Miroiu 2010

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Not the Right Moment! Women

and the Politics of Endless Delay
in Romania
Mihaela Miroiu
Version of record first published: 13 Sep 2010.
To cite this article: Mihaela Miroiu (2010): Not the Right Moment! Women and the
Politics of Endless Delay in Romania, Women's History Review, 19:4, 575-593
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Womens History Review
Vol. 19, No. 4, September 2010, pp. 575593
Not the Right Moment! Women

and the Politics of Endless Delay
in Romania1
Downloaded by [Fondren Library, Rice University ] at 03:19 29 November 2012
Mihaela Miroiu
The history of gender policies and feminism in Romania and, more generally, in Eastern
Womens
10.1080/09612025.2010.502402
RWHR_A_502402.sgm
0961-2025
Original
Taylor
402010
19
mihaela_miroiu@yahoo.com
MichaelaMiroiu
00000September
and
& Article
Francis
History
(print)/1747-583X
FrancisReview
2010 (online)
Europe, bears little resemblance to its history in older and stronger democracies. Even
though feminisms emerged in Eastern Europe around the same time as in the West, here
they encountered a non-modern society. Then as now, Romanian feminists operated with
western knowledge in a very different context. The patriarchy of the peasant society and
that of the political class proved much stronger than their stuggle for rights. In post-
communist times, after the fall of state patriarchy (read: communism), the feminist lobby
of the authors generation (women around forty to fifty years old) proved much weaker
than the internal conservative pressure towards the old gender status quo, as well as later
on, weaker than the paternalism of the European Union, to which feminists owed at least
their current room service, costless state feminism.
Introduction
From the perspective of womens interests, what has been a constant feature of Roma-
nian politics since the beginning of political modernity? The frequently offered
response by the politicians in power comes to mind: Dont ask for civil or political
rights or equal opportunities! This is not the right moment! We have other priorities.
This is what the first wave of Romanian feminists were told in 1848; this is what we,
Mihaela Miroiu is Professor of Political Sciences in the Political Science Faculty at the National School for Political
Studies and Public Administration (NSPSA), Bucharest, Romania. She developed the first MA programme in
Gender Studies (1998). Miroiu is the author of twelve books published in Romanian including Road to Autonomy:
feminist political theories (Polirom, 2004); Priceless Women (Polirom, 2006) and Beyond Angels and Devils: ethics in
the Romanian politics (Polirom, 2007). She has edited and co-edited nine other books, most of them on feminism,
including a Feminist Lexicon (Polirom, 2002). Correspondence to: Mihaela Miroiu, Professor of Political Sciences,
Political Science Faculty, National School for Political Studies and Public Administration (NSPSA), Povernei
Street 6-8, District I, Bucharest, Romania. Email: mihaela_miroiu@yahoo.com
ISSN 09612025 (print)/ISSN 1747583X (online)/10/04057519 2010 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/09612025.2010.502402
576 M. Miroiu
present-day feminists, have been told for the past eighteen years of post-communism.
The tendency to postpone the recognition of womens rights and equal opportunities
is certainly not specific to our case. To most readers, the fact that women have been
waiting for their turn, left behind all other political minorities, is common knowledge.
Unlike our western colleagues, mainly from United States, Great Britain and France,
in Eastern Europe we lack the experience of second-wave feminism (that is, the move-
ment that began in most western countries after 1960). This movement stressed gender
differences and the re-evaluation of womens experiences. The absence of this move-
ment in Romania matters a lot in terms of continuity, coherence, and a sense of the
history of womens rights.
Second-wave feminism was the most non-conformist, as well as the most intellectu-
ally creative, of feminist movements. Women defined themselves and explained them-
selves, made their private experiences public, and transformed them into political
interests. Some feminist projects became state policy: family rights; control over sexu-
ality and reproduction; equal pay for equal work; state support for child rearing;2 access
to professions commonly thought of as masculine, including careers in the army, in
politics and in administration; tougher laws on rape, and the classification of marital
rape as a crime; the punishment of pornography, prostitution, sexual harassment, and
domestic violence; policies that opposed sexism in education, employment, and the
media. No less important was the fact that, thanks to research programmes in womens
studies, feminism, and gender studies, women developed their creativity in many areas.
Second-wave feminisms were not allowed to emerge in Eastern Europe. During the
same historical period, as in other Central and Eastern European states, communism
played a dual role for women: that of a supporter and that of an oppressor. The most
positive aspects of the system were its support for child rearing as well as full access to
education and employment, its apparently gender-neutral ideology, and its promotion
of emancipation through work. Its most oppressive action was the abolition of funda-
mental rights, including the right to control ones reproductive capacities. The new
man (a generic term for every communist human being) of the official ideology was
genderless, anonymous and ready for self-sacrifice. Personal and private interests were
illegitimate.3
The post-communist era must recover the feminism of affirmative action and equal
opportunities. This is the only way to resist post-communist regimes tendency to
promote modern forms of patriarchy, more specifically the increase in womens
economic dependency that is associated with the cultural rebirth of traditional patriar-
chy, the pervasive post-feminism of the media, and also what I call room-service polit-
ical feminism which has been generated by the adoption of the Acquis communitaire of
the European Union.4
Political Modernization: Nation and men first! Stay in line! (18481946)

