Olga Tóth
Working Women
Changing Roles, Changing Attitudes
The political and economic developments after the Second World War led
to fundamental changes in the role of women in Hungary. Even at the end
of the forties, Hungary was still a traditional agricultural society. It
was a society in which women were blessed with very little in the way of
mobility, where their place was determined by their circumstances: the
family carrying on small-scale agricultural production, the urban petty
bourgeois family, or the urban bourgeois family, a significant model if
rather smaller in number.
The fledgling Soviet-style programme of social "modernization",
with its coercive and extensive industrialization of the economy, demanded
large numbers of new, largely unskilled, workers. The incorporation of
women into production en masse was, indeed, supported by Soviet-style ideology,
which identified social equality for women with their being wage-earners.
For the majority of women, however, wage-earning was less a question of
choice than of necessity. The incorporation of women into the workforce
was so successful that by the eighties women and men were both in more
or less full employment. The majority of women in full-time employment
today have mothers who were or are similarly employed.
The burgeoning participation of women in the labour market had a knock-on
effect on the family. The birth rate declined, and that, together with
bad mortality figures, has meant that the population of Hungary has been
decreasing since the early eighties.
Combining full-time employment with the role of housewife and mother
has presented a serious problem for women. The socialist system's policy
towards women and the family took full employment for granted, and was
dictated by labour shortages. A network of subsidized child institutions
was established (crèches, kindergartens, after-school day care),
which, for the majority of working women, were affordable. At the same
time they were often criticized for being crowded and thus capable of little
more than acting as child holding-pens.
In the second half of the sixties the economy had a labour surplus,
the most convenient solution to which was the removal of part of the female
workforce. Child-care benefit (GyES) was introduced in 1967, which made
it possible for mothers to stay at home until their children were three
years old, a period in which they received a fixed payment, and after which
they could return to their workplace. In 1985 this was accompanied by the
child-care allowance (GyED), which was linked to the mother's income. With
these measures the socialist state hoped to boost the birth rate and to
encourage better qualified women with longer career backgrounds to have
more children. GyES and GyED can be seen as model examples of social policy
and policy toward women in Europe, although from the start sociologists
were dubious about the expectation that these measures would lead to sustain
ed growth in the birth rate; in addition it was clear that the withdrawal
of women from the work place would strengthen their traditional family
role and relegate them to the status of second-rate wage-earners.
Following the change of regime, the early nineties saw the continued
widespread participation of women in the labour market. According to the
1990 census, 70 per cent of women of working age were actively employed,
with a further 8 per cent inactively employed (receiving child-care benefit
or child-care allowance). Some calculations suggest that in 1992 the economic
activity of women (82.8 per cent) outstripped that of men (80.8 per cent,
Frey 1993). In subsequent years the economic activity of both men and women
has declined, which is primarily attributable to economic restructuring,
or rather to the advent of mass unemployment in Hungary. At the same time,
contrary to expectations, women have not been the primary victims of this
unemployment: of the current 408,000 unemployed (9.3 per cent of the workforce)
60 per cent are men and 40 per cent are women. This ratio has been stable
over the past few years. In practice, unemployment affects women in a greater
proportion than this. Many opted for early retirement in order to avoid
unemployment, not to mention that in the mid-nineties more than 10 per
cent of women of working age were on GyES or GyED. Experience suggests
that a significant proportion of these women find themselves unemploy-ed
after benefit runs out. The attitude of society towards women in the work
place is so contradictory that articles, both in the press and in academic
journals, or pronouncements by politicians frequently express or imply
conflicting opinions. Parti cularly striking is the view that the process
of getting women into jobs, begun in the late forties, was forced onto
society and, as such, is clearly unacceptable. The argument is that the
place of women is in the home, and that the decades in which they earned
a wage are best considered an unhappy memory. This traditional role-model
clearly goes back to that of the middle-class wife and mother before the
Second World War. Others stress the need to guarantee women the right to
choose. They see the ideal situation as one in which the husband is the
primary bread-winner, except that in certain instances--should, for example,
the family's life-cycle and obligations or the wife's ambition facilitate
or necessitate it--she can take on (usually part-time) work. The emphasis
here is on women accommodating to others' needs: Earning a wage is not
seen to be of intrinsic value to a woman's life, rather as an exception,
a kind of added extra. The model is the two-part work cycle for women,
as widely current in Western European countries before the mid-eighties.
