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Magdalena Sztandara
Ideology always entails a symbolic dimension and actions that depict the social
and cultural relations in ‘objective’ perspective and ideal conditions. Interestingly,
in the case of socialism, the ideological contents were commonly shared by women,
who while juxtaposing their personal struggles and achievements, discussing their
plans and intentions, incessantly clanged to the Party’s raison d’Etat and expressed
their gratitude for living calm and free lives.’ The official power expressly promised
to solve all the burning social issues, such as gender discrimination, and thus, one
can ask if feminism was needed at all. Because, according to the state officials of
the Polish People’s Republic, every citizen was equal, no grass-roots movement
was needed for any emancipatory actions. After all, equality was guaranteed in
the state constitution and repeated in media propaganda as the will of the people.
A good example of such a correlation was the fact that the descriptions of photo¬
graphed women in the newspaper Kalendarz Ziemi Opolskiej (1953) were literal
quotations from the Constitution of the Polish People’s Republic, passed by Parlia¬
ment on July 22, 1952. The first photograph depicts young schoolgirls, whilst the
second shows ‘delighted’ female workers in factories; the captions say, respectively:
‘Citizens of the Polish People’s Republic have equal right to education’ (art. 61)
(Fig. 173), and “Woman in the Polish People’s Republic is equal to man in all do¬
mains of national, political, economic, social and cultural life’ (art. 66) (Fig. 174).
Another photograph depicts a woman holding a baby, which instantly implies
a stereotypical figure of the ‘Polish Mother’, with a caption stating: ‘Marriage and
family are under the care and protection of Polish People’s Republic. Families with
many children are under the special care of the state’ (art. 67) (Fig. 175).
One can notice that everyday life, as well as press photographs, still promoted
values and beliefs that returned women to their traditional roles. One of the rea¬
sons for this might be that women’s obligations were commonly known since they
were historically ‘proven’ and preserved by certain social relations as vehicles for
understanding the world. Therefore, the exploitation of women as a social group
“was presented as both necessary and beneficial to them” (Wtoch 2009: 34-35).
Before the war, women’s professional work and employment were considered
factors in the decline of family life and the decay of women’s morality. In socialism,
on the contrary, the work was a citizen’s duty despite gender identity. In this period,
the socialistic government was chiefly focused on implementing ideological plans,
> A similar caption appeared in Tiybuna Opolska (1954, vol. 56, p. 1) in the context of International
Women’s Day.
This is a construction created for the purposes of history—the monumental figure who dedicates herself
and her children to the good of the country. The myth of the ‘Polish Mother’ originates in the times when
Poland lost its independence; its inseparable feature is the need to invoke the victim. This can be found in
the literature, various studies and public discourses, both from the socialist period and the contemporary.
The socialistic ‘Polish Mother’ needed to be a brave citizen who raised her children in service of the regime
(cf. Kowalczyk 2003; Monczka-Ciechomska 1992).