Modern feminism was essentially shaped in the countries of Western Europe and
North America during the process of industrialization. Due to the resulting separation
of public and private spheres, and between productive and reproductive work,
Womens History Review 577
traditional patriarchy was replaced by, or transformed into, modern patriarchy, under
which women became dependent on men for income and status. Industrialization
created a large number of non-earning housewives who found themselves under the
authority of their husbands who worked for income. Womens dependence now
affected not only their traditional cultural, judicial and political status, but also their
economic survival and social identity.
Romania, like other East European countries, has a very different history. An early
feminism of equality originated in the first half of the nineteenth century, but did not
develop in the same way as in the industrialized West. The main form of production
was manual and agricultural, based especially on the organization of the traditional
peasant community. Women as well as men played an important role in the household
as producers (80% of the economy was based on agriculture).
The embryonic process of industrialization did not extend to society at large. The
industrial revolution that started after 1859 only scratched the surface of production
and had little effect on peasant agriculture, which remained pre-industrial. Therefore,
there was no real separation between domestic and reproductive and productive work,
between public and private spheres. The proportion of housewives in the total popula-
tion was very low and as a consequence, the survival of women was not significantly
dependent on men.
The thinkers and politicians of the modernization period entertained, with a few
exceptions, traditional views concerning the rights of women. These thinkers believed
that womens main vocation was self-sacrifice for the benefit of the family. Thus, for
Romanian self-proclaimed liberals of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth
century, women shared an ethic of self-denial, an unconditional devotion to the family.
Their duty was to educate the nation morally. Liberals paid homage to the woman as
Madonna, whose power comes from love: She is an angelic being, a goddess who lives
off our lives, who has no other joy than our joys, no other happiness than our
happiness.5
This romantic ethical approach dominated the so-called Romanian liberal
discourse (as opposed to the feudal conservative one). It served as the mainstream
conception of the day: all men are equal, liberals argued, but women have something
special which placed them closer to goddesses. The moral idealization of women went
hand in hand with their exclusion from politics. Women were deprived of autonomy
because they were entitled to citizenship as mothers and wives rather than as persons.
They were seen as caregivers and caretakers and as heroines of the private sphere.
There were of course exceptions, such as Ion Ghica (1859), one of the very few
Romanian politicians who insisted on the need for self-government (autonomy) at an
individual level, as well as on the relationship between the financial independence and
the autonomy of women.
The absence of policies fostering personal autonomy explains the failure of modern-
ization efforts. Cezar Bolliac, Romanian poet and publicist, believed that women had a
strong civilizing role and requested that they be granted the right to vote, a full status
as citizens. Stefan Zeletin, Romanian economist and sociologist, argued in 1927 that
]Sl[ed
ci
womens dependency would disappear only if they worked for a wage and if the state
578 M. Miroiu
abandon the idea that only the head of the family represented a proper subject of
policy.6
Despite its inherent limitations, classical Romanian liberalism was progressive by
comparison with conservatism. Conservatives insisted on inheritance based on the
principle of male primogeniture and on treating women as vulnerable and always in
need of protection. The liberal view was also more favourable to women than nation-
alist thought, and especially legionarism (Romanian fascism). To the nationalists and
especially to so-called legionnaires women mattered only because of their ability to
give birth to and raise men. Their only value was as mothers. Because the country
needed virile values and attitudes, only men could be historical agents. Everything that
was feminine was despised.7

Naturally, educated women in the countrys influential circles of the early stage of
political modernization, who had access to information and culture beyond the tradi-
tional borders, passively accepted neither deification at the expense of rights, nor social
and economic injustice. The particular evolution of Romanian feminism arises, as in
other Eastern European countries, from the fact that women dominated the agricul-
tural production of the peasant household while the modernization of society
remained a superficial phenomenon. Before the arrival of communism, 80% of the
countrys population consisted of peasants. As a consequence, the development of a
broad feminist movement, beyond the small groups of educated women in the cities,
was impossible.
Nonetheless, the need for such a movement arose primarily due to womens inferior
legal status. As a result, legislative changes became a paramount target. The documents
of the age show that the legal status of Romanian women was so humiliating as to fall
below the level of human dignity.8 Womens status continued to be low during the early
period of modernizaton and after the Revolution of 1848. The 1866 Civil Code, a piece
of legislation inspired by the Napoleonic tradition and passed under the Constitutional
monarchy, disempowered women economically and socially, placing them in the same
category as minors and idiots.9 Therefore in 1896 the Romanian Womens League,
based in Iasi, requested the Assembly of Deputies (the equivalent of a Parliament) to
]ces[d
li
remove the married woman from the category of minors and to acknowledge her right
to dispose of her wealth as she sees fit.10 However, this petition was disregarded.
In the absence of a solid tradition that affirmed the pursuit of happiness and
personal fulfilment as legitimate human goals, the feminists of the modernization
period could only urge women to sacrifice themselves for causes other than the family.
In their arguments, they used nationalist and collectivist concepts which emphasized
goals and pursuits different from their individual interests. Maria Bucur explored the
meanings bestowed by Romanian feminists on the idea of citizenship between 1880
and 1918. She shows clearly that they shared a paternalistic view, stressing civic
responsibility more than individual rights.
However, Bucur argues that after 1890 nationalist rhetoric lost ground massively in
the approaches of Romanian feminists. She assertsand I concurthat 100 years ago
feminists understood that the shaping of the nation per se does not lead to rights for
women.11 Feminists made radical demands that were frequently shaped in the
language of rights. The nationalist discourse that had been legitimated by the politics
of reunification of provinces inhabited by Romanians in a national state (1859) atro-
phied once Romanian feminists (e.g. Sofia Nadejde, Adela Xenopol, Eugenia de Reus
ab
ve][r
Ianculescu, Maria Flechtenmacher and Maria Butureanu) came into contact with the
]ced
lt[i
international feminist movement. In 1896 Sofia Nadejde asked,12 We are fed up with
ab
ve][r
being treated as children and we demand to be treated as equal human beings. Is it

fair that some uncultured men should enjoy every right, while women, no matter how
superior in intelligence, should have no rights?13
In 1913, Maria Butureanu14 attacked the immense lie of the universal vote as long
]ced
lt[i
as it remained just a male vote. She called for an end to the pervasive contempt for
women, and added that it was high time for them to test their abilities and reason and
stop having recourse to tears in their conferences and writings in order to beg for their
rights.15 She believed that such appeals to emotion made women appear politically
inept. Dignity required uprightness, reason, and the recognition of rights. Not through
an educational system that stressed subordination, but only through freedom of
thought and action, would women be able to develop their minds.
These women defined political equality as the right to exist as a person with individ-
ual dignity, and to be freed from ancillary status. Otherwise, women would remain a
nothing that has value only if placed beside a man. By fully exercising their rights,
women would be able to escape male protection, which numbs our wills, paralyzes our
brains, and demeans our personalities.16
During the period before the elaboration and adoption of the 1923 Constitution
considered the most democratic one in our entire history before communismRoma-
nian feminists lobbied intensely for political rights. The most important figures in the
movement were, among others, Calypso Botez, Eleonora Stratilescu, Elena Meissner,
Maria Butureanu and Alexandrina Cantacuzino.17 Cantacuzino gave a regional and
international dimension to Romanian feminism by playing a leading role in the
creation of a Feminine Covenant in Central and Eastern Europe (1923) and becoming
vice-president of the International Council of Women (ICW). From the latter position
she influenced the position of the League of Nations and of other international organi-
zations with respect to womens rights.
Below are a few significant ideas in Calypso Botezs18 argument for full political rights:
The spirit of domination, the rule of male force have ensured that men get the
lions share. Worried about facing a rival armed with equal abilities, men made
sure that women were kept away from jobs where the latter could make them appear
inferior or, if they let women in, they paid them less in order to discourage and demo-
bilize them, to keep them in inescapable submission. To get a firm control of power,
men always knew how to craft a philosophy and an ethics that entitled them to keep
women in a position of lasting dependency The male law-maker granted woman
the solicitude and protection which she never asked for. In exchange he robbed her of
rights including the natural right to self-assertion. It is these rights that women are
claiming for themselves today.19
In 1919, Eleonora Stratilescu, a Ph.D. in Philosophy and feminist activist,20 provided

a good synthesis of the requests made by Romanian feminists: (a) in the area of
580 M. Miroiu
economics: equal pay for equal work; the protection of womens work and its outcome;
(b) in culture: access to all forms of education, careers and professional positions;
reconciliation between career and motherhood; desegregation of education and the
cultivation of the same values irrespective of sex; (c) in marriage and the family: full
equality of the spouses under law and in education; control of ones income irrespec-
tive of sex; allotment of a part of male income to the wife in consideration for her
household work; elimination of the moral double standard; disestablishment of marital
authority, the banning of prostitution; paternity tests; (d) in politics and society: equal
civil and political rights; the participation of women in all public offices, alongside and
under the same terms as men; and political education for women so that they may fully
exercise their rights.