A third view regards employment as a key aspect of human existence, and
argues that with the help of paid work women can realize their potential
and escape their subordination to men. This very ideology lay behind the
extensive economic development in the socialist years and the accompanying
in-satiable demand for labour, but is also closely related to the concept
of feminism. Press debates in recent decades have for the most part tried
to make the best of the two extreme positions, and as a kind of modern-day
compromise have constructed the position which recommends women to take
on part-time work, or work that adjusts to the family's life-cycle.1
Female wage-earning in particular phases of the
family's life-cycle
In recent decades full employment was general in Hungary, 96-97 per
cent of them working full-time, independently of what point their family's
life-cycle was at. Our questionnaire inquired as to the extent to which
members of the Hungarian population approved of this practice. Wo men with
families experienced four distinct marital phases: the first, childless,
the second with children under 6 at home; the third with school-age children;
and the final phase of the marriage after all the children have left home.
For each phase we asked whether women consider full-time, part-time or
no employment as appropriate.
In general, it can be noticed that, in the minds of both men and women,
attitudes toward the employment of women have undergone a dramatic change
since 1988. Overall, the favouring of full-time employment has declined.
Only in the first, childless, phase of the marriage do a high proportion
of interviewees (73 per cent of men and 83 per cent of women) regard an
eight-hour working day as acceptable. Even in the childless phase of the
marriage, a higher proportion of men than of women favour part-time employment.
As far as the employment of mothers with pre-school children is concerned,
the views of men and women are much closer to each other than they were
in 1988. In the mid-nineties, a higher proportion of both sexes preferred
mothers with small children not going to work. Especially striking is the
change in the opinion of women, 60 per cent of whom wanted mothers with
small children to stay at home in 1994 as opposed to 46 per cent in 1988.
This proportion is higher than that for men in 1988. Attitudes to this
phase of life are strongly affected by age and educational background in
the case of women, but not in the case of men. The older the female interviewee,
the more likely she is to think that mothers with small children should
not go out to work. As for the women actually affected, half of the under-30
age group would like to see women doing at least part-time work, even during
this phase. This view is particularly common amongst women who have completed
a university degree.
Opinions concerning the employment of women with children of school
age have changed in a similar way. Almost half of those questioned consider
a four- to six-hour working day to be suitable for women in this phase,
much as in 1988. The proportion of those in favour of an eight-hour working
day however has decreased dramatically (by 11 per cent for men and 15 per
cent for women), with a concomitant rise of those in favour of women staying
at home. This means that--in contrast to 1988--there is no significant
difference between the opinion of men and that of women on this question.
But for both males and females there are differences reflecting age and
educational background. Younger and better-educated interviewees usually
think it right for mothers bringing up children of school age to take up
at least part-time work, or even a full-time job. Those who did not complete
secondary school, however, think it preferable for women not to work during
this phase.
The story is similar in the case of women whose children have grown
up and left home. Women's views in 1994 are a mirror image of men's views
in 1988; they have turned much more traditional. The proportion agreeing
with full-time employment has declined, for women to 72 per cent, for men
to 66 per cent. In both cases the proportion of those who think it right
for women in this phase not to go to work has grown. There are significant
differences between men and women on the basis of educational background.
Thus 80 per cent of women graduates favour full-time employment in this
phase, with 16 per cent favouring part-time work. For graduate men, on
the other hand, the figures are 64 per cent and 30 per cent respectively.
It is noteworthy that even those women without a secondary school leaving
certificate are more likely to support full-time work at this stage in
life than graduate men.
Since the change of regime Hungary--like all other former socialist
states--has had a stronger demand for part-time employment, and a higher
proportion of wo men favouring their withdrawal from wage-earning. So of
the alternatives suggested in the introduction, the public would seem most
in favour of the two-part work cycle, where women work in the childless
phase, then again once the children have grown up. Yet a comparison of
attitudes with reality strengthens the impres sion that the two strongly
differ from each other. Our data suggests that a significant proportion
of the public is genuinely nostalgic for the lifestyle in which women did
not work or only worked part-time. Meanwhile many of those who cannot find
work or live at home on childcare allowance feel they would benefit more
from going out to work. This inconsistency is one of the most significant
potential sources of conflict within Hungarian families.
