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‘A Woman from a Newspaper’: A New Face for Ideology and Old Habits
which included a massive women’s work activation in order to build a socialistic
future.
On the one hand, due to the official emancipatory directions, the state ideology
introduced the image of women as being similar to men. However, on the other
hand, the same programmatic guidelines depreciated women by indicating that
they could not be situated in the same rank as men. Consequently, the ideological
aim was rather to create a performance for the public that would give them the
impression that equality and harmony played the main roles on the social stage
(Fig. 176).
Women’s relative economic independence and the possibilities of engaging with
the public sphere in socialism, did not, however, make any substantive transforma¬
tions of their socio-cultural position. The main problem—the lack of emancipa¬
tory actions—remained unsolved and it was particularly visible in the sphere of the
private, where the patriarchal patterns were strongly rooted (cf. Papi¢ 1989: 37).
‘There was no transgression or transformation of a collective social conscious that
could make it possible to abandon the dichotomised categories of the public and
the private, the theory and the practice, the knowledge and the politics. In other
words, the existing socialist reality differed from the one that was ideologically
planned and declared. Apparent gender equality merely put women in ‘second
class’ professions; if they worked in physical jobs, their efforts were rarely appreci¬
ated. After working hours in textile factories or grocery shops, they usually had to
fulfil their ‘natural duties’ of housekeeping, which were far from declining.’ The
emancipatory process declared in state ideology and gender equality in access to
education, politics and employment was thus based on paradoxes and contradic¬
tions (see Toniak 2008). The official and dominating discourse, which was sup¬
posed to be ‘pro-feminine’ unveiled its inconsistencies in various contexts. Thus,
the idea of emancipation, although widely used in slogans and programmatic as¬
sumptions, was far from its initially ascribed meanings. Rather, the (male) state of¬
ficials wanted to preserve their power and preferred their own interests over gender
equality. When looking at the photographed positions of women in 1950s Poland,
one can notice a clear patriarchal pattern of organising social, cultural and political
life. After all, the emergence of any new ideology always involves the rooted and
well-known signs, images and imaginaries that allow it to function.
The local newspapers in the 1950s in the Opole Silesia region published photo¬
graphs that imposed a specific image of social life on viewers that was consistent
with certain criteria and ideological assumptions. The image of ‘a woman from
a newspaper preserved the gendered myth