Women in the Politics of Postcommunist Eastern Europe

During the Communist period, in most of these contries, even women with small children typically worked outside the home, and their participation in formal institutions was virtually mandatory. Today, as they are being disproportionately affected by marketization, downsizing, the dramatic erosion of social services, and as their sons are being drafted to participate in an unending series of border wars, have women found a new political voice?

Marilyn Schattner Rueschemeyer is Professor of Sociology at the Rhode Island School of Design and Adjunct Professor of Sociology at Brown University. She is a Fellow at Harvard University's Russian Research Center.