PVP 2 - Women in the Czech Lands during the 1948 – 1989 period: The depiction created by the regime versus the real woman

Syllabus

1) The development of the position of women in the Czech lands before 1948

2) Creating the depiction of women during the 1948 - 1989 period and the role played by art and the media in this process

3) Women and education

4) Women in the workplace

5) Women and maternity

6) Women in the family

7) Femininity, physicality and women’s health

8) The Christian woman

9) Women in their free time

10) Women and fashion

11) Women in positions of authority

12) Women in the political opposition

13) Women in prison

Annotation

In every society there exists a difference between the depiction of women as presented by the media and the arts, and reality. In totalitarian Czechoslovakia, however, this difference was dramatically widened by the governing regime. As the depiction created by the regime reflected reality less and less, the more stubbornly did the regime insist on its portrayal. This was, in part, so they could transform women into the desired depiction by portraying a model to aspire to, and in part because they were deceiving both themselves and their citizens that the situation was indeed the one they were portraying to women.

Both the depiction of women living in the Czech lands and their actual lives developed and mutually influenced each other during the course of the four decades, and were full of paradoxes. Put simply, the tougher the regime became, the more widespread the official depiction of women became, and their opportunities in real life became more restricted.

There were noticeable changes over forty years, not only in the education of women or their engagement in employment processes, i.e., the essential areas in which development more or less took the direction of the regime’s efforts, but also in peripheral areas, such as the social structure of imprisoned women or those that practised the Christian faith. It was precisely in these marginal areas where the depiction dictated by the regime actually radically departed from reality.

This subject will be approached from an historical science perspective, however, for a deeper understanding, some points will be supplemented with sociological and psychological reflection. During each lecture numerous visual sources will be shown (accompanied by unofficial translations where necessary).