Anotace
Women’s rights in Modern Czech History
Lecturer: Mgr. et Mgr. Jaromír Dvořák
Annotation
The course focuses on the evolution of women's roles in modern Czech society from the end of the Habsburg Monarchy to the present. The course ends with a discussion of the current status of the so-called Istanbul Convention and is chronologically constrained by the founding of the first women's cultural, educational, and support institutions in the 1860s. The issue is defined territorially by the territory of the Czech Lands, but the course also reflects the evolution of human rights in state and supranational entities of which the Czech Lands were a part. The course's goal is to familiarise students with both the specific evolution of women's positions in Czech society and the human rights influences that have had an impact on the Central European environment. Space is allotted during the interpretation to the three basic levels of the given issue, where the demands of the women's movement articulated in the press and programme statements of women's organisations (the idea of an ideal state) are first analysed within the context of individual periods. This is followed by a reflection on the women's issue from the standpoint of objective legislation (legal status), while space is also devoted to the actual position of women in society at the time (factual status). The student will not only become acquainted with the specific historical realities of the Czech women's movement, but also with human rights theory.
Course Objectives
The course aims to familiarise foreign students with the concept of women's human rights in Central Europe, using specific historical developments in the Czech lands as examples. The entire course is designed to help students understand the fundamentals of the issue and then apply methodological principles when studying human rights issues in a variety of cultural and historical contexts.