At the end of the Second World War, women took an active part in the renais sance of the republic. Economic motives as well as enthusiasm played an important part in spurring their participation. Little by little a new situation was created within the family, where previously patriarchal organization and the image of woman as mother and housekeeper had been dominant. After February 1948 [the Communist takeover] women were invited to take part in the common cause of constructing Socialism and they were promised that society would create very favourable conditions for them.
At the same time legal equality for women was declared and embodied in the constitution of May 1948. Women took jobs in sectors traditionally reserved for men, such as mining. Men's wages began to decrease so that the wage of the woman became increasingly necessary for the family budget. But the development of social services that had been promised went forward very slowly and education failed to advance. If there was no grand mother in the family, children would be sent to the creche when they were three months old.
Emancipation in work only
Furthermore, women were only emancipated in the framework of work. Their wages were, and still are in most cases, lower than men's. Housework is done free as an additional obligation. In our social consciousness, the education of children is considered among women's main tasks, along with cooking, needlework, flower growing and inventing dressmaking patterns.
There is nothing in theory to stop women occupying the post of director, playing the same role as a man in politics, dedicating themselves to social activity or improving their professional qualifications. But first of all they have to get the children off to school, clean the windows and the floors, do the washing up and the laundry, do the ironing, sew buttons back on and do the cooking for the whole family. After having finished the thousand and one tasks, which extend from the preparation of the family holiday programme to the purchase of toilet paper, women can do whatever men do.
The question is to know if there have been and are many female personalities able to overcome such conditions, and, a sub-question, how many men would be able to develop themselves in such conditions of emancipation. A mother responsi-
Czech women face the
CZECHOSLOVAKIA Czech committee supported the creation of a new movement, the Movement for the Emancipation of Women in Bohemia and Moravia (led by Eleonora Slavickova), and took part in the elections via this committee. However, in January 1990, the number of women in the Assembly in fact dropped to 21.6% [this assembly being
WHILE no clearly feminist current has yet emerged in post-Stalinist Czechoslovakia, a number of women-based political initiatives have seen the light of day. Alena Valterova, the author of the article we publish below, has been involved in several of these, notably the "Political Party of the Women and Mothers of Czechoslovakia".
The article, which has been shortened for space reasons, first appeared in the magazine Zena (woman), and gives some sense of the current state of thinking about the "woman question" in Czechoslovakia.
ALENA VALTEROVA ble for two children has in these conditions to have an ability (even a talent) for organizing her daily life equivalent to that of a secretary in a medium sized enterprise. Furthermore, women know the price of a life. They know what it means to bring up a child before it can take its place among the "members of our toiling class";
a forced adaptation of the women, and through them of the children, to the ways of thinking, action and organization of the men being at all times required.
In Czechoslovakia, 94% of women of working age have a job — the highest figure in the world. In Mlady svet ["Young
World"], M. Malousek has published the results of an opinion poll on the assistance given by men to their spouses in housework. Some 50% of men give no help in the home, the rest give a maximum of an hour and a half a day. Women, on the other hand, must spend four to six hours a day on housework. Men do the things they find entertaining or that they want to do.
The women do the rest. The same is true of the national economy. Men are better paid for performing heavy work or when they hold leadership functions. And women do the rest whatever their working con-
Women sicker than men
Last March, the prime minister of the
Czech government, in his report on the situation in the Czech Republic, wrote:
"From 1970 to 1985 the number of men falling sick has risen by 30% and the number of women by 46%." And everybody knows the different between a man and an woman who has a cold.
Women account for nearly a half of the national economy's total production. Over the past forty years women have had only the most minimal and token representation in all the decisions making structures of the economy, services, health, education, arms and the environment.
Because of this, women's traditional "spheres" (aesthetics, tenderness, family life, the raising of children) have been considerably reduced. Women have been appreciated for their success in the male "spheres": professional success, participation in political life, drinking of alcohol, smoking and so on. In the course of time it has become customary to depict Czech and Slovak women only as passive and incapable, supposedly for a crisis in the family and causing great moral damage to the children. In the same period of time, those qualified specialists, the men, have proved incapable of producing sanitary towels.
All in the past?
