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Publication A “Special Category of Women” in Austria and Internationally: Migrant Women Workers, Trade Union Activists, and the Textile Industry, 1960s to 1980s(Brill, 2024-05-04) Helfert, Veronika; Hoerder, Dirk; Neissl, Lukas; Department of Gender StudiesAt the beginning of the 1960s, Austria joined Western and Northern European states in recruiting temporary migrant workers. While the European “guestworker” and migrant labour regimes have been subject to multiple studies in the last 40 years, migrant women have rarely been at the centre of these investigations, although their specific issues have comprised a facet of the international labour movement since the 1970s. Female migrant workers faced a double marginalization in the labour movement, both as migrants and as women. By analysing printed source material, archival documents, and interviews with women trade unionists, this chapter examines this specific double marginalization; how gender, class, and ethnicity shaped the labour activism of domestic and migrant working women; and how the international, national, and local levels interacted in the context of the deindustrialization of the Austrian textile industry.Publication Renegotiating Skills, Wages, and the Right to Work: On the Gender of Labor Activism around Rationalization in the Bulgarian Tobacco Industry in the Early 1930s(Cambridge University Press, 2024-02-19) Masheva, Ivelina Lyubenova; Department of Gender StudiesStarting from the early 1930s, structural changes in the Bulgarian tobacco industry, prompted by the advent of the world economic crisis and German economic expansionism into Southeastern Europe, led to a deep restructuring of the labor processes, known in the terminology of the time as rationalization, in the Bulgarian tobacco industry. The introduction of the tonga rationalization technology had a deskilling and deeply gendered effect on the industry, making a significant number of skilled male workers redundant, disproportionately decreasing average male wages and leading, in turn, to a further feminization of an already majority-female workforce. The introduction of the new system provoked a strong response from the organized labor movement, which used a variety of tactics to fight against the new technology: from strikes to petitions to tripartite negotiations. Organized labor's reaction was deeply gendered, an aspect that only becomes truly visible if, in addition to gender and skill, we employ the analytical lens of scale. By following trade union policies on the local, national, and international levels, the article goes beyond the carefully crafted gender-neutral language in official documents to reveal tensions between the conservative attitudes of rank-and-file activists and the official trade union agenda. This is especially evident in communist labor politics, where Bulgarian trade union policies on the local and national levels provoked an intervention on the part of the Profintern between 1930 and 1931. The movement's internal contradictions resulted in a polyvalent, ambiguous, and non-linear trade union policy formed through the clash of and negotiations between local activists’ conservative notions of gendered work and family roles and the radical gender program of international communism.Publication Radical and Utopian or Partnership between Men und Women? Austrian Trade Union Women, Autonomous Feminists and Labour Related Concerns, 1970s-1980s(2024-04-01) Helfert, Veronika; Department of Gender StudiesThis contribution explores the interplay between labour and feminist activism in Austria during the 1970s and 1980s. Focusing on the often overlooked nexus of the women’s liberation movement and the trade union movement, the analysis looks into the forms of organisation and protest used by women activists from various political affiliations on the left, including social democrats, communists and emerging alternative and green groups. These protests included the struggle for reproductive rights, conflicting ideas on the inclusion of domestic labour into labour activism, the significance of partnership as an activist concept, and the challenges of joint actions. The material is analysed using a combined source-critical and theory-driven approach, employing hermeneutic methods to reveal specific debates and the complex dynamics of cooperation and distinction in both labour and feminist activism. The study thus shows that the activism of women organised in communist, alternative (radical) left and socialist trade union contexts was part of the activist cycle of feminist movements in the 1970s and 1980s.Publication Women workers’ education at the Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions: excavating histories of transnational collaboration with the ICFTU(Informa UK Limited, 2023-11-8) Çağatay, Selin; Department of Historical StudiesThis article explores the relationship between the Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions (Türk-İş) and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) from the 1960s until the 1990s with a focus on the transnational collaboration of activists who organised educational activities for women workers and trade unionists to empower them as rights-seeking political subjects and strengthen their position within the trade union movement. Demonstrating how women’s trade union education evolved within the framework of local politics as well as global processes such as the Cold War and the emergence of a UN-led gender equality regime, it argues that global inequalities, geopolitical differences, and Türk-İş leaders’ ambivalent attitude towards women’s status in the trade union movement led to a loose, sporadic relationship between local activists and those from the west. At the same time, it was often these activists’ sustained efforts towards collaboration and the circulation of their agendas that pressured Türk-İş to invest in women’s empowerment in trade unions. Utilising archival and trade union sources as well as oral history interviews, the article integrates the work