Intersection of Gender and Class in Socio-historical and Biographical Perspectives

Abstract

This paper investigates how structural changes in Czech society brought about by the transition from the centrally planned state-socialist regime towards market-based capitalism, which impacts individual opportunities and choices. The intersectional approach and concept of social capital allows us to interpret employment trajectories of women in the Czech Republic in its historical as well as biographical contexts. This paper addresses the underdevelopment of intersectional analysis of the dynamically changing women's position in post-socialist societies of Central and Eastern Europe. Eva is representative of women with low education, and by analyzing her biography, we interpret the changing intersection of class and gender in post-socialist Czech society. The state-socialist experiment with women's emancipation solely through their participation in paid work has failed and ever since women's emancipation or gender equality has never been a political priority. The turn to capitalism after 1989 intensified re-traditionalization trends, making it difficult to combine work and care. Not only did Eva deal in her working strategies with the deterioration of the status of low-educated women in changing class relations in post-socialist society although she remained childless, she also encountered maternity discrimination and the relative impossibility to combine paid work with care (for a family member).