While womens right to vote was not included in the 1923 Constitution, the latter did
mention that this right would be the object of a special law. The right would be granted
at an abstract right moment, as the politicians of the day were fond of saying. In 1929,
the right of women to vote in local elections was acknowledged. The Constitution of
Carol II and the voting act of 1939 granted the right to vote to women of thirty and
older, but under dictatorship this right was not exercised. The universal vote for indi-
viduals over eighteen irrespective of sex was introduced by the 1946 Constitution,21
quite a bit later than other European countries, including some neighbouring ones. In
other words, Romanian women voted for the first time in real free electionsthat is,
in elections in which they had a choice of political parties22in May 1990, after the fall
of the communist dictatorship.
The feminist movement in Romania faced a terrible backlash with the spread of the
legionnaire (fascist) ideology in the 1930s. Women were assigned solely maternal
virtues, and only when these served the national interest.23 Under the dictatorships in
the countrys history (the fascist one between 1939 and 1944, and the communist one
between 1948 and 1989), feminism was practically annihilated.
After 1946, the Eastern bloc entered a different process of development from that
followed by the West. Under communist dictatorship, feminism could not evolve.
West European and North American governments, together with Australia and New
Zealand, had created a political environment in which feminism could develop. The
second wave of feminism in the late 1960s in these societies advocated equal
opportunities and gender partnership.
Communism First! Forget Your Own Interests! (19471989)

From a moral and political normative perspective, in particular one related to the femi-
nist ideal of personal autonomy, I hold that there is a deep incompatibility between femi-
nism and communism.24 Even though communism proclaimed a gender-egalitarian
ideology and gender policies with favourable consequences for womens emancipation
and economic independence, this agenda was not feminist in intentions and meaning.
If there was some feminism in communism, its manifestations were at the individual,
unofficial levelrarely public and without political consequences. Patriarchy merely
changed its form, from a private to a state system of domination.25
Gender policy under communism wavered between the ideology of equality and the
reality of state patriarchy. Official dogma affirmed womens economic independence
from men, the status of work and life comrades for men and women, state support for
rearing children, equality in educational opportunity and womens political participa-
tion. However, as Jean Robinson argued26 this was a parafeminist (or pseudo-
feminist) neocorporatist agenda, implemented with the complicity of so-called
womens organizations, all under the party-state control.
Despite the partys control over the public agenda, there were still avowedly feminist
attempts at emancipation coming from influential public intellectuals27 such as the
journalists Ecaterina Oproiu and Stana Buzatu. In the 1970s, a time when we experi-
enced a degree of openness towards the West, Oproiu promoted the idea of emancipa-
tion, especially in relation to injustice in the domestic sphere.28 As long as women had
the monopoly of the burden of the household, any notion of equality would be impos-
sible, she argued. One may speak of domestic work, but not of domestic emancipa-
tion.29 She criticized womens double day, as well as the double standard used in the
media: male decision-makers were asked about their views on the economy and
production, while women were requested to give their opinions on reconciliation
between jobs and domestic work.
In her book The Condition of Women, a Dimension of Contemporary Progress (1977),
Stana Buzatu was critical of the traditional idea that the family is the sole source of
fulfilment for women, because it discourages women from developing to their full
potential. She described the wage gap among economic sectors. Buzatus argument
focused on economic independence, the only form of independence accepted by the
official ideology.
Both feminists were daughters of their time, believing that class solidarity was more
important than womens solidarity. They promoted the idea of emancipation within
rather than from communism. Few could imagine at the time that the system would
eventually collapse. Apart from these two women, my generation, which coincides with
the younger one of second-wave feminism, produced few feminists. The main reason
is that, in the 1980s, Romania became the most autarchic European communist state
(joining Albania) and every form of individual and academic relationship or exchange
at the international level was banned.
In my view, communism was useful, though less to the working class, than to the
nomenklatura;30 and, perhaps strangely, to the workers in western states. The latter
stood to gain from the communist threat (cold war propaganda), as their governments
were constrained to create welfare policies while preserving the capitalist system in
order to prove that communism was unnecessary as long as the workers were content.
To many feminists in the West, especially to the Marxist and socialist ones, commu-
nism seemed to be the place where feminist dreams came true. Only later did they
fully realize that the communist propaganda about womens equality provided an
attractive faade for a nightmarish reality.31
The communist Constitution of 1948 explicitly prohibited gender discrimination,
though unlike racism and nationalism, which were to be punished under the law,
sexism was not. In fact, the term sexism was not a concept in our vocabulary before
582 M. Miroiu
1989. It emerged after 1990 and is still rarely used. Under such circumstances, tradi-
tional patriarchy in daily informal habits remained untouched and the notion that
gender relations should be based on life comradeship was simply a piece of official
propaganda.32 Of course, in theory women had gained emancipation through
economic equality, political equality, equality in education, and equality in private life.
But the facts didnt follow the theory.
(a) Political Equality without Political Interests

In a sense, communism was comfortable: Relax, the Party will think for you! The
National Council of Women was founded to promote the Partys policy among
women. National womens organizations were attached to the Communist Party and
their programmes were only minimally emancipatory. Their chief purpose was rather
to support women in reaching some balance in their double workdays.
Formally, womens access to high-ranking positions in the state was unrestricted.
Communism enforced a quota system. The participation of women in the Partys lead-
ership increased constantly until reaching a figure close to 40%.33 Hierarchically,
women were present more at the lower levels of decision-making than at the top, yet it
is worth noting here that, unfortunately, it was only during communist times that
women came to the forefront of Romanian politics. Throughout Romanian history
there is no tradition whatsoeverwith the single exception of Ana Pauker, Vice Prime-
Minister and then Minister of Foreign Affairs, in the first communist cabinet, 1947
52of women in political life other than in their capacities as wives, mistresses or
daughters, and usually cast by public opinion in the role of a villain.
Early communist propaganda promoted the image of women as workers, building a
career, especially in industry. Later on (after 1971) emancipation became a less prom-
inent theme and gradually gave way to national communist propaganda, that stressed
motherhood for the benefit of the state, and the personality-cult of Elena Ceausescu and
]ces[d
li
her husband Nicolae, the state and party leader. The main arguments for the promotion
of women were no longer related to their professional abilities as employees, but rather
as mothers with a job and multiple children, persons devoted to the country.34
(b) Working Comrades

