Tarryn Priestly
Nov 23rd,
2014
WGST 202
Professor Currans
Blog Topic: The
Feminist Movement
Article Review #3
Bystydzienski, Jill
M. "The Feminist Movement in Poland." Women's Studies International Forum 24.5 (2001): 501-11. Web. 23 Nov. 2014.
'The Feminist
Movement in Poland' is exactly as it says: an article that discusses
the feminist movement's formation in Poland. This article, written by
Jill Bystydzienski, goes in depth into how the movement had formed
and specifically why it had been so slow to form in Poland, a country
that Bystydzienski believes already has all the qualities to sprout
this movement and yet hadn't. With this, her main point in the
article is that historical, political, economic and social conditions
have posed obstacles to the formation of a strong feminist movement
in Poland, but such smaller women's movements had emerged on a local
context. To support her main point, Bystydzienski brings into light
Poland's past, showing why many Poles, especially women, believe they
don't need a feminist movement in their country.
Poland throughout
its life as a country had experienced foreign rule after foreign
rule, and in the era of the two World Wars, such rule had influenced
the people within Poland to preserve traditions special to their
culture. This involved women being put in traditional roles as
educators, preservers of the Polish heritage and language and
maintainers of Polish traditions. Such traditional roles were given
to women so that men could focus on rebuilding the nation, ignoring
women's demands to be admitted into the professions and political
parties for this purpose. The Poles' want to be unified, and in such
created an “us against them” attitude for the people (pg 502).
With this, inequalities or differences among the people weren't seen
so much as a priority, as a focus on gender inequality was seen as
unpatriotic, unnecessarily taking the focus of a unified nation and
people away from being the most important thing to achieve. The call
for traditional roles from the Catholic church also slowed the
process of forming a feminist movement in Poland, as the Church is
seen as a major influence in the lives of the Poles since a majority
of people in Poland are Catholic. There also was the idea of ideals
and chivalry that had Poles take comfort in these traditions, not
wanting to sacrifice them for a feminist movement.
The later rule of
communism had also set back the idea of a feminist movement as it too
enforced the ideas of preserving traditional roles amongst women,
saying that they had equality but in honesty women were still seen
primarily as homemakers and mothers. Under the rule of communism,
women were not allowed 'legally to establish autonomous women’s
organizations' (pg 502). Established by the government, one women's
organisation did exist: the League of Polish Women. This had existed
essentially to 'facilitate women’s adaptation to the expectations
and demands outlined in the state plans of socio-economic development
which determined their activities' (pg 502). With these organisations
influenced by state plans rather than feminist ideals, this trend of
deception had continued into policy making, with policies appearing
to benefit women but were actually to benefit the state's economic
goals. And it is also under communism that feminism wasn't given a
good light in the first place as its cause was belittled, and the
Polish people formed disdain for what they considered 'western
feminism', a movement seen as a 'bourgeois preoccupation' (pg 503).
Added to this was also the dismissal of western feminism as being
lesbian-dominated and anti-male, something the traditional Poles
didn't want to be seen as. Feminism in Poland was also associated
with communism, as Poles saw that communism gave them a right to
employment and abortion legal, and with those issues taken care of,
they saw no reason to implement feminism.
After the communist
era, Polish people didn't want a feminist movement because of the
supposed relation to communism. They had 'resisted creating
centralised umbrella organisations' to keep away from the communist
ideal but also because it was the less centralised organisations that
were more effective (pg 504). The League of Polish Women had become
more feminist, but didn't have as many members as before due to the
former communist ties, and it was also communist history that made
the Poles experience difficulty in establishing international
coalitions since that would mean including Russian women as well. But
in the years after communism, many organisations had been created
that have become more feminist, one such being Pro-Femina, an
organisation that, created in 1989, devotes its entirety to the issue
of abortion legality. And there has been an increase in feminist
ideals in Poland, such as the establishment of several centres of
Women's and Gender Studies in major Polish universities in the 2000s
and the Network of East-West women started by U.S. women that
connects them to Polish women and even Russian women, showing the
improvement in solidarity. Poland still has a ways to go, but Polish
feminism has begun to form, becoming its own unique feminist movement
not in the issues it handles but how Polish women handle these issues
and how they relate them to their past and their present.
I chose this
article to discuss the feminist movement in a different country
because what is seen in the media is normally American feminism, so
to broaden the horizon to include other countries' feminism can
really help show how our own movement compares and if there is
anything we need to work on ourselves. This goes for my blog topic
and course themes, my blog topic in that it's good to see how others
handle situations such as gender discrimination, and course themes
because while we may look at other countries, these could still be
'privileged' (privileged in the sense that the movement was fast to
happen and would have minimal backlash if begun) countries such as
Great Britain or Canada, so to look at a country not so privileged is
to really see how something such as the feminist movement had
transcended across the globe to affect everyone.
It's interesting to
compare this article with the last article I reviewed, 'Can Men
Promote Feminism' by Jean Pierre Vernet, Jorge Vala and Fabrizio
Butera, because for both articles, yes, men can promote feminism in
both countries Poland and the United States. And it's with this
promotion that both articles show that men would be heard more and
would have things done more because they were heard, since they're in
power. But in the case of Poland, it's the sheer fact that men don't
want to promote feminist ideals at all, that it's women who do it and
are still ignored, that contrasts these two. Vernet, Vala and Butera
state that men can promote feminist ideals all they want and show
that some do, but Bystydzienski brings in the information that they
can, but none do. And it's with this that I've learnt about how
difficult the struggle is in other countries such as Poland to have a
feminist movement because everyone is convinced that nothing is wrong
and that nothing needs to change. It's certainly different to go from
a feminist movement that moves quickly and has existed for decades in
America to Poland, who had just started their feminist movement, and
it's still so small. And that brings me to something I would like to
find more about, which is the more recent achievements of the
feminist movement in Poland just to see how it has faired and if it
is getting stronger. I wonder if anyone else had picked up where
Bystydzienski left off in terms of tracking the progress of Poland's
feminist movement. If no one has, that brings up the question as to
why not and also of course curiosity as to whether no one knows
current happenings because people stopped caring or something went
wrong. If Bystydzienski would have alluded to other articles that
were still researching Poland's feminist movement as she was
finishing hers, that would have helped the information stay current.
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