Polish women organize to defend their interests and fight setbacks

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Helena Zapadlinska, retired telephone operator: "Walesa is selling the coun6 SOCIALIST ACTION JULY 1990 These are times of great promise and great danger for women in Poland. For decades, the second-class status of women—in public life, on the labor market, and at home—was an unchallengeable fact of life, firmly rooted in the hypocritical policies of the ruling Stalinists and in the ideology of the powerful Catholic Church.

Now, the collapse of one-party rule and the nascent democratic process have created political space for women to begin struggling to change their situation.

A newly formed national feminist organization is taking the lead in advocating women's rights and challenging the institutions of male dominance that circumscribe every aspect of women's lives. Women within Solidarnosc are beginning to draw attention to the special problems of working women.

At the same time, however, women are facing a far-reaching assault on their legal rights and living standards that threatens to set them back decades. As the new "roundtable" government of Solidarnosc and the Stalinists rushes to privatize the ailing economy, women are becoming the majority of the new unemployed and have already lost their right to protected long-term parental leave.

Legislation to outlaw abortion is pending in the Polish Senate for the second year in a row. Women are even less represented in government than before, while Playboy-style calendars are displayed in most stores and offices.

Never has it been more critical for women to unite to defend their rights. While the potential for such organization exists, there are many obstacles which must first be overcome.

A twisted history The situation of women in Poland is complex and contradictory. Basic legal rights and social benefits, which in the West were won only after protracted struggle, were provided after the establishment of a planned economy following World War II.

The Polish constitution guarantees the equality of the sexes. Abortion was legalized in 1956 on certain specified grounds, and has evolved essentially to permit abortion on demand for those enrolled in the national health system (not everyone is included).

A system of childcare support was developed which included, for mothers, the right to three months' paid maternity leave and leave to care for sick children (35 days per year per child) and, for either parent, the right to up to three years' parental leave, with an allowance of 40 percent of the former salary paid during the first 18 months.

Pornography was legally banned. New opportunities were made available to women who wished to attend universities and to study or work in traditionally male-dominated fields.

But in reality, little changed for most women. Male dominance was perpetuated in public life through the Stalinist party bureaucracy and in private life through the weight of tradition reinforced by the Catholic Church.

Women entered the work force in record numbers to help rebuild war-devastated Poland and currently constitute 46 percent of the workforce. But they have been kept segregated in the lowest paying jobs-often the most monotonous and unsafe-concentrated in the textile, food, and pottery industries, the clothing trade, and education and health services. Thus, the average woman earns only 65 percent of the average man's wages.

At the same time, women have always been expected to assume full responsibility for children and the home. The policies of the ruling Polish United Workers Party (PUWP) encouraged this sexual division of labor. For instance, rather than investing in daycare centers, the government urged mothBrenda Bishop spent seven weeks in Poland in January and February 1990. She held extensive discussions with feminists and unionists and attended the Conference of Women in Solidarnosc in Gdansk. try. We can't eat factories."

ers to take extended parental leave.

Women who seek abortions must often encounter long waits at the public clinics and hospitals. Most women prefer to see private practitioners although the cost can be quite expensive.

The one established women's organization, the Women's League, has been little more than a project to occupy wives of PUWP leaders, publishing a magazine, Women's Life, and providing some individual services to women, such as help in finding part-time work or childcare.

Yet women have not been entirely passive. In 1980-81, they became active in Solidarosc in numbers equal to men, notwithstanding their noticeable absence from the history-making photos.

In those days, women saw their interests as identical to men's in the fight for political democracy and social justice. But even as Solidarnosc broadened into a mass movement of opposition, its critique of the political and social order never extended to the subordination of women. With the Church hierarchy as its strongest ally, the top leadership maintained its social conservatism.

One step forward, one step back As in the West, it was the attempt to take away women's right to control their reproductive capability which created the conditions for women to begin openly struggling around their own agenda.

In February 1989, a bill was introduced in the Sejm (the Polish parliament) to protect the rights of the "unborn child." Violators— women and doctors alike-were to be subjected to a three-year prison term.

Women all across the nation were indignant. In a country where safe and reliable birth control is obtainable only by chance, many women are forced to turn to abortion as a last resort. In a population of 19 million women, nearly 700,000 women have abortions each year.