The 1948 Constitution promised to fulfil one of the fundamental demands of socialist
feminism: For equal work women are entitled to equal pay (Art. 21). Every able-
bodied citizen had the right and the duty to work. Individuals who did not work were
considered parasites (except for stay-at-home mothers with young children) and were
punished with six months imprisonment. Women amounted to about half of the
workforce (over 47% in 1989). Apparently, the conditions for economic equality were
ensured. Vladimir Pasti (2003) argued, however, that things were hardly as they
seemed: Communist gender policies reproduced the social domination of men, start-
ing with the flag, which represented a man with a hammer and a woman with a sickle,
given the already existing hierarchy of the two types of work.35
Socialism created its own patriarchy through a political hierarchy of economic
sectors based on the so-called social importance of the work (typical of a command
economy). The socially important branches (such as mining, heavy industries,
engines, constructions) were preponderantly occupied by men, while women were the
majority of the workforce in the less politically important ones (for example, textiles,
food industry, commerce, tourism). Even within the fields dominated numerically by
women the factory leaders were mostly men. Real socialism enforced the economic
domination of the communist man over the communist woman through a hierarchy
of occupations that justified inequalities in position and income.36 By the end of
communism, the income gap was real, though moderate. Usually the salaries in the
feminized domains were about one-third as high as those in the masculinized ones.
Generally, an individual income was insufficient for survival and the economic rela-
tionship of the couple was, therefore, one of interdependence.
(c) School Comrades

During the communist regime, education was mixed, free and accessible irrespective
of gender. In principle, women enjoyed equal access to every form and level of educa-
tion and they managed in fact to close most of the previously existing education gap.
In 1987, 50% of primary and secondary school students and 47% of university
students were girls and young women. Education became increasingly abstract, tech-
nical and unrelated to mens and womens real life concerns, including their feminin-
ity and masculinity. Feminine experiences were particularly neglected in academic
curricula. Women were pushed towards specializations within the comparatively
poorly paid professions through political decisions (prices, as well as wages, were not
set by the market, but through state planning). In education as well as in health, two
fields dominated by women, the base was deeply feminized and the top was male
dominated.
As an educational ideal, the new man was genderless and characterized by
attributes such as tenacity and obedience, collectivism, a sense of duty towards the
state and the party, self-sacrifice, and a concern for collective entities such as the
class and the nation which was not balanced by a respect for individual rights.
Education for freedom, competition and autonomy was available to neither males
nor females.
(d) Life Comrades?

The term private sphere is as suspect as its counterpart, the public sphere.37 The
state interfered with and controlled the private lives of individuals. Unlike democratic
capitalist states, which were founded on the principle of non-interference with the
privacy of the family and the person (with all its side-effects, such as the tacit tolera-
tion of domestic abuse and violence, which were among the chief subjects of second-
wave feminism), the Romanian communist state during its final decade determined
the consumption needs of individuals and controlled access to basic goods (food,
584 M. Miroiu
electricity, gas, size of living space). A more general form of intervention, which had
endured throughout the communist era, was in marriage. During the first stage, from
1948 until 1964, a man or a woman was required to be politically correct in his or her
marital choice. Criteria included the social class of the spouse, and his or her political
past or that of the prospective in-laws. A marriage that did not fulfil these criteria was
wrong and sinful from a communist point of view. In the nationalist stage of
communism (196589) other criteria were used to define sinful marriages: relations
abroad, correspondence, professional contacts. Such a marriage could affect ones
career and promotion opportunities.
Child rearing was partly taken over by the state, which funded factory nurseries and
kindergartens. The purposes of this policy were broader than just support for the rais-
ing of children. In particular, it was better for the parents to stay busy producing
because the state could control them more easily this way, and the party-state could
control childrens early education.
According to official ideology, the socialist family was based on the partnership of
life comrades. But that was only on the surface. Communist patriarchy upheld the
fathers domination in the family by giving him the state benefits that supported child-
rearing, while the mother bore the responsibility of raising the children. The state
established protective policies for mothers and children rather than parental responsi-
bility policies (of the parent and child sort), and so it did not undermine male
supremacy.38
One of the greatest hardships of women under communism was that of the double
workday in the absence of partnership between spouses and, in the 1980s, under condi-
tions of extreme scarcity. Thus, women were exploited at their working place (in
Marxist terms) by the patriarchal state, while in the family they were exploited by men.
Furthermore, just as in the case of men, scarcity forced women to have recourse to the
black market in order to obtain basic goods, thus involving them in what was legally a
crime. Because it was really impossible to live by the laws and Party constraints, most
adults were delinquents, trying to survive despite quotas on consumer goods, from
bread and milk, to gas and electricity.
A telling example of the states lack of interest in anything without direct political
relevance was its non-intervention in domestic violence or in other kinds of sexual
abuses. Family beatings, marital rape, and sexual harassment were not criminalized.
Prostitution and pornography, however, were criminal offences. In western countries
the issues mentioned above were placed on the public agenda precisely in the context
of second-wave feminism, a stage that was missed by communist countries. In Roma-
nia the Party alone could decide what issue was truly political and whether it deserved
a place on the political agenda.
But despite the glaring injustice and inequality perpetrated within the domestic
sphere, it is important to look at the familys positive significance. Family and private
life had become a place of refuge from official propaganda, sites of self-expression and
self-fulfilment where sceptical intelligence could be cultivated. The private sphere of
the family and close friends played, to many, the role of a barricade against the random
cruelty of official politics.
(e) Womens Wombs are State Property
The paternalist state usurped the patriarchal and patrilineal right of man to protect
the sexuality and wombs of women by disestablishing both mens legal control of these
matters, as well as womens control over female fertility.39
In Romania, the form of state interference with the most dramatic consequences
for private life was the pronatalist policy. Under Decree 770 of 1966 abortion was
banned because Nicolae Ceausescu, the head of the party-state and the Central
]ces[d
li
Committee of the Communist Party, decided to increase Romanias population in

