Abstract
Come 1989 and the shattering of the Iron Curtain, it seemed that grassroots feminism suddenly leapt to life to counter the completely unanticipated threats to reproductive rights, women’s employment, state-run child care, and health care that accompanied the dismantling of the communist infrastructure. But feminism, though long dormant in Central Europe, did not suddenly spring, full-blown, out of nowhere. Prior to 1989, and independent from the state, many women had long nurtured the elements of feminism, both in private and in their respective pro-democracy subcultures. Their political legacy carried into the post-communist era, helping to usher a broader-based feminism into their respective countries.
What women achieved under communism was so obvious that we never believed we had something to lose.
Małgorzata Fuszara, gender studies professor, Warsaw University1
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Notes
Agnieszka Graff, “A Different Chronology: Reflections on Feminism in Contemporary Poland,” in Third Wave Feminism: A Critical Exploration, Expanded Second Edition, ed. Stacy Gillis, Gillian Howe, and Rebecca Munford (New York, 2007), 144.
In addition to the Global Feminisms Project cited in note 4 above, see Shana Penn, Solidarity’s Secret: The Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland (Ann Arbor, 2005).
The oral history projects include Sławka Walczewska’s Feministki (Krakow, 2005), part of the Global Feminisms Project; Ewa Kondratowicz, Szminka na sztandarze. Kobiety Solidarnośći 1980–1989 (Warsaw, 2001); and Penn, Solidarity’s Secret.
See, for example, Shana Penn, “Media Representation of the Holocaust in Poland,” Rethinking Poles and Jews: Troubled Past, Brighter Future, ed. Robert Cherry and Annamaria Orla-Bukowska (Lanham, MD, 2007).
See, for example, recent books by Bożena Umińska-Keff, Postać a Cieniem. Portrety żydowek w Polskiej Literaturze (Warsaw, 2001); BARYKADY. Kroniki obsesyjne lat 2000–2006;Wydawnictwo eFKa, (Krakow 2006); and Utwór a Matce i Ojczyznie Wydawnictwo (Warsaw, 2008).
See Jerzy Tarasiewicz, In an Open Boat (Tavernier, FL, 2005).
See Anna Reading, Polish Women, Solidarity and Feminism (London, 1999), 201–12.
Teresa Hołowka, ed. Nikt nie rodzi się kobieta: Antologia tekstow feministycznych (Warsaw, 1982). According to Umińska -Keff, this same anthology is used in gender studies courses and remains the only second wave feminist reader in Poland today.
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© 2009 Shana Penn and Jill Massino
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Penn, S. (2009). Writing Themselves into History: Two Feminists Recall Their Political Development in the People’s Republic of Poland. In: Penn, S., Massino, J. (eds) Gender Politics and Everyday Life in State Socialist Eastern and Central Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230101579_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230101579_13
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