Women's Vital Voices: The Costs of Exclusion in Eastern Europe

Swanee Hunt

From Foreign Affairs, July/ August 1997

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Summary:  Post-communism has been bad for women in Eastern Europe: their representation, employment, and safety have suffered. America must support women leaders and entrepreneurs for the transition to democracy and capitalism to be complete.

Swanee Hunt is U.S. Ambassador to Austria.

The advent of democracy in the former communist states of Europe brings both much promise and, as we are learning, much peril. For millions, the complexion of life has evolved from red to rose-colored to raw. A monolithic nemesis has been replaced by a perplexing variety of threats to stability in this fragile region, with expressions of democracy frequently drowned out by the noises of intolerance and repression.

In this brave new world, the voices of women are vital to healthy social and political discourse. The dramatically low status of women in post-communist Europe is an issue that goes beyond the well-being of women per se to the fostering of economic development and democracy. American interests require that we help the region's women carve out their rightful place in the mainstream of society.

ON THE MARGINS OF DEMOCRACY

Life under communism was a far cry from the auspicious pronouncements of fair treatment for all comrades. After all, equal access to parliamentary charades, empty shelves, and substandard health services was hardly a boon. With the fall of communism, the trappings of gender parity fell away, exposing discrimination against women that had persisted in the totalitarian state. The transition to capitalism has been difficult for most, but especially for women.

While the particulars of women's status differ from country to country, patterns of marginalization exist: diminished labor market access, increasing vulnerability to crime, loss of family-oriented social benefits, and exceedingly low parliamentary representation. In many countries in transition the feminization of poverty has been striking. In Russia, 87 percent of employed urban residents with incomes under $21 a month are female; above earnings of $315 a month, the figure nose-dives to 32 percent. To an even greater extent than in the West, Eastern European women tend to be clustered in the low-paying professions. But during this period of transition, ever-more-blatant gender-biased hiring and promotion practices are becoming deeply entrenched; job advertisements frequently specify "attractive female receptionist" or "male manager." In most of the new democracies, regulations prescribe early retirement for women, locking them into fixed incomes far removed from the free market.

Under the weight of gender-based layoffs, lower pay, and meager career opportunities, this downward spiral is accelerating. In Russia, women's wages slipped from 70 percent of men's in 1989 to 40 percent in 1995, and in most sectors women are the last hired and first fired. In Slovakia, between 1989 and 1993 women earned just over half what men did -- although more women were university graduates. In Belarus, where the majority of specialists are female, women search for a job three times longer than their male counterparts.

The slower the economic growth, the more severe is women's disadvantage. Employment gaps between women and men are least apparent in Poland and the Czech Republic, which are thriving. In countries experiencing more difficult transitions, the gap is larger. In Ukraine, for example, women constitute 70 percent of the unemployed, and the trend is sharply worsening. The underlying ...

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