order to increase significantly the number of those who would build up the next
stage of socialism: communism itself. There were no contraceptives and importing
them was banned. The Decree required a minimum of four children of each fertile
woman under forty-five. The unborn did not have rights as individuals, but were
considered only as potential statistics useful for predicting and achieving demo-
graphic change. Many maternity clinics officially registered newborns only as late as
three days after their birth so that, in the case if they died earlier, those infants
should be registered as aborted. Infant mortality was considered a far greater evil
than abortion and the way of concealing the real proportion was to falsify the statis-
tics, pretending that some of the children had never been born, but had been
aborted. Caesarean births decreased dramatically in frequency because they entitled
the mother to an abortion during the first two years after the birth. Hospitals had a
Caesarean planning quota that allowed them to perform only two procedures a
month, so women who were admitted after this limit had been reached risked their
lives if they had delivery complications. Women were regarded primarily as repro-
ductive beings. In factories especially, they were forced to subject themselves to
gynaecological checks every three months.
Gail Kligmans analysis of pronatalist policy and its consequences in The Politics of
Duplicity: controlling reproduction in Ceausescus Romania (1998) offers an excellent
outline of the living history of women in the 1970s and 80s. Abortion was described
by official communist propaganda as intra-uterine massacre, a vicious enemy of the
peoples biological future, leading to a decline in the workforce and undermining
the homelands independence. It was denounced for thwarting the fulfilment of
womens destinies, and as an attack against the motherland and the ancestors
lands which diminished the demographic patrimony of the parent-party.40 Abor-
tions performed in clinics required an agreement from and the presence of a prosecu-
tor in order to check if the abortion was criminal or not. Physicians and midwives
risked jail terms and the withdrawal of their licences unless they denounced women
who sought abortion. As abortions were secretly performed, most obstetricians, as
well as most fertile women, often felt guilty and vulnerable, whether or not they were
caught.
This sense of guilt that the regime inculcated in people played a major role in
preventing resistance against the official policy. In depriving women of control over
their reproductive capacities (a control to which they had become accustomed in the
first communist decades of 194765), the totalitarian state was able to manifest its
586 M. Miroiu
omnipresence and its repressive paternalism. This, in turn, generated the daily
techniques of duplicity (the schizophrenia of the official and, respectively, private
discourses), and a generalized form of deception: Do what you need as long as you
speak what they want to hear. Survival by duplicity, Kligman argued, turned the popu-
lation into party-state accomplices. Living ones life respecting all rules and laws was
impossible. As a result, men and women had various degrees of guilt and, to match it,
corresponding degrees of intimidation and cowardice. The citizens became not only
victims, but also collaborators of the totalitarian state.
The consequences of Romanias pronatalist policies were harsh and very visible:
women who died of septicaemia or bleeding, genitally wounded women, women and
physicians imprisoned for abortions, orphaned or abandoned children, sexual traumas

and fear of sex.41
Communism therefore produced a fatherless patriarchy. Men, as well as women,
were deprived of personal autonomy, of participation in public life and, doubtless, of
real control over their lives. Under this system, it was hard to view men, as a group, as
oppressors, when the common enemy, the party-state, was infinitely more powerful
and more dangerous.42 This explains why in the post-communist transition, due to
fresh memories of tyranny, the major feminist arguments were unconvincing and
called forth lots of resistance.
Integration First! We have Other Priorities!

Let me confess my own ignorance: when communism ended I was thirty-four and knew
nothing about feminism. Even though I had studied philosophy, Friedrich Engels femi-
nist work, The Origins of Family, Private Property and the State, was not a part of our
bibliography. With one single exception,43 no books or articles on feminism had been
translated into Romanian and universities did not teach it. The brainwashing worked
almost perfectly. We emerged from communism in total ignorance of our peoples
struggle for civil and political rights, and especially of the feminist past. These pasts,
like all the pasts of the fight for rights, were not part of our education. As late as 2008,
most Romanians knew nothing about the history of womens rights, and history depart-
ments in universities are hardly interested in the topic. With only a few exceptions
(Stefania Miha ilescu, Gisela Cosma, Simona Stiger, Cristina Olteanu and Valentin
S][ced
li a[berv]
Gheonea, Alin Ciupala , Roxana Cheschebec,44 who published mostly after 2001),
a[berv] ]ces[d
li
professional historians ignore the issue altogether. Even the authors mentioned above
were trained and made sensitive to the subject in western, mostly American, universities
(the exception is Stefania Miha ilescu). To these names one should add two Romanian-
a[berv]
born US historians: Maria Bucur and Irina Livezeanu.

The first contacts with cultural and activist feminism (mostly British and American)
came after 1991that is to say after the first professional encounters in the West. The
second wave of feminism was at its peak and many of its projects had been turned into
laws. Post-feminism was not yet influential in the media.
We who moved in academic circles were converted to feminism through academic
readings. The most active Romanian feminists among women born in the 1950s,45 I
among them, started reading feminist philosophy, political theory, sociology, literary
criticism, and anthropology. We suffered from intellectual hunger and our political
thinking was less in tune with the world we were living in than with the western
world. Furthermore, we were allergic to politics and activism, at least for the first six
or seven years.
As a result, the Romanian feminism of the first post-communist decade was chiefly
academic and civic.46 We absorbed ourselves in postmodernism and other theories
developed in advanced liberal democracies while living in a country that had failed at
its attempts at democratic modernization, had experienced the burden of sixty years of
various dictatorships, and had almost no history of fundamental rights and liberties.
Our ability to follow and understand the dramatic transformations of gender relations
due to the political decisions in our own society was quite low.
While we were publishing books, establishing the first feminist non-governmental
organizations (NGOs),47and introducing feminist classes in academia with the major
support of our British and American colleagues (199498), the political leaders of the
country were making decisions that replaced the communist regimes social services
for women (minimal as these were) with measures that made women dependent on
men, abolished state involvement in child rearing, and dispensed with the political
services of women and their presence in the political and executive positions, too.
The communist Mayflower became a Titanic; whatever gender equality had existed
in economic life disappeared.48
I admit now that our civic activism at the level of NGOs and academic output was
largely irrelevant, for its source of inspiration was the liberal democratic state, and it
was only remotely relevant to the world we were living in. Our discourse was a kabbala
of rights and liberties, alien to a world that lacked a tradition of individual rights and
the rule of law. When we had to finally acknowledge that feminism was necessarily
political as well, our agenda was near identical to that of our second-wave feminist read-
ings: the criminalization of domestic violence, sexual harassment and discrimination,
equal opportunities.49 Romanian women did have all these problems, but the other
problems, which we had not read about and which had not been researched, we
grasped only intuitively at best.50
But what was going on, at the macro-political level, during the first decade of Roma-
nian post-communism (19902000), when the country had placed itself in the grey
zone and lacked European Union (EU) integration policies? Socialist factories shed
their social dimension, and thus the entire network of nurseries and kindergartens. The
state stopped providing for the welfare of women and focused instead, under pressure
from trade unions, on protecting workers in the male-dominated branches of the
industry. For over ten years (19902001) men in the mining and machinery industry
played the part of favoured victims of transition and were artificially maintained in
factories that produced little and sold even less. Their income came from the redistri-
bution of the public budget.
These were the glory days of what I have called left-wing conservatism: the
organic growth (slow change) from a planned economy and communist property
system to a market economy with a capitalist property system.51 Women worked
588 M. Miroiu
chiefly in economic sectors that were privatized rapidly (textiles, food industry,
services and trade) and quickly switched over to a market economy which made big
profits for the owners but paid small wages, did not allow unionization, and lacked
social protection. Many women became migrant workers in EU countries. The
money they earned was redistributed by the government as a covert form of social
protection especially to the (actually jobless) men who were kept in employment in
bankrupted, protected, state-owned industries by political decisions rather than by
market forces. The privatization of socialist assets favoured the managers of the
former socialist industries, 90% of whom were men.52 They became resource capi-
talists, closely related to politicians and soon political actors themselves (between 94
and 97% of parliamentarians during the first post-communist decade of 199099