Motives for women to go to work
The international questionnaire sought opinions on three possible motivations
for women to seek employment. Res pon ses could be expressed on a scale
of 1 to 5, from complete agreement to complete disagreement. In this analysis
"agreement" refers both to "completely agree" and "agree"
responses.
It is a widespread belief that the collapse of socialism has left only
the financial motive as significant in a woman's decision to find work.
This was tested by asking for responses to the following statement: "Today
the majority of working women have to work because their family cannot
make ends meet without their income." A high proportion of men and
women (90 per cent) agreed with this statement. (This question did not
appear in the 1988 questionnaire, so no comparison can be made.) Only graduates
thought differently, one in five believing that women do not primarily
work because of financial necessity. Even amongst the under-30s, 85 per
cent accept this. Our data therefore support the proposition that in Hungary
financial necessity really is an exceptionally powerful motivational factor
for women seeking employment. We should add that this financial motive
is no less strong in all the other post-socialist countries, with the proportion
of those agreeing with the above statement above 90 per cent in each of
them. This value is slightly lower in Slovenia, where 77 per cent of men
and 87 per cent of women consider financial necessity to be the key motive
for women seeking work.
The following proposition summarises another possible motivation for
women to go out to work: "Employment is the best way a woman can maintain
her independence." It is striking that no more than a third of Hungarian
interviewees agreed, compared to the other post-socialist states, where
a much higher proportion (60-70 per cent) did so. Another characteristic
of Hungary is that, unlike the other post-socialist countries, women were
no more likely to agree with the proposition than men. Just as our hypothesis
suggests, those with the poorest and highest educational qualifications
make the strongest connection between female employment and independence.
Meanwhile it is precisely those in the oldest age group who are most receptive
to this proposition: 48 per cent of women over 68 agree, as opposed to
only 27 per cent of women between 18 and 27. The very concept of independence
seemingly has a unique meaning to certain classes of Hungarians. We can
only guess as to what is the explanation for this. It may be that the younger
are the most sensitive to the fact that in Hungary today work does not
provide independence in the full sense, given that even in 1994 incomes
did not usually provide an adequate living standard. Another answer may
be that the word 'independence' had negative connotations for the inter-viewees,
presuming that it referred to women who leave their families, breaking
family ties that--despite the high divorce rate--are still highly valued
in Hungary. In principle, of course, it is also possible--if hardly likely--that
Hungarian women, in contrast to their contemporaries in Western European
and other post-socialist countries, feel themselves to be independent even
when they do not earn a wage, that is, that Hungary has already experienced
the total emancipation of women.
An analysis of women's motivation logically gives rise to the proposition
that women (also) find work as a way of achieving self-fulfilment. The
questionnaire phrased this idea the other way round, as follows: "Performing
the duties of a housewife can offer just as much self-fulfilment to a woman
as paid employment." In 1994 half of men and women agreed with this
proposition. The older the interviewee and the poorer his or her educational
background, the more likely he or she was to accept this. This question
divides the post-socialist countries into two quite distinct groups. Those
questioned in Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria and Russia saw domestic work as
on a par with paid work in terms of self-fulfilment, while those in the
former GDR, the Czech Republic and Slovenia did not think it offered the
same self-fulfilment.
Employment of women and the family
Having considered sources of motivation for women to go out to work,
we now turn to what interviewees thought of the effect that women going
out to work had on their families, particularly their children.
One of the questions was directed at the problems facing mothers with
children under six. This was expressed in the following proposition: "A
child under six will certainly suffer if his or her mother goes to work."
As we saw when evaluating the various life phases, this is the stage in
life when interviewees favour, with unambiguous unanimity, mothers staying
at home. It is no surprise, therefore, that a high proportion accepted
this last proposition, three-quarters of both men and women. Support for
this view has strengthened since 1988. It is noteworthy that in the youngest
age group the proportion who accept this view is even higher in the case
of women than in the case of men. (In the 18-27 age group 60 per cent of
women and 47 per cent of men agreed with this proposition.) For both sexes,
the proportion increases with age (in the over-68 age group 82 per cent
of men and 86 per cent of women). For women, educational background has
a powerful effect on the level of support for the proposition. Women with
no more than a secondary school- leaving certificate are more likely to
agree with it than men of a similar background (62 per cent completely
agree, 24 per cent generally agree). Acceptance is much lower in the case
of graduate women. What is more only one in five agree that it is not automatically
damaging for a child under six for his or her mother to go out to work.