of women labour activists in feminist labour historiography, offering a more comprehensive understanding of trade unions’ gender politics in Turkey and globally.Publication The Women of Viharsarok: Peasant Women's Labour Activism in 1890s Hungary(Cambridge University Press, 2024-04-24) Varsa, Eszter; Department of Gender Studies; Department of Historical StudiesThis article explores peasant women’s labour activism in 1890s Hungary, in the southeastern part of the Habsburg Empire, where repeated harvesters’ strikes and peasant uprisings took place during the second half of the nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth centuries, making it the first centre of agrarian workers’ socialist organizing in Hungary. Informed by a more inclusive approach to women’s activist histories and subaltern studies, this article develops a new perspective on the periodization and geography of the international and Hungarian history of women’s social movements, to contribute to the historiographies of peasant women’s labour activism in the Eastern European countryside.Publication Gendered Work, Skill, and Women's Labor Activism in Romanian Tobacco Factories from the 1920s to the 1960s(Cambridge University Press, 2023) Ghiț, AlexandraIn this article, I choose struggles over skill development as an entry point to uncovering features of women's labor activism in state-owned tobacco factories in Romania, from the 1920s to the early 1960s. I look at the processes that constructed women tobacco workers, especially those at the Tobacco Manufactory in the city of Cluj, as non-skilled workers, and examine the forms of labor activism in the tobacco industry that challenged those constructs. I describe how women's work at the Cluj Tobacco Manufactory, from the mid-1920s to the mid-1950s, was shaped by successive waves of production intensification and rationalization, demonstrating that these reorganizations affected female workers more than they affected their male coworkers. I point out that although they were considered non-skilled laborers, female tobacco workers exercised an amount of control over their work and were important contributors to their families’ maintenance. I show that spanning two different political regimes, matters of skill were at the core of labor activism. For female workers, in the interwar period, labor activism in male-dominated organizations and structures entailed skill-mediated political strategies that emphasized experience and shopfloor status besides skill. By the 1950s, labor activism encompassed engaging in confrontational politics over seasoned women workers’ lack of access to skill training programs. I show that both in the late 1920s and in the early 1950s, illiteracy and women's more limited access to formal schooling in general shaped new experiences of participation in labor politics.Publication Women’s Labour Struggles in Central and Eastern Europe and Beyond: Toward a Long-Term, Transregional, Integrative, and Critical Approach(Brill, 2023) Çağatay, Selin; Erdélyi, Mátyás; Ghiț, Alexandra; Gnydiuk, Olga; Helfert, Veronika; Masheva, Ivelina; Popova, Zhanna; Tešija, Jelena; Varsa, Eszter; Zimmermann, Susan; Department of Gender Studies; Department of History and Medieval StudiesThe introductory chapter provides a historiographic and thematic framing for the contributions and, we hope, for future research. The first section discusses the existing historiography of the region, highlighting the long history of writing on women’s labour activism in Central and Eastern Europe and its adjacent territories within and across the borders of different types of empires and nation-states, and across vastly diverse political regimes. The second section discusses key contributions of the chapters assembled in the volume to the study of women’s (and sometimes men’s) quests for the improvement of the lives and working conditions of women, pointing to their interconnections and highlighting their contributions to the development of long-term and transregional approaches to the history of women’s labour struggles. The third section expands on the rationale for studying women’s labour struggles from a long-term, transregional, integrative, and critical perspective, further discusses insights emerging from the volume and other scholarship, and highlights challenges as well as directions for ongoing and future research in the field of women’s labour activism.Publication The blue and white pin that matters(2017) Pető, AndreaPublication Populist Female Leaders should not be underestimated(2013) Pető, AndreaPublication Far Rights Movements and Gendered Mobilisation in Hungary(2012) Pető, AndreaPublication Teaching women‘s history in Eastern Europe - for rethinking(2003) Pető, AndreaPublication A háborús nemi erőszak és a nőgyógyász lobbi hatása a magyarországi születésszabályozási rendszerre(2021) Pető, Andrea; Svégel, FanniA tanulmány bemutatja, hogyan kapcsolódott össze a születésszabályozás és születéskorlátozás a tömeges nemi erőszakkal az első és a második világháborúban, továbbá hogyan erősítette fel a korábban is meglevő vitákat a nemi erőszak jelensége, illetve ennek milyen törvényi és a nők életdöntéseit befolyásoló gyakorlati következményei voltak. Az első világháború során elkövetett nemierőszak-esetek indították el a nyilvános szakpolitikai vitákat, amelyek nyomán fokozatosan egyre nagyobb teret engedtek a terhesség legális megszakításának. Az 1945-ös tömeges katonai erőszak pedig precedensértékű legalizációt hozott magával, ami után a magyar szabályozás a váltakozó szovjet családpolitikát követte. A cikk bemutatja, hogy a szülész–nőgyógyász lobbi hogyan vett részt a vitákban, illetve hogyan volt képes szakmai és anyagi érdekeit az éppen aktuális szakpolitikai döntések során is képviselni, például az 1952-es népesedéspolitikai kampány során. Az abortuszbizottságok és társadalmi szerepük meghatározónak bizonyultak legalább egy nőgeneráció számára. Az ötvenes évek elején megkezdődő erőteljes medikalizáció és adminisztrációs ellenőrzés a hetvenes évekre megváltoztatta a születésszabályozási rendszert: a