were men).
The post-communist transition was male dominated both at the level of winners,
and at the level of protected losers, according to the formula: State men, market
women.53 Within less than ten years the gap between average male and female incomes
increased and the former state support for raising children in the crches and kinder-
gartens attached to the socialist firms and institutions simply disappeared. Some of the
firms were privatized and the new owners did not care about the former social services
for employees, while those that remained under state control devoted resources to the
protection of workers themselves, not of their children. Men became citizens and polit-
ical subjects while women became private people and second-class citizens. This was
not due to the market economy but, on the contrary, to state politics that privileged
men as winners as well as privileged losers.
The lesson taught by post-communism is that the market economy (the capitalist
one) is hardly as inimical per se to women as many socialists had thought, and that
political patriarchy is adaptable and changes to fit any form of social organization,
whenever there is no consistent feminist opposition.54 The economic bases of modern
patriarchy in this region, more specifically the massive dependence of women on mens
income and on mens political decisions, became a mass phenomenon only during
post-communism.
The EU accession process (200006) forced the Romanian Parliament to adopt
European legislation, including measures which were a by-product of second-wave
feminism: parental leave (1998), anti-discrimination legislation (2000), the criminal-
ization of domestic violence (2003), laws against sexual harassment and for equal
opportunities (2003). Politicians and the general public regarded these laws as manda-
tory European imports rather than as an internal political priority. They were not an
expression of domestic demand (as social protection had been) although, as suggested
previously, such demands had been advanced. This was a clear example of what I call
showroom costless state feminism.55 Unfortunately, the showroom condition did not
go away: enforcement budgets were not provided or they remain extremely low, while
the leaders of the institutions enforcing the laws are, for the most part,56 politically
appointed and lacking in the necessary expertise. The institutions in question engaged
in formal, useless, brochure-editing activities without relevance and impact. To make
a long story short, they have failed so far to have any impact on the humiliating
conditions within families and institutions and to fight media sexism (unlike media
racism, for instance). They have not generated fair gender policies in education,
employment and healtha failure that the Black Book of Equal Opportunities between
Men and Women57 documents critically and in great detail.
Political life is dominated by a different set of priorities. When the transition no
longer provided an excuse for the marginalization and exclusion of women, the politi-
cians appealed to the major political issues of the day: NATO integration (2004) and
EU accession (2007). Again, that was not the right moment.
Relax, men are thinking about your political interests! is the message sent out by
the post-communist state. Recent research on the relationship between gender and
political interests, reported in such publications as Gender, Political Interests and

European Insertion (2007) and Baluta et al. (2007),58 has shown clearly that not only is
ab
ve][r ]ced
lt[i
womens participation in decisions on local public affairs (6.8% women in local coun-
cils), the public budget (no female minister), or legislation (just 10.6% of members of
the Parliament are women) insignificant, but also that womens practical and strategic
interests are not represented politically. Women are, par excellence, private agents.59
Womens priorities (health, education, the environment) are at the periphery of public
investments as compared with the army, the secret services, and the police. Women
are not among the capitalists created through the redistribution of the former socialist
assets. Equal pay for equal work is still on the waiting list in a long historical tradition
of the delay.
To economic dependence and political non-representation one may add the excessive
sexualization of womens image, the new post-feminist language,60 as well as the anti-
feminism of public intellectuals. Nonetheless, the macro-picture shows progress in
democratization, legal protection for women and an increase in womens level of
consumption.
Conclusions
Apparently, we have caught up with the West: in the USA and in Western Europe
the post-feminist agenda is more visible than third-wave feminism, and the obvious
backlash against feminism is a very dangerous trend.61 But the crucial difference lies
in the context: many of the acquisitions of political feminisms have become gener-
ally accepted in the world of consolidated democracies. They are facts of life. In
Eastern Europe, however, this is still something to be hoped for in the distant future.
One lesson that must be learned is that neither liberalism, nor social democracy, nor
(even less) communism provide sufficient conditions for gender justice. The depolit-
icization of the feminist agenda, which is now an insidious phenomenon in
advanced democracies as well, is dangerous: it lets women get carried away by the
mainstream agenda without also being able to determine policy in accordance with
their ideas and interests; it encourages new democracies to deal with gender prob-
lems as footnotes to the political agenda; it releases conservative governments from
pressures especially because gender fairness remains, to these governments, the
unacceptable change.
590 M. Miroiu
Notes
[1] This article and my participation in the conference, International Feminisms in Historical
1
Comparative Perspective, 19th20th Centuries, held in Lisbon, 2008 had important support
from the National Council for Scientific Research in Higher Education (CNCSIS) grant,
Gender, Political Interests and European Insertion. The initial title of my talk was Dealing with
Room-Service Feminism when the Second Wave is Missing. Because this article includes a
larger outline of the evolution of gender politics in Romania, the title has been changed.
[2] Mainly the states with a long tradition of social-democratic politics, especially the Scandina-
2
vian ones.
[3] See also Katherine Verdery (1996) What was Socialism and What Comes Next (Princeton: Prin-
3
ceton University Press); Gail Kligman (2000) Politica duplicitatii. Controlul reproducerii in a[bve]r ]ldecit[
Romnia lui Ceausescu [The politics of duplicity. Controlling reproduction in Ceausescus

]edlcs[i
Romania] (Bucharest: Humanitas) (original publication Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1998); Krassimira Daskalova (2000) Womens Problems, Womens Discourses in
Bulgaria, in Susan Gal & Gail Kligman (Eds) Reproducing Gender: politics, publics and everyday
life after socialism (Princeton: Princeton University Press); Mihaela Miroiu (2007) Commu-
nism was a State Patriarchy, not State Feminism, Aspasia. International Yearbook of Central
and South-Eastern European Womens and Gender History, 1, pp. 197201; Natalia Novikova
(2007) Communism as Vision and Practice, Aspasia. International Yearbook of Central and
South-Eastern European Womens and Gender History, 1, pp. 202206.
[4] See Chris Corrin (Ed.) (1992) Superwoman and the Double Burden: womens experience of
4
change in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (Toronto: Second Story
Press); Nanette Funk & Magda Muller (Eds) (1993) Gender Politics and Post Communism
(New York: Routledge); Gal & Kligman (Eds), Reproducing Gender.
[5] See Raluca Popa (2002) Dimensiuni ale patriarhatului in gndirea liberala romneasca , intre
5
1848 si al Doilea Razboi Modial [Dimensions of patriarchy in the Romanian liberal thought
]ldecsi[
between 1848 and the Second World War], in Maria Bucur & Mihaela Miroiu (Eds) Patriar-
hat s i Emancipare in istoria gndirii politice romnesti [Patriarchy and emancipation in the
]ldecsi[
history of Romanian political thought] (Iasi: Polirom), pp. 2572. ]cs[edli
[6] See Popa, Dimensiuni ale patriarhatului, pp. 2572.

