Maternal Employment and the State: Varieties of Familialism in Post-Socialist Countries

Relative to Western capitalist countries, the socialist states were distinguished by comparatively high full-time employment of women since the early socialist period, i.e. since the 1950s. Much of the earlier literature argues that state socialism eroded the bonds of family life and that its childcare policies freed women to join the labour force – and on a full-time basis (e.g. Van der Lippe and Van Dijk 2001a: 5). Early scholarship on transition from socialism to capitalism presupposed an increase in traditionalism in attitudes, practices and policies, and argued that the ideological climate would push women into traditional relationships, out of the labour force.  Moreover, an ‘anti-feminist sentiment’ thesis argued that, given the opportunity, women in the post-socialist countries would opt out of jobs to stay home with their children (e.g. Einhorn 1993; Gal and Kligman 2000; Pascall and Kwak 2005).

The empirical evidence for such theses is scarce. Moreover, a considerably more compelling trend can be identified when narrowing the focus to employment patterns of women in the phase of “active motherhood in [their] biographies” (Pfau-Effinger 2004a: 2): employment rates for women aged 25-49 without pre-school children have, between 2000 and 2008, contrasted sharply with the employment rates for women with preschool children. Whilst the former have been similarly high among the eight post-socialist countries, the latter ranged from the lowest 30 per cent in Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, to about 90 per cent in Slovenia. This shift in employment practices among women with children deviates from the pattern of total female employment in a cross-country perspective, and seems at odds with the re-traditionalization thesis which argues that trends in mothers’ employment would be similar among these countries. The puzzle is what accounts for such behavioural change among women with young children and those without.

This paper seeks to explore childcare policies and aims to show whether, and how, current trends in care/work integration practices have been influenced by the historical-institutional developments during the period of state socialism. I will argue that a longer scan produces a picture of continuity, and indicates that treating post-socialist countries as a distinct regime type masks an interesting and nuanced story. I will show that state socialism put them on different paths, and that the social inheritance continues to exert a powerful effect on their childcare policies and social practices in the post-socialist period.