Back to the Hearth? Family Policy and Gender in Postsocialist Poland and the Czech Republic (1990--2004)

In the family policy reforms they undertook between 1990 and 2004, postsocialist European welfare states strengthened familialist policy elements by reducing state assistance to families and by increasing the burden on families - de facto on women. This dissertation documents the familialist trend in Poland and the Czech Republic. Poland moved toward a liberal-individualist family policy model, whereas the Czech Republic moved toward a conservative-statist family policy.;The dissertation explains the variation in both countries' family policy trajectories. It analyzes family policy reforms as necessary consequences of the changing political and socio-economic framework after 1990, with rising poverty and unemployment, and rapidly declining birthrates. Differences in national family policy discourses reflected the influence of norms, values, and cultural practices around gender roles in both countries. Once the Communist Party's rhetorical commitment to gender equality and the instrumentalization of family policy in the service of the planned economy were obsolete, "family values" and (mostly conservative) social norms came to bear directly in the new democratic Poland and Czech Republic, though in different ways and to different degrees. In Poland, family policy discourses were strongly populist and rooted in Catholicism. In the Czech Republic, family policy discourses reflected Social Democratic traditions as well as neoliberal reform ideologies, leading to ambiguous reform outcomes.;Most actors in both countries shared a preference for family policies which limited the state's responsibility for family well-being, and a disregard for gender equality policies. Only a minority of gender equality advocates in both countries, inspired by policy trends and debates in Western Europe, demanded increased state support for families with the goal of promoting gender equality. While the reforms in both countries did not ignore the European Union's legal framework for gender equality and the Union's coordination process for social policy, a "Europeanization" of postsocialist family policy did not happen in either case.