6
[7] See Valentin Niculescu & Pirca Radu (2002) Femeia in gandirea nationalista romaneasca
7
[Woman in the Romanian nationalist thought], in Bucur & Miroiu (Eds) Patriarhat si Eman- ]ldecsi[
cipare, pp. 149216.

[8] See Stefania Miha ilescu (2002) Din istoria feminismului romnesc 18381929 [The history of
8
Romanian feminism 18381929] (Iasi: Polirom), p. 17.

[9] Ibid., pp. 1718
9
[10] Ibid., p. 28
10
[11] See Maria Bucur (2007) Between Liberal and Republican Citizenship: feminism and national-
11
ism in Romania, 18801940, Aspasia. International Yearbook of Central and South-eastern

European Womens and Gender History, 1, pp. 84102.
[12] Sofia Nadejde (18561964): writer, journalist and impressive feminist and socialist militant.
12
[13] See Mihailescu, Din istoria feminismului romnesc, p. 86.

13
ab[ev]r
[14] Maria But ureanu (18701919): writer and publicist, founding member of Womens Enfran-
14
]cetd
[li
chisement Association.
[15] See Mihailescu, Din istoria feminismului romnesc, p. 86.
15
ab[ev]r
[16] See the article Scopul asociatiei, Asociatia pentru emanciparea civila s i politica a femeilor
16
]ced
lt[i ]edlct[i a[bve]r ]ldecsi[ a[bve]r
romne. Buletin trimestrial, no. I, January 1919, in Mihailescu, Din istoria feminismului rom-
ab[ev]r
nesc, p. 207.
[17] Princess Alexandrina Cantacuzino (18761944), vice president of International Womens
17
Council (1925), was a controversial figure: she acted simultaneously as a rights-oriented femi-
nist and as a nationalist critic of Romanian interwar democracy. See Roxana Cheschebec ]cs[edli
(2007) Reclaiming Romanian Historical Feminism, Aspasia. International Yearbook of Central
and South-Eastern European Womens and Gender History, 1, pp. 255265.
[18] Calypso Botez (1880?): President of National Council of Romanian Women and an impres-
18
sive social researcher and publicist.

[19] Calypso Botez (1919) Femeia in legislatiunea romana, in Mihailescu, Din istoria feminismului
19
ab[ev]r
romnesc, p. 227.
[20] See Mihailescu, Din Istoria Feminismului Romanesc, pp. 2436.
20
ab[ev]r
[21] In 1946 the UN imposed the universal vote on all its member states.
21
[22] In the communist regime the elections were a pure masquerade. The only party to vote for
22
was the communist one.

[23] See Niculescu & Pirca, Femeia in gandirea nationalista romaneasca, pp. 149216.
23
[24] I developed the argument in my article Communism was State Patriarchy, not State
24
Feminism. I argued there that the notion of a feminist communism is a contradictio in

terminis.
[25] Miroiu, Communism was State Patriarchy, not State Feminism, p. 200.
25
[26] Jean Robinson (1995) Womens State and the Need for Civil Society: the Liga Kobiet in
26
Poland, in Dorothy Stetson McBride & Amy Mazur (Eds) Comparative State Feminism
(London: Sage), p. 205.
[27] In the 1980s the public intellectuals influence was deliberately and dramatically reduced due
27
to the rise of the personality cult of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu. ]cs[edli
[28] With reference to communism I prefer to use the term domestic sphere, as Ecaterina Oproiu
28
does, since the notion of a private sphere is inadequate: the state was everywhere and
constantly interfering with the lives of individuals.
[29] Oproiu Ecaterina et al. (1977) Cartea fetelor [Girls book] (Bucharest: Editura Politica).
29
ab[ev]r
[30] The concept nomenklatura means the top level of the Communist Party with important
30
position at the state and local level.

[31] See, for example, the recent comments of Marilyn Boxer in her (2007) Communist Femi-
31
nism as Oxymoron? Reflections of a Second Wave Feminist Historian of European Social-

ism and Feminism, Aspasia. International Yearbook of Central and South-Eastern European
Womens and Gender History, 1, pp. 241246.
[32] See also for the Bulgarian case, Krassimira Daskalova (2007) How Should We Name the
32
Women-Friendly Actions of State Socialism? Aspasia. International Yearbook of Central and

South-Eastern European Womens and Gender History, 1, pp. 214219.
[33] In 1989 the membership of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party (RCP)
33
included 24% women among the full members and 40% among the part members, while in
the Executive Political Committee women amounted to 10% of the full members and 8% of
the part members. See Cristina Olteanu (Ed.) (2003) Femeile in Romnia comunista [Women a[bve]r
in Communist Romania] (Bucharest: Politeia, SNSPA).

[34] See Kligman, Politica duplicitatii; also see Cristina Olteanu (Ed.) (2003) Femeile in Romnia
34
a[bve]r ]edlct[i
comunista . [Women in Communist Romania] (Bucharest: Politeia, SNSPA).

a[bve]r
[35] Vladimir Pasti (2003) Ultima inegalitate. Relatiile de gen in Romnia (Iasi: Polirom), p. 102.
35
]edlct[i
[36] Ibid.
36
[37] Also see Franck, who uses the expression an ersatz public sphere, in Funk & Muller (Eds),
37
Gender Politics and Post Communism, p. 323.

