Paper Titles & Abstracts

Post-socialist states have shown comparatively high full-time employment of women since the 1950s. Much of the earlier literature argues that state socialism eroded the bonds of family life and that its family policies freed women to join the labour force. Early scholarship on transition from socialism to capitalism presupposed an increase in traditionalism in attitudes, practices and policies, and argued that the ideological climate would push women into traditional relationships, out of the labour force. Empirical evidence for such theses is scarce, and a compelling trend can be identified when narrowing the focus to employment patterns of women in the phase of "active motherhood in [their] biographies" (Pfau-Effinger 2004a: 2): employment rates for women without pre-schoolers contrast sharply with the employment rates for women with preschoolers. Whilst the former have been similarly high among the eight post-socialist countries, the latter range from the lowest 30 per cent in Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, to about 90 per cent in Slovenia. This shift in employment practices seems at odds with the re-traditionalization thesis which argues that trends in mothers' employment would be similar among these countries. The puzzle is what accounts for such behavioural change among women with young children and those without. This paper seeks to explore family policies in post-socialist EU member states and aims to show whether, and how, current trends in care/work integration practices have been influenced by the historical-institutional developments during the period of state socialism. A longer scan produces a picture of continuity, and indicates that treating these countries as a distinct regime type masks an interesting and nuanced story. Paper shows that state socialism put them on different paths, and the social inheritance continues to exert a powerful effect on their family policies and social practices in the post-socialist period.