Hungarian Studies Review Spring-Fall, 1999 [antikvár]

Women and Hungary: An Introduction Agatha Schwartz and Marlene Kadar To date, the participation of Hungárián women in various aspects of public life has not been sufficiently documented. Hungárián women's participation in both politics and the arts has been recognized, if at all, mainly in relation to the role Hungárián women fulfilled as mothers and wives and supporters of men in their fight for various causes. Or, as for the arts, their work has been measured by standards set by a largely maledominated establishment whose interests do not necessarily serve the interests of women writers and artists. Often the contributions of women to the culture both in Hungary proper and in the Diaspora have been undervalued or misinterpreted according to masculinist norms of quality, aesthetics and reason. It is no surprise that in Hungary, as in Western Europe and North America, women's intellectual work is denigrated as trivial, dealing with topics not considered adequately "universal" to be taken seriously by the legitimate judges of taste and value. During the communist era in Hungary, publications about women's issues were scarce, and a critique of the state socialist interpretation of "the woman question" was all but forbidden. According to communist party doctrine, women were emancipated by their equal right to and acquisition of paid labour. Hungárián women, like Russian women, were portrayed as happy workers, released from the drudgery of home and hearth. Nevertheless, there were signs of equity in the public sphere: women had the right to work and were paid the same salary for the same type of work as men. Moreover, the state provided inexpensive childcare. But the ideology that supported these otherwise progressive initiatives was conventional, unchanged and oppressive for women in the family and in other aspects of both the priváté and public spheres. Thus, women still tolerated oppressive laws and social controls in Hungary. They persevered the double burden of paid productive labour and unpaid "unproduc-