[38] See Pasti, Ultima inegalitate, pp. 99112.
38
[39] See the Romanian edition of the book, published by Polirom: Kligman, Politica duplicitatii,
39
a[bve]r ]edlct[i
p. 245.
[40] Ibid., pp. 124130.
40
[41] See also Adriana Baban (1996) Viata sexuala a femeilor: o experienta traumatizanta
41
ab[ev]r c]e[tdli ab[ev]r c]e[tdli ab[ev]r ab[ev]r
[Womens sexual life: a traumatic experience], in Madalina Nicolaescu (Ed.) Cine suntem noi?
ab
ve][r ab[ev]r
[Who are we?] (Bucharest: Anima), as well as Cristian Mungius movie, 432: 4 Months, 3
Weeks, and 2 Days.
592 M. Miroiu
[42] Mihaela Miroiu (1999) Societatea Retro [The backward-looking society] (Bucharest: Trei
42
Publishing House).
[43] Mathilde Neil (1974) The Drama of Woman Liberation (Bucharest: Editura Politica).
43
[44] Women I mentioned are professional historians and they are rediscovering the feminist past
44
through the historical archives (Stefania Mihailescu, Alin Ciupala, Roxana Cheschebec, Gisela S[]cedli ab[ev]r ab[ev]r ]cs[edli
Cosma, Simona Stiger) or through the communist archives (Cristina Olteanu and Valentin
Gheonea).
[45] Some important figures of the first post-communist decade are Laura Grunberg (President of
45
AnA), Madalina Nicolaescu (President of Gender. Center for the Research of Womens Identity),
ab[ev]r ab[ev]r
Renate Weber (President of the Soros Foundation), Livia Deac, Ana Maria Sandi (President,
Gender in Development Program, UNDP), Liliana Popescu (President, Civic Education
Project), Dina Loghin (President, SEF (Equal Opportunities for Women).
[46] See also Susan Gal & Gail Kligman (2003) The Politics of Gender after Socialism (Princeton:
46
Princeton University Press); Denise Roman (2003) Fragmented Identities: popular culture, sex,
and everyday life in postcommunist Romania (Lanham: Lexington Books); Laura Grunberg
(2008) biONGrafie. AnA-Istoria traita a unui ONG de femei [AnA. The living history of a ]evabr[ a[bve]r
womens NGO] (Iasi: Polirom). ]cs[edli
[47] Such as, for example, AnA. The Society for Feminist Analyses (1996) and the journal AnALize
47
(1998).
[48] See Mihaela Miroiu (2004) Drumul ca tre autonomie, Teorii politice feministe [The road to
48
a[bve]r
autonomy] (Iasi: Polirom); Mihaela Miroiu (2004) State Men, Market Women: the effects
]cs[edli
of left conservatism on gender politics in Romanian transition, in Feminismo/s. Revista del

Centro de estudios sobre la Mujer de la Universidad de Alicante, Mujer y participation polit-
ica, coord. Monica Moreno Seco & Clarisa Ramos Feijoo, no. 3, June, pp. 207234;
Mihaela Miroiu & Liliana Popescu (2004) Post-Totalitarian Pre-Feminism, in Henry F.
Carey (Ed.) Romania since 1989: politics, economics and society (Maryland: Lexington
Books); Mihaela Miroiu (2006) A Mayflower turned Titanic: the metamorphosis of politi-
cal patriarchy in Romania, Femina Politica. Zeitschrift fur femiinstiche Politik-Wissenshaft, 1,
pp. 8498.
[49] We have lobbied the Romanian Parliament on these issues starting in 1997.
49
[50] Domestic social research was weakly developed and we lacked the requisite data.
50
[51] See Miroiu, Societatea Retro and Miroiu, Drumul ca tre autonomie.
51
a[bve]r
[52] Pasti, Ultima inegalitate.

52
[53] Miroiu, State Men, Market Women, pp. 207234.

53
[54] See Barometrul de gen (2000) [Gender barometer, 2000] (Open Society Foundation), Buchar-
54
est. http://www.gender.ro/gender; also see Pasti, Ultima inegalitate; and Liliana Popescu,
(2004) Politica sexelor [Politics of gender] (Bucharest: Maiko).
[55] Miroiu, State Men, Market Women, pp. 207234.
55
[56] The exception is the president of the National Council for Preventing and Fighting Discrimi-
56
nation, Csaba Asztalos.

[57] Laura Grunberg (Ed.) (2006) Cartea Neagra a egalitatii de s anse intre barbati s i femei in
57
u][cadbl a[bve]r ]edlct[i ]ldecsi[ a[]vber ]edlct[i ]ldecsi[
Romnia [The black book of equal opportunities between men and women in Romania]
(Bucharest: AnA Publishing House).
[58] Oana Baluta, Alina Dragolea & Alice Iancu (2007) Gen s i interese politice [Gender and political
58
ab[ev]r c]e[tdli ab[ev]r ]edlcs[i
interests] (Iasi: Polirom). ]cs[edli
[59] This is clearly reflected in the fact that, for example, rural roads, used mostly by men, were a
59
priority compared to the water and sewage networks, women work manually; there are almost
no state nurseries while the kindergartens are rarely affordable; there is gender discrimination
in the funding of healthcare.
[60] Laura Grunberg (Ed.) (2005) Mass media despre sexe [Mass media on gender] (Bucharest:
60
Tritonic).
61
[61] Susan Faludi (1991) Backlash: the undeclared war against American women (New York:
Crown); also see Anita Superson & Ann Cudd (Eds) (2002) Theorizing Backlash: philosophical
reflection on the resistance to feminism (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield).

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Political Modernization: Nation and men first! Stay in line! (18481946)

was feminine was despised.7

being treated as children and we demand to be treated as equal human beings. Is it

In 1919, Eleonora Stratilescu, a Ph.D. in Philosophy and feminist activist,20 provided

exercise their rights.

Communism First! Forget Your Own Interests! (19471989)

(a) Political Equality without Political Interests

(b) Working Comrades

(c) School Comrades

(d) Life Comrades?

Committee of the Communist Party, decided to increase Romanias population in

physicians imprisoned for abortions, orphaned or abandoned children, sexual traumas

Integration First! We have Other Priorities!

born US historians: Maria Bucur and Irina Livezeanu.

and 97% of parliamentarians during the first post-communist decade of 199099

political interests, reported in such publications as Gender, Political Interests and

Romnia lui Ceausescu [The politics of duplicity. Controlling reproduction in Ceausescus

Romania] (Bucharest: Humanitas) (original publication Berkeley: University of California

history of Romanian political thought] (Iasi: Polirom), pp. 2572. ]cs[edli

[6] See Popa, Dimensiuni ale patriarhatului, pp. 2572.

cipare, pp. 149216.

Romanian feminism 18381929] (Iasi: Polirom), p. 17.

ism in Romania, 18801940, Aspasia. International Yearbook of Central and South-eastern

[13] See Mihailescu, Din istoria feminismului romnesc, p. 86.

sive social researcher and publicist.

was the communist one.

Feminism. I argued there that the notion of a feminist communism is a contradictio in

position at the state and local level.

nism as Oxymoron? Reflections of a Second Wave Feminist Historian of European Social-

Women-Friendly Actions of State Socialism? Aspasia. International Yearbook of Central and

in Communist Romania] (Bucharest: Politeia, SNSPA).

comunista . [Women in Communist Romania] (Bucharest: Politeia, SNSPA).

Gender Politics and Post Communism, p. 323.

ab[ev]r c]e[tdli ab[ev]r c]e[tdli ab[ev]r ab[ev]r

womens NGO] (Iasi: Polirom). ]cs[edli

of left conservatism on gender politics in Romanian transition, in Feminismo/s. Revista del

[52] Pasti, Ultima inegalitate.

[53] Miroiu, State Men, Market Women, pp. 207234.

nation, Csaba Asztalos.

u][cadbl a[bve]r ]edlct[i ]ldecsi[ a[]vber ]edlct[i ]ldecsi[

ab[ev]r c]e[tdli ab[ev]r ]edlcs[i

interests] (Iasi: Polirom). ]cs[edli

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