Independent women's action groups sprang up in every major city, often around universities. They undertook petitioning, parliamentary appeals, and even street actions in defense of the existing law.

After being inundated with letters and phone calls, the Women's League was forced to take a stand against the proposed legislation, while Solidarnose managed to avoid publicly stating its position. Lech Walesa vacillated, stating at first that people have to stop "killing each other." Later, he suggested that the question is a moral one, better left to individual conscience rather than the state.

The bill died last summer before coming to a vote, but the newly formed action groups did not.

National feminist gatherings

In the meantime, the entire political landscape was changing in Poland. In "roundtable" discussions, Solidarnosc eventually agreed to a compromise with the ruling bureaucrats, leading to new elections.

When the PUWP was soundly trounced and unable to rule (only one of its uncontested candidates even won a plurality, Solidarnosc finally agreed to a power-sharing arrangement under which the PUWP retained control of the army and security forces, as well as the newly established post of president (filled by General Jaruzelski, who had declared martial law in 1981).

For the first time in years, it was possible to organize, demonstrate, and openly publish and distribute information without fear of repression or control. These changes gave impetus to feminist organizing.

As soon as the law on organizations was liberalized, the core of feminists moved to establish an official national organization. They registered with the government as the Polish Feminist Association (PFA).

At the beginning of November 1989, a conference in the western city of Poznan brought together activists from groups in the abortion rights campaign to exchange views on how to continue the women's struggle. On Nov. 12, at the request of the National United States, women organized a picket of the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw in solidarity with the 600,000 demonstrating in Washington, D.C., to demand safe, legal, and accessible abortion.

And later that same month, the first national meeting of women in Solidarnosc was convened to lay the groundwork for developing a women's agenda for the organization.

Women workers hit by austerity Ironically, the very openings that made it possible for women to begin organizing also unleashed other forces which threaten to push women even further backward.

The government's solution to the problems of the inefficient, debt-ridden Polish economy is nothing short of the reintroduction of capitalist economic relations in all sectors. The effect has been to reduce living standards by 40 percent and to bring back unemployment.

Women are proving to be the hardest hit. Some 80 percent of those already dismissed are women, who are concentrated in the "non-essential" office jobs which are being eliminated. With less training and few transferable skills, these women will have great difficulty in finding new work.

Other women have been forced to quit their jobs as the cost of daycare soars to levels exceeding their take-home pay. Many more working mothers will lose their jobs as a result of changes in the law; employers will now be permitted to fire women during their three-year parental leave.

These attacks dovetail with a campaign to limit women to their role as homemakers and mothers. In January, the Sejm quietly eliminated the state subsidy to the Family Development Society (formerly the Family Planning Society), a private association that was the only family-planning body in the country.

Less than one month later, legislation to outlaw abortion-slightly altered from last year's failed bill—was introduced in the Senate. And in April, the Minister of Health issued regulations that would require the approval of three doctors and a psychologist before an abortion can be performed by the state. Although this decree has not yet been voted upon by parliament, it is already being implemented in some areas.

The leader of the center-right Union for Real Politics, Jerzy Korwin-Mikke, has even gone so far as to suggest that the right to vote should be taken away from women. His party also urges that women's access to higher education be limited, on the theory that women are less likely to make use of their degrees!

Women in Solidarnose

While it is clear that women can only rely on themselves to defeat this array of attacks, there is little chance of building a mass independent women's movement in the near future. Women's advocates must therefore seek to win support for pro-women policies and to mobilize women through existing institutions.

The most important institution in this period is Solidarnosc. Only a strong workers' organization can lead the kind of fight in the workplace and in the political arena that will be necessary to defend women's economic interests. But Solidarnosc cannot be counted on to automatically play this role.

Under Walesa's iron hand, the top leadership currently supports the government's pro-market policies, accepts mass layoffs, and approves the loss of social benefits and the growth of social differentiation as the price that has to be paid to put the Polish economy back on its feet. Top union leaders (including the new head of the Gdansk region and the union's female spokesperson, Barbara Malek) are on record as justifying the mass dismissals of women first.

Nor do women have any decisive influence in Solidarnosc. Activists estimate that women comprise about 20 percent to 50 percent of leadership at the enterprise level, from 10 percent to 25 percent at the regional level, and have only token representation on the National Executive Committee. (No statistics are readily available, itself an indication of the problem.)

