Frauen

Editorial
Domestic Maids
in the 21 st Century
The focus on “Women in the East and in the West” is long overdue,
as this theme includes those social areas of our lives that we come
into daily contact with and therefore most intensively touch each of
us, man and woman alike: partnership, family, motherhood and fatherhood,
children, love, health, education and work. It is astonishing
how the relationship between women and men can serve as a
seismograph on the condition of a society, its identity. On account
of this, and against a background of increasing globalisation and in
context of a need for a new national and social self-discovery, above
all in Eastern Europe, current themes such as equal rights between
men and women, the rearing of children and the family are being so
emotionally and intensively debated.
Taking a look at the young democracies in Eastern Europe one notices
with a degree of astonishment that many of the discussions going
on there at the moment, for example regarding abortion and childcare,
led to a return to traditional role models after 1989. Although it
ought to be said that, due at least in part to the male personality cult
of Communism, women under that system ultimately also failed to
break through the “glass ceiling”.
After the fall of Communism, although it had been allowed during the
socialist era, abortion was again made punishable in Poland. Many
childcare facilities that could be used free of charge or for a small
fee in communist countries were closed down for reasons of costs
in the era of market-economy and profit-oriented thinking. Due in
part to this situation many women have found themselves forced to
withdraw from working life over the last 18 years, whereas before
the collapse of the Iron Curtain they had been able to work full time,
also in traditionally male dominated professions. The increase in
couples having fewer or no children at all has by now become a serious
problem in the EU. Due to the difficult job situation in their own
countries women from Eastern Europe work (generally illegally) as
carers of the elderly, cleaning women or even as prostitutes in the
West, while their husbands at home look after the household and the
children – in the best of cases. This is a new and yet old “domestic
maid” situation with exchanged role models that we know originally
from the 19th century and had thought was long outdated.
But there are, increasingly, also positive things to report, the everyday
heroines, the successful women and those who simply live with
equality and attempt to implement it on a daily basis.
We relate the stories of all these women in the current “Report”, and
we are aware that this time the contributions are of a more serious
nature, but the theme is unfortunately still a serious one, one that
should not be taken lightly, a highly political matter that is worth
contemplation by both men and women.
With kind regards,
Redaktionsbuero
Antje Mayer und Manuela Hötzl
www.redaktionsbuero.at
www.kontakt.erstebankgroup.net/report
MAGAZINE FOR ARTS AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE / Editorial
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