Monika Mária Váradi
- Katalin Kovács
Small-town Women
[...]
In Socialist times, party membership was a matter of
course for the middle cadres of factories, and a sine qua non for advancement.
Three of the women spoke cogently about this. They said that at the time
they felt "honoured" when they were asked to join, and have fond
memories of the atmosphere at the compulsory party seminars. "There
was the shift overseer, the team foreman, and the workers. So in this small
family in which you were working, you were together, and you could talk
to them." Yet after 1989, none of these women joined any of the organizations
that grew out of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party; nor did those
working class women who had not felt particularly "honoured"
when, under pressure by their team leader, they joined the Party along
with all the others working in their shift. "Some came from very religious
families, and said, 'I'm sorry Magdika, but I'm not joining, my family
will disown me.' At which [the group leader] said, 'Look, Marika, we're
not telling a soul, just join.' The poor thing, she even cried. She [the
group leader] was determined to get rid of anyone in her shift who didn't
join. And in the end she was awarded the Hero of So cialist Labour title,
because she showed how she could turn every soul under her wing into a
partisan. I was so angry at Party meetings--hardly aware where I was. And
we were young, we had better things to do, the sun was shining, but there
we were, for an hour and a half or thereabouts, because we had to be there,
there were lots of other things to attend to, and so we said, for goodness'
sakes, why must I waste an hour and a half on this ridiculous nonsense."
The lack of political interest among the manual labourers and white-collar
workers stems from two factors. Neither political activity nor strong religious
beliefs could be said to have characterized the poor rural peasants' and
town-dwelling manual la bour ers' background from which these women came.
At the same time, white-collar workers are not targeted by party rhetoric
of whatever colouring, and there is no party on the Hungarian political
scene which the workers think of as a working man's party. "Well,
I was expecting that it wouldn't be any worse for us. But then came democracy.
You know... And then came this Socialist Party, I was waiting for it to
happen, the long and short of it is, I voted for them. I thought maybe
they'd want what we had before. But why is it grinding people into the
shit? But the worst of it is... not those on top, it's always those already
down who go further down, on and on."
With the change in regime, these people, coming from a poor peasant
and working class background, lost their security. Com pared to the poverty
they had known in childhood, late-Kádár Socialism was a boom;
they felt a sense of security, that "it was worth all the work",
and that "if you work hard enough, you will go up in the world."
"Basically, we're not working any more than we did before, in the
factory. Before, it was much more difficult, because there was more physical
work... but you did it... till you dropped, you'd have done the work for
the whole plant alone, because it was worth it... We weren't tired emotionally,
just physically... We worked, and joked, and sweated, but with good cheer."
Things have drastically changed. For most working families, the main
problem is survival. They are afraid that they will be reduced to the level
of their parents 40 or 50 years ago. The fact that these insecure and frightened
labourers and white-collar workers now have a small share-holding in their
own workplace, has done nothing to alleviate their fears. Instead of feeling
that the factory is theirs, the opposite is the case; they feel they have
less to do with it than ever, because not only the majority of the shares,
but all the essential information, too, remains in the hands of the management.
They say that the divide between them and the management is growing by
leaps and bounds.
For the manual labourers and white-collar workers, post-1989 society
suffered from a great divide not only in a financial sense, with a small
number of the newly rich and a large number of those who are growing poorer;
they also feel that within the new order of things, work counts for nought,
nor does it guarantee even the humblest of living standards. "When
I look around," one woman said, "I feel sad, because I never
learned how to do anything else but work. That's how I grew up, it's what
I know. I thought I could earn a living that way. And now all I hear is
you've got to go into business. But I'm not cut out for that. Even if I
had any capital, I'm not one of your clever schemers. I'm not enterprising
enough to start something. What I wanted, what I still want, basically,
is to make a living doing a job of work. Some people are born for that.
Not everybody's good at business, but this system, it humiliates the worker."
[...]
Top white-collar working women divorced for different
reasons, and in every case, it was they who started proceedings. Every
one of these women married out of love. They wanted to be good wives and
good mothers, and to have a career at the same time. They could not go
on living with their husbands as they prevented them from pursuing their
own careers, or were not "partners" in their lives, by which
they meant that the husbands should help with small children and support
their wives in their professional ambitions. On the other hand, these women
did not tolerate their husbands' pastimes, the drinking bouts with friends
after soccer games, the card games that stretched into the early hours,
instances where the husband "took out the garbage in the afternoon
and didn't come back till eleven at night, because he went drinking with
the boys"--a situation which was tolerated least of all when the women
felt bound hand and foot, especially if this occurred because of the husband's
wishes, or because they were rearing small children.
"When I was married," one woman explained, "my husband
wouldn't allow anybody near me, regardless of whether this was a man, a
woman, or one of our friends. He only cared about goulash and white shirts.
My whole life revolved around making tasty variations of goulash, and baby
food for the children. In the end I was so angry and tired, I couldn't
eat." Another woman told us, "When my little girl was born, I
said, well, I ended up bringing another servant into the world! Because
if you're a wife, you are promoted to a hotel maid. 'Clean clothes, warm
cunt,' that's what they say that men want."
Both of the women just quoted had small children when they were divorced.
Though they were not willing to be the servant of their husbands, they
didn't mind taking care of their children, and in this they were supported
by their parents. Of the four children they had between them (two children
each), three were graduates, and the fourth travelled the world, a photographer,
a real lad "taking after his mother". When they were young, both
women were the apples of their fathers' eye, and both their mothers were
housewives. These fathers gave their daughters a sense of direction, and
it is also thanks to them that both these women have an admirable amount
of self-confidence. Their mothers continued what they had always done:
to give their all in the service of their families--and by now, the families
of their daughters as well. Well over seventy, they continue to do so to
this day.
[...]
The authors are members of the Regional
Research Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Monika Mária Váradi is a sociologist.
Katalin Kovács is senior social researcher and ethnographer.
They have collaborated on joint projects for the past five years.