It seems that we are witnessing a nationwide feeling of guilt. In Hungary
88 per cent of children between the ages of three and six go to kindergarten;
the Education Act requires children to attend school preparation at kindergarten
once they are past their fifth birthday. Yet a significant proportion of
women feel that their children under the age of six will suffer lasting
emotional damage if they go out to work. Amongst the other post-socialist
countries this opinion is most characteristic of Bulgaria and Russia; opposing
views were found amongst East German, Czech and Slovenian interviewees.
Those who oppose women going out to work argue that this risks damage
not only to the child's life but to that of the family as well. The latter
notion was expressed in the following proposition: "Family life suffers
if the wife works full-time." The proportion of women agreeing with
this has grown slightly since 1988 (from 61 per cent to 66 per cent) while
that of men has diminished significantly (from 77 per cent to 60 per cent).
This means that women are now more likely to support this view than men.
This is particularly noticeable in the 18-27 age group, where 54 per cent
of women, as opposed to 38 per cent of men, agree with the proposition.
The older men are, the more likely they are to agree, the proportion reaching
77 per cent in the over-68 age group. In the case of women responses are
similar up to the age of 47, after which the proportion who agree grows
suddenly and overtakes that of men. If we exclude the middle-aged, more
women support this proposition than men of any age group. There is a striking
disparity in the opinion of women depending on their educational background.
Amongst women with college or university degrees support for this view
has declined since 1988, while for all other groups it has grown. Thus
in 1994, 82 per cent of women with no secondary school-leaving certificate
thought that full-time work damages family life, but only 28 per cent of
graduate women said the same.
Nostalgia and guilt
The response of sociologists at home and abroad to the data produced
by the 1988 international survey was that, relative to their contemporaries
in Western Europe and North America, Hungarian men are dis tinctly conservative
concerning questions related to the employment of women (Harding 1989,
Tóth 1991). On most questions it was the opinion of women that changed
most drastically between then and 1994, thus partly reversing the trend
of men being the more conservative. 1994 has shown Hungarians, in particular
Hun garian women, reverting to the paradigm of the housewife who confines
her activity to the household. These values can not but be described as
conservative. Yet there seems to be no talk of the society-wide two-wage-earner
family model being abolished, nor of the proliferation of part-time work,
which would seem to represent a widely-adopted panacea for these problems.
Thus people have to live with a major discrepancy in their everyday life--between
what they consider to be right and what is actually the case. How can we
explain the way such attitudes have emerged? There are, no doubt, a whole
list of factors behind them. We could perhaps begin with the proposition
that in 1994 women felt they could finally express their true beliefs on
this issue, no longer being conditioned by the pressures of socialist ideology.
This is, however, immediately contradicted by the fact that other similar
surveys conducted since 1989 suggest that the young and middle-aged genera
tions of Hungarian women have become firmly adjusted to wage-earning. It
looked impossible that "women could be sent back to the kitchen".
(Hadas 1994; Vukovich et al, 1994).
If the explanation for such beliefs is not to be found in earlier beliefs
being given a new freedom of expression, then we must look for it elsewhere.
A significant role must be apportioned to a society-wide feeling of guilt
that Hungarian society and ideology has traditionally produced in women.
It could already be felt in socialist times that many held women qua social
group responsible for the declining birth rate, for the lack of keenness
in bringing up children, for just about all the problems arising amongst
the young. At the same time as seeing a need for women to earn a wage,
society and the family consistently attacked mothers for the irreparable
damage they were supposedly causing to their children by doing so. It would
be a logical escape from this if women becam - or at least thought it right
in principle to become - housewives again.
Perhaps the most obvious answer to the change in beliefs is that women
have tired of the--by Western standards very significant--strain that simultaneous
employment and housekeeping imply. According to household budget data,
the nineties in Hungary have been characterized by an outright traditional
division of labour within families. The wife does the lion's share of household
chores, independent of whether she or her husband go out to work or not.