A women's commission was recently set up at the highest levels of the union to investigate, educate, and organize in regard to the problems of women workers. Unfortunately, the top leadership has hampered the commission in its work.

At the same time, the efforts of a handful (continued on next page)

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Foreign "experts" from the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) who led Solidarnosc Women's Conference.

Warsaw movie theatre: Pornography is on the rise in Poland.

SOCIALIST ACTION JULY 1990 7 (continued from preceding page)

of women activists have made some progress inside Solidarnosc. In January, a week-long seminar addressed exclusively to women's issues was held in Gdansk. A few dozen unionists (most of whom were leaders in their enterprises) and many feminist academics and activists attended.

At the outset, the full range of material and psychological problems facing working women in Poland was outlined. A report prepared by a member of the PFA from Gdansk, who was recently hired by the union's National Education Committee to concentrate primarily on women's issues, provided the background for the discussion.

Top on the list was the fact that all working women, regardless of age, education, or type of work, are saddled with all the housework and childcare after they have put in their eight or more hours on the job. Inequality in the job market resulting from discrimination in education, hiring, and promotion was also identified by some speakers.

In industry, where women constitute 13.2% of the workforce, they are exposed to an array of health and safety hazards: 63% work in a standing position without interruption, 50% are required to lift excessively heavy loads, 48% work with harmful substances, 46% work with high levels of noise, 35% are exposed to excessive dust levels, and 30% to high temperatures.

The search for solutions to these problems proved problematic. As the very first speaker put it, the only real answer lies in reversing the centuries-old tradition-passed from grandmother to mother to each new generation-that a woman's place is in the kitchen while a man's is on the shop floor.

Thus, in the quest for more immediate solutions, many women sought to carve out special protections for women, which would only perpetuate the sexual division of labor and fuel the forces of discrimination.

Some women favored the establishment of a maintenance allowance that would enable mothers to remain home to "educate" their children until the age of 10. Wide support was given for a ban on nightwork for women. A prohibition on women working overtime or working with hazardous substances and a homemaker's allowance were among the other suggestions raised.

More appropriate policy recommendations were ultimately formulated. The conference insisted that flexible working hours and part-time work should be made available to women and that more daycare centers of higher quality (i.e., lower teacher/child ratio and more flexible operating hours) should be opened. It was also stressed that men had an equal responsibility for home and childcare duties and that medical leave to care for sick children should be extended to fathers as well.

The principle of equal pay for work of equal value was endorsed, and the union was urged to take an active role in the job reevaluations currently underway in many industries and to demand special job-skills training for women. In the health and safety field, it was agreed that pregnant women should have the right to a protected job, while the union should prioritize the fight to eliminate or minimize hazardous working conditions for all workers.

Participants expressed alarm over the potential loss of social benefits (such as parental leave) and the decline in health and safety standards that may result from the much-sought-after foreign capitalist investment.

US OUT NON

SOCIALIST ACTION Send coupon Many women, however, were prepared to accept on principle that, if workers must be fired for the sake of "improving the economy," less harm is done by dismissing women—on the assumption that women earn less and that their income is supplementary.

But cold, hard economics may transform this belief. Inflation and the wage freeze have already made it next to impossible to feed a family on two incomes. And some women pointed out that women are, in fact, the primary breadwinners in many households.

"Moral control"

Ideologically, the cult of "motherhood" is being nurtured these days, while the sexual objectification of women is becoming more pronounced. Pornography, which is still officially illegal, arrived several years ago with the first market reforms and is now spreading like wildfire-a symbol of Poland's "modernization."

In the year that Miss Poland reigns as Miss World, calendars of nude women in degrading poses are produced by state companies, prominently marketed in state-run shops, and found hanging on most office walls. The Church, which has done its best to suppress any discussion of sex, even forcing a lone textbook on sexuality out of print, has lost its tongue when it comes to the new porn.

Guilt and shame still inhibit most women from discussing these "private" matters. Despite the much-hailed freedom of the press that now exists, many feminists feel that a new form of self-censorship, an "inner moral control" shaped by Catholic ethics, makes the environment even more hostile to such discussions.

Though it is not yet feasible for feminists to think of producing their own publications, they are using other means at their disposal. In March, for example, activists and academics from across the country addressed the subject "Motherhood: Duty or Free Choice?" at a seminar in Krakow. Similar forums are being planned in other areas.

