so-called unified Europe, with the Czech Republic (CR) by and large a proud participant in the European Union s first wave of eastward expansion, iklov s call for accentuating the situatedness of our discussions of women s issues continues to be pertinent. This attention to our specificities, differences, and similarities also strongly informs my own ongoing work directing Carleton College s Women s and Gender Studies in Europe semester-long study-abroad program. 2 Guiding U.S. college students in the study of European (including Czech) gender, sexuality, and ethnicity issues, I note every year that students knowledge brought to the cultural sites, histories, and traditions of Eastern Europe tends to be surprisingly limited. My experience confirms the continued (and perhaps even increasing) relevance of Jennifer Suchland s 2011 assessment of the persistent exclusion of attention paid to the diversity that is the former second world within U.S. Women s Studies (but also perhaps U.S. education in general), in spite of overall efforts to internationalize knowledge production (838). As Suchland has articulated, while intellectual pathways to certain locations in the world have been instituted within U.S. Women s Studies, there continues to be a lack of focus on the second world in transnational feminism (837).
The peculiar indistinction of the former Eastern European bloc as a supposed non-region (as it was proclaimed to be in 1995 by Wanda Nowicka at the World Conference on Women in Beijing) has in some respects been addressed and, one might imagine, remedied. The annual peer-reviewed journal Aspasia , dedicated to women s history in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe ( CESEE ), has been appearing since 2007, offering informative discussions on a plethora of topics relevant to local scholars. The fairly steady stream of monographs and edited volumes devoted to gender (less so ethnicity or class) issues in the region might perhaps even speak to a gradual establishment of a sub-discipline of Eastern European Women s/Gender Studies within the broader field of Women s and Gender Studies ( WGS ). Relevant articles dealing with the region also occasionally appear in established WGS journals, including the European Journal of Women s Studies, Women s Studies International Forum , and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society .
These resources are invaluable for those interested in gender-related topics in the former Eastern bloc. Still, scholarly discursive digestion of former Eastern bloc culture and history has not necessarily modified broader public awareness nor tended to have led