You are going to reply that all this is of the past. In November 1989, there was the velvet revolution. During the demonstrations we won our liberty and there after everything has been better. The single women's organization, the Women's Union, of which 16% of the country's women are members, 80% of them with no party affiliation, has since been in deep crisis. This crisis has been all the deeper in that the Union's committees -80% of whose members were Communists — have collapsed, without taking into account the activity of the different sections or the problems of women at a national level. In the Slovak republic the organization has changed its name.
On February 3, 1990, the Central Committee of the Women's Union issued a proclamation in which it promised to ensure that at least a third of Federal Assembly deputies were women, before winding itself up. The sections of the coopted on the base of the previously existing Assembly]. There was only one in the federal Government of
National Entente, in control of ministerial budgets; there were three women in the
Czech government and one in the Slovak government. Six months later, a committee for women's and family questions was born in Slovakia bringing together organizations both old and new. There was even talk of the creation of a ministry for the family in Slovakia.
The representation of women on the electoral lists of the various political hey ties was below 25%. Furthermore, were usually put at the bottom of the slates. After the June 1990 elections, the proportion of women in the Federal Assembly had dropped to 10%. In Slovakia there are now no women in the government, so that the proposal to create a new commission for women has remained a dead letter. There is only one woman in the Czech government and there is no women's commission there either. At the federal level, things are no different; the only woman has no brief for women's issues.
No democracy without women's representation
In the same framework, I cannot resist quoting a comment by Ms. Dohnal, the first Austrian woman to become a minister: "if there are less than 30% of women in the assembly, then there is no democracy either." It is true that last July the president expressed his astonishment that there were no women around him. This was very nice of him, but that was it. Nobody in official circles shows any interest in
In recent times, women have been criticizing one another. They discuss as they wait in line. Their conversations are about daily life reveal the hope that things are not going to stay the same, that things are not so bad, that someone has some explaining to do. And if you ask them what they are going to do themselves, they all reply: "But what can / do?"
The statistics have already for a long time shown that a mother responsible for two children can only expect to sleep for between five and seven hours a night, that Saturday is a day off only for men, that the working day in Czechoslovakia is the longest in Europe, and that women have a shopping bag with them at all times. However, if women do not begin to get organized, they can only expect one thing: that their situation and that of their children 23 will get still worse. July 22, 1991• #211 International Viewpoint
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market
The labours of Father
CZECHOSLOVAKIA / HAITI
And how are things in fact developing?
show took place in the framework of the new democracy, even before the draft law on political parties was ready. At the moment when a shortage of medicines was becoming apparent, a heated debate was taking place on the state logo. While people were keen to start in business and create real competition, the problem of the name of the state was being dealt with. Street names have been changed, but our children do not have the right to choose their
The new assembly stated that it was necessary to rapidly adopt a wide range of new and better laws; the deputies sorted out the issue of their salaries and went on holiday. The end of 1990 was seen in with discussions on jurisdiction and the new year was greeted with the freeing of prices, although business possibilities remain highly restricted, without talking of foreign competition.
Women and the market
In this situation, what are women going to do? Czechoslovak society is in the process of moving towards democracy and a market economy. The questions of method, of possibility and of time are still posed but the tendency is given. And what do we know of the problems of women and of the family in the developed coun tries? Last March I received a letter from the European Union of Christian Women, informing me of the situation of women in the market economies, which is worse
It is necessary that women become conscious of their capacities and begin to use them both for the benefit of their family and in the general interest. Today, there are at least 30 initiatives in Czechoslovakia whose activity is turned towards the problems of women and the family. The political party for women in the CSFR is in the process of being born. "Women's"
sections exist in several parties also. All develop their centers of interest and their personality, to resolve their problems and those of others, to get involved in political parties which have an established programme and a solid structure.
The political movements in Czechoslovakia are formations created in haste on the eve of the elections, without structure or activity, whose members cannot control their representatives. It is interesting for example that the Independent Erotic
Initiative counts in its ranks more members than all the womens' organizations
Finally, I pose the following question;
how much time will it take women to understand their situation? Can they take part in the development of the society? If they are not capable of doing so, they will have neither the possibility nor the right - to complain about their destiny. International Viewpoint #211 • July 22, 1991
Aristide
"DECHOUKAY", "balewouze" and "lavalas" - three words in Creole that you need to know if you want to follow the situation in Haiti. ARTHUR MAHON
DECHOUKAY" means to dig up a tree by the roots. This term was used at the time of the departure of the dictator Duvalier. The population attacked symbols of Duvalierism and hunted down the tontonmacoutes (the Duvalierist armed gangs). The dechoukay was interrupted by the intervention of the army, who protected the tonton-macoute leaders, Catholic hierarchy, who issued an appeal for national reconciliation.
