RÓWNOUPRAWNIENIE PŁCI W DEBACIE PARLAMENTARNEJ SEJMU USTAWODAWCZEGO RP 1947–1952. ZARYS PROBLEMU
GENDER EQUALITY IN THE PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE OF T HE LEGISLATIVE SEJM OF1947–1952. AN OUTLINE

Summary/Abstract: The article contains an analysis of the nature of the parliamentary debate concerning equal rights of men and women – including protection of children’s rights – that took place at the Polish Legislative Sejm in the period from 1947 to 1952. The discussion offered here applies themethod of critical analysis of the content of available source material as well as the biographical method seeking to answer the questions who were the female MPs fighting for women’s rights in the period of Stalinism and whether their activity proved their agency. The source basis is transcripts of Sejm sittings, the press and literary memoirs. Female MPs such as M. Jaszczukowa, E. Pragierowa, I. Sztachelska, S. Garncarczyk and Z. Tomczyk were seeking to amend legislation so as to ensure the practical implementation of the gender equality principle. That was also a flagship slogan of the new communist people’s authorities at the start of the period known in historiography as Poland’s Stalinisation. Standards and regulations were debated that were to constitute a legal environment, and thus to make it possible for women to be active in various fields on an equal footing with men. The discord between postulates justified by ideology and cultural norms did not stop legislative amendments. The female MPs initiating that change could have felt the sense of agency and their actions certainly contributed to other changes towards gender equality in Poland of that time.

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