Building a feminist movement The success of the independent feminist movement will depend in part on the ability of the young groups to strengthen themselves organizationally. At present, a handful of activists is assuming reponsibility for an I 16 months for $4 1 year for $8 State St., Rm. 308, 94110 struggle of Polish women. Opinion is divided on whether the anti-abortion bill has any chance of passage by parliament. In the long run, the position adopted by Solidarnose and its allies in government will be Emmanuelle critical.

At the 2nd National Congress of Solidarnosc, held in Gdansk on April 19-24 a resolution was passed calling for the protection of the "unborn child. ." Not much fight was put up against the resolution; some women activists in the union even voted for it. Afterwards, feminists organized a picket line of Solidarnosc's office.

The Church is pulling out all stops in its anti-abortion campaign, resorting to appeals from the pulpit and propaganda displays set up in chapels. The prospect of Poland becoming another Ireland is feared by many women. But there are other indications that even loyal Catholics are not prepared to follow the Church on this issue-as shown by the predominance of two-child households.

At the same time, many are becoming annoyed with the Church's ever-bolder intruoverwhelming amount of work. Local sions into secular affairs. The introduction of groups have been functioning largely inde- a chaplain in Parliament and religious maspendently, taking their own initiatives based ses on television are but the most obvious on local needs. examples. Even among those with moral obWhile this decentralization may be appro- jections to abortion, many believe the quespriate to the internal needs of the movement tion must be resolved by individual conat this early stage, it makes it more difficult science rather than by the political process. to coordinate the struggles on a national The attack on abortion will be a decisive level—as well as to win media attention. test for women and for Polish workers as a The independent feminist movement faces whole. The stakes are high, as it is not simits greatest challenge from the formerly ply a question of restrictions but the loss of "official" organizations, particularly, the a democratic right that is more protected than Women's League. Having lost the backing in the West. The outcome will also be an of the Stalinist bureaucracy, which provided important indication of whether the new era it with operating funds, the League is trying in Poland will awaken women to the need to to prove that it is still the leading women's organize to defend their interests or whether organization in order to hang on to its exten- it will force them into passivity as never besive offices and privileges. Thus, it is at- fore. The answer to that question is linked to tempting to play a more activist role. the larger political developments.

The League has approached PFA about The disintegration of the old Stalinist working together on draft legislation. To order presents historic opportunities for a sodate, PFA has refused any collaboration, not cial transformation aimed at establishing a wanting to be used to legitimize the League true political and economic democracy-soor to risk being discredited by too close an cialist democracy. But in marked contrast to association with the old guard. the mass mobilization ot 1980-81, when the But at the same time, feminists cannot majority of working people participated in simply stand aside and let the League use its constructing a new union and workers' counestablished position to set the direction or cils that were to be the infrastructure of a futake all the credit for the women's moment. ture self-managed republic, the process is Nor can they afford to turn their backs on now in the hands of politicians, parliamenany who are potential allies in the fight to tarians and "experts." defend women's rights. Rather than seeking to organize working PFA's difficulties may be exacerbated by people or to actively involve them in their its reluctance to formalize its organizational union or grassroots politics, these political structures. At present, there is no formal leaders are preaching restraint and disciplined membership procedure, no clear leadership, cooperation with their attempts to attract no regularly convened meetings or formal foreign investors. mechanism for decision making, and no sys- Many in Poland are alarmed at the all-tootem of dues or other regular sources of fund- familiar conservative atmosphere in which ing. criticism is discouraged as irresponsible and In many ways, the PFA is still function- unpatriotic. Mass resistance by women is ing the same as before it was legal, domi- only likely to develop if and when the grownated by a tight-knit group of highly moti- ing discontent of all working people is transvated individuals who constitute a de-facto lated into a political struggle to protect their leadership. These organizational weaknesses interests. are likely to be resolved with time, as the In the meantime, projects to defend need to incorporate more women forces the women's rights and to raise the consciousdevelopment of more formal methods of ness of women may achieve some advances group functioning. while paving the way for the development of La broader women's movement. This is just The abortion rights struggle the beginning of a new round in the long In the near future, the threat to abortion uphill struggle for liberation that women in rights is certain to occupy center stage in the Poland share with women around the world.

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