The Unbearable Lightness of Women’s Rights?
The Unbearable Lightness of Women’s Rights?

Summary/Abstract: WAGNEROVÁ, Alena: Žena za socialismu: Československo 1945–1974 a refl exe vývoje před rokem 1989 a po něm [Woman under socialism: Czechoslovakia 1945–1974 and the refl ection of the development before and after 1989]. (Gender sondy [Gender probes], Vol. 12.) Translated from German by the author. Praha, Sociologické nakladatelství 2017, 262 pages, ISBN 978-80-7419-252-4. The publication is a Czech translation of Alena Wagner s book Die Frau im Sozialismus: Beispiel ČSSR (Hamburg: Hoffmann & Campe, 1974) which was originally published in German, supplemented by several later essays dealing with the situation of women and women’s movements in Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic) and the Federal Republic of Germany. The Czech writer and cultural historian explains her motivation to write the book by a sharp contrast between the emancipated status of women in Czechoslovakia and the traditional patriarchal model she encountered after her arrival to West Germany in the early 1970s. Based on results of previous sociological surveys, she used the example of Czechoslovakia to describe the model of socialist emancipation characterized by a high level of employment of women and their full equality under the law. The reviewer believes the forty years old study of Alena Wagner is very remarkable, primarily because the authoress analyzes gender issues (without actually using the term “gender”) against a specific historical background, an aspect that is often absent in today’s works in the field of gender studies; she also foresees findings of later sociological analyses, and weighs pros and cons of the emancipation model she analyzes.

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