Chapter 6: Gender and Higher Education: The Hungarian Case

The women's politics of the state-socialist period were characterized by “state feminism.” As a pillar of emancipation, “full employment” appeared as an external, state-imposed constraint. At the same time, it did not result in economic equality (strong segregation in employment, few female managers, women's wages lagged behind men by about a quarter or a third). Furthermore, this full employment did not result in the extinction of the paternalistic family ideal – women spent three to four times more time doing domestic work than men. Women's political participation was high in a parliament without real political power, but this did not reflect the real social situation of women, nor did they increase their political influence. The task of a single, “official” women's movement was to involve women in productive work and to convey the ideology of the party to women. The introduction of measures that positively influenced the social situation of women was linked to the oppressive state, the rejection of which also resulted in the rejection of certain women's policy measures (e.g., rejection of women's quotas, official women's movements, etc.) (Kelemen, 2008).