terhességmegszakítások dominanciáját fokozatosan felváltotta a modern fogamzásgátló szerek széleskörű használata. Az újabb népesedéspolitikai kampány (1973) és a civil ellenállás, majd a rendszerváltást követő alkotmányos szabályozás körüli kiélezett viták mutatják a mára létrejött kényes egyensúly törékenységét és a kompromisszumos megoldás egyfajta lehetőségét.Publication ‘Unfettered Freedom’ Revisited: Hungarian Historical Journals between 1989 and 2018(2021) Pető, Andrea; Barna, IldikóIn his 1992 article, ‘Today, Freedom is Unfettered in Hungary,’ Columbia University history professor István Deák argued that after 1989 Hungarian historical research enjoyed ‘unfettered freedom. Deák gleefully listed the growing English literature on Hungarian history and hailed the ‘step-by step dismantling of the Marxist-Leninist edifice in historiography’ that he associated with the Institute of History at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS) under the leadership of György Ránki (1930–88). In this article he argued that the dismantling of communist historiography had started well before 1989. Besides celebrating the establishment of the popular science-oriented historical journal, History (História) (founded in 1979) and new institutions such as the Európa Intézet – Europa Institute (founded in 1990) or the Central European University (CEU) (founded in 1991) as turning points in Hungarian historical research, Deák listed the emergence of the question of minorities and Transylvania; anti-Semitism and the Holocaust; as well as the 1956 revolution. It is very true that these topics were addressed by prominent members of the Hungarian democratic opposition who were publishing in samizdat publications: among them János M. Rainer, the director of the 1956 Institute after 1989, who wrote about 1956. This list of research topics implies that other topics than these listed before had been free to research and were not at all political. This logic interiorised and duplicated the logic of communist science policy and refused to acknowledge other ideological interventions, including his own, while also insisting on the ‘objectivity’ of science. Lastly, Deák concluded that ‘there exists a small possibility that the past may be rewritten again, in an ultra-conservative and xenophobic vein. This is, however, only a speculation.’ Twenty years later Ignác Romsics, the doyen of Hungarian historiography, re-stated Deák's claim, arguing that there are no more ideological barriers for historical research. However, in his 2011 article Romsics strictly separated professional historical research as such from ‘dilettantish or propaganda-oriented interpretations of the past, which leave aside professional criteria and feed susceptible readers – and there are always many – with fraudulent and self-deceiving myths’. He thereby hinted at a new threat to the historical profession posed by new and ideologically driven forces. The question of where these ‘dilettantish or propaganda-oriented’ historians are coming from has not been asked as it would pose a painful question about personal and institutional continuity. Those historians who have become the poster boys of the illiberal memory politics had not only been members of the communist party, they also received all necessary professional titles and degrees within the professional community of historians.Publication "Better stories" in higher education. Cunning strategies for gender studies: What can you do when nothing can be done? Can the hangman be an ally of gender studies?(2023) Pető, AndreaThis paper is based on two arguments: First, “grim storytelling” only gives access to part of the story and therefore needs to be supplemented with “better stories” — stories that generate an understanding of human potentiality, creativity, resilience, interconnectedness and shared “vulnerability”. Second, the tendency towards “grim storytelling” in critical social sciences constitutes a major limitation for the possibilities of imagining and enacting the very transformations that Europe most urgently needs in order to enhance the European project.Publication Memorialization of the Holocaust(2014) Pető, AndreaPublication Fear Eats the Soul: self-quarantining in an illiberal state(2020) Pető, AndreaFear Eats the Soul is one of the several remarkable films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder from 1974. The unlikely love story between a 60 year old German widow, who works as a cleaner, and Moroccan guest worker in his late 30s, shows how fear is manifested in words, in actions and also in the stomach ulcer of the guest worker. Fear is a governing force of all lives: fear saves us from drowning in a steep river and fear also prevents us telling an honest opinion about our colleague’s work. Fear, especially one type of it, the ‘existential fear’, has recently been used as an explanation for the resurgence of illiberalism and different forms of populism. One fears from impoverishment, job loss, premature death due to an infection in the underfinanced health care system, loneliness and the real list of subjects of fear can go on. But fear is a tricky emotion as Fassbinder knew it so well. It eats the soul as it becomes a part of the body, and not only drives one’s actions but also makes life lived with dignity impossible.Publication The Illiberal Memory Politics in Hungary(2022) Pető, AndreaPublication Roots of illiberal memory politics(2017) Pető, AndreaPublication Gendering De‐Democratization: Gender and Illiberalism in Post‐Communist Europe(2022) Bogaards, Matthijs; Pető, AndreaMany observers have written with concern about a growing “opposition to gender equality,” “anti‐gender campaigns,” and even a “war on gender.” Often, these trends take place in countries that are witnessing a decline in democratic quality, a process captured by such labels as “democratic erosion,” “democratic backsliding,” or “autocratization.” This thematic issue brings together literature on gender equality and de‐democratization with an emphasis on the role of illiberalism and a regional focus on post‐communist Europe.