"Balewouze" means to sweep clean after watering the soil, in order to be able to pick up all the dust. This term was employed by Jean-Bertrand Aristide and several popular organizations in autumn 1987 before the November 29 elections, which the Duvalierists and military interrupted with a bloodbath. meant: before talking about elections, there had to be a big cleanout of tontonmacoutes. The balewouze did not take place, but something similar to it happened. Following military outrages, tens of thousands of people formed defence brigades to protect the popular neighbourhoods of the capital in the week preceding the November 29, 1987 elections. The army used force to stop
"Lavalas" is a torrent that sweeps away everything in its course. In October 1990, Jean-Bertrand Aristide conducted his election campaign under the sign of lavalas. Since then the torrent has twice descended into the streets of Port-au-
On December 16, 1990, the mobilization of the popular neighbourhoods prevented attempted fraud during the election, and, on the night of January 6/7, 1991, when the radio announced the coup by Roger Lafontant, a former interior minister of Duvalier, the people of the capital once again came out into the streets. Port-au-Prince was covered with barricades and 50,000 people massed in front of the National Palace, which Lafontant had seized. The following days, hundreds of Duvalierists were lynched or burnt in the capital and elsewhere. And the inhabitants of the rich neighbourhoods trembled before groups of youth who had come to
"dechouker" the Duvalierists' houses.
These three terms, "dechoukay",
"balewouze" and "lavalas" have a synonym: insurrection. They recall the slave insurrection whose bicentenary will be celebrated on August 22, 1991.
And it was to the words of the song of that insurrection, "Grenadiers on the attack" that the inhabitants of the coun try's second largest city, Cap Haitien, came into the streets on January 7, 1991.
Since Duvalier's downfall, there have been several days of popular explosion in the towns and cities of Haiti, but they have petered out and have been followed by long periods of calm, and even discouragement.
"Too hot for a civilian president"
Such uprisings have their roots in the extreme oppression and social inequality in Haiti. And they explain why, over the past five years, the United States has not succeeded in imposing a political solution which enjoys any legitimacy, why general Avril said: "in Haiti chair is too hot for a civilian" and why Jean-Bertrand despite being considered public enemy number one by the conservative forces and expelled by his religious order. The days following Lafontant's attempted coup made a deep impression on the bourgeoisie and ruled out further such attempts for the moment.
In October 1990 Jean-Bertrand Aristide decided to run in the presidential elections because it was necessary to mobilize the people and create a shock, after the defeats and demobilization which followed November 1987. It soon became clear that it was not just a question of blocking the road to the Duvalierists, most of whom had been prohibited from standing in the elections by the electoral council. In fact, there was a chance that Aristide would win.
He therefore started to stress certain themes: the US ambassador had offered the comment "after the ball, the drums sound heavy". Aristide, expressing Haitian pride faced with American arroreplied with proverb: "with many hands, the work becomes easy". His campaign took place around three axes: justice, open goverment and participation. On the other hand Aristide's campaign programme put forward nothing specific beyond what was
HAITI was in fact on offer was the possibility of LA DEMOCRATIe a "democratic transition". As he made clear at the beginning of the electoral campaign: "what is important is to recognize the moment where history gives us a rendezvous for a tactical alliance. Today that alliance must express itself as an
'operation Lavalas' to close the road to
This was to be not only an alliance between political currents, between social sectors with different interests, an alliance whose effects were to go beyond the election. This idea in the electoral "The state must find an equilibrium based on respect, justice and the law between what the workers demand and what the private sector needs to be encouraged to pur money into the country and help it to
Vague electoral programme
A second reason for the vagueness of the electoral programme is that Aristide wanted to neutralize or reassure the army and imperialism, so that they would allow the elections to take place. The third reason is that in Haiti a reform programme is largely illusory if it is not accompanied by mobilization and organization, something on which Aristide insisted during the campaign and even afterwards, talk-
"participatory democracy" "The people is the main actor, we will do only what the people tells us to do," he