On average, women have an hour less leisure a day than men. This leisure
has, in any case, declined in all social groups since the eighties, with
economic decline and dwindling living standards forcing the majority of
people to perform unaffordable services themselves. The years of the change
of regime saw the continuation of a decline in people's ability to avoid
doing their own housework. Many women are now obliged to carry out domestic
tasks that in the past they could afford to pay others to do. At the same
time the family is in need of income, and rising unemployment has meant
that it is often the woman who is secure in the receipt of a wage. The
majority of jobs require better results from individuals than in the past,
and, added to the pressure, affecting women as much as men, there is the
fear of unemployment. Given that the change of regime has from this perspective
made women's lives much harder, it is no surprise that women favour a lifestyle
more relaxed than their present one. This is consistent with the view of
most men, who feel that their lives would be made easier if their wives
stayed at home.
Of course a large question mark remains over whether, were these desires
to be satisfied overnight, allowing women to be housewives would really
lead to an easier, happier life for everyone. If this were to happen, a
division of labour would arise between the sexes that would in part be
similar and in part be different from what we observe today. Men would
do the same amount of work at their work place as they do today. True,
women would take the burden of housework off their shoulders, thus fully
handing over to them the role of the wage-earning patriarchal head of the
household, but presumably they would take no greater part in bringing up
their children or in family life. Is this what men really want? And would
women, freed of the burden of paid employment, really be better mothers
and wives? Would it put an end to their guilty conscience? Would looking
after the house offer them real long-term satisfaction? Are today's young
women, with their rising standards of education, who currently occupy half
the country's university places, really just preparing themselves to be
housewives? These are some of the questions a sociologist cannot answer
just from looking at the data. It would appear that the judgment of society
on the employment of women is not yet a fully exhausted subject of research.
Bibliography
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in Hungary in Transition, Welfare Ministry, Buda pest, pp. 7-40.
The role of women in the labour market has gradually changed over the
last fifty years. To begin with, they could only find unskilled work or
office jobs, as their average level of education lagged behind that of
men. Today half of all university students, and more then half of those
completing their secondary education, are female. Sectoral gender segregation
is present in Hungary as much as anywhere else, with, for example, 90 per
cent of teachers being women. At the same time, a good number of those
entering supposedly "male" professions--like medicine, law or
engineering--are female. The flow of women into management positions is
entirely a post-1989 phenomenon. They normally break into middle management
but there are more and more women taking up top executive positions in
the burgeoning banking sector.
Evaluations of marriage and the family have undergone a unique transformation
in Hungary since the change of regime. In the youngest age group there
has been a dramatic growth in the incidence of common law marriage with
a concomitant rise in the average age at which people get married, which
had previously been distinctly early (early twenties). The birth of every
fourth child outside marriage is a new phenomenon. In some of these cases
the parents get married later, but public opinion is increasingly ready
to accept that mothers can bring up children on their own. Apart from the
occasional fluctuation, the divorce rate is consistently high. Trends suggest
that a third of marriages in Hungary today will end in divorce.
Olga Tóth
is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Sociology, Budapest.
Work on this article was supported by the OTKA National Social Research
Fund programme "The Role of Women in the Years of Transition".
1 The source for the
following analysis is provided by a survey into "Family Values and
Changing Gender Roles" conducted by the ISSP (International Social
Survey Pro gramme). Data was collected in Hungary in 1994 by TÁRKI.
The same questionnaire was used in 23 other countries. This included post-Communist
states such as the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Poland, Bulga ria, Russia
and the new German provinces, i.e. what had been the GDR. Whenever it helps
shed light on the analysis, I compare the Hungarian data with opinions
in other post-Communist states. Some of the data are also worth comparing
with the 1988 ISSP survey, when we used a questionnaire that was in part
identical with the current one. For some questions we are in a position
to trace their change over time, indeed over the period of transformation.
The sample size was 1500. Those questioned were geographically representative
in that 19.5 per cent were from Budapest, 43.0 per cent were other towns,
and 37.5 per cent were from the contryside. Women were slightly overrepresented
in the sample at 57.8 per cent, as opposed to their proportion in the population
of 53.1 per cent. As fas as age groups are concerned, under-35s are underrepresented,
the middle-aged are correctly represented, and those over 56 are slightly
overrepresented. Marital status split the interviewees as follows: 13.3
per cent single, 59.1 per cent married, 4.1 per cent living with partner,
8.1 per cent divorced, 16.4 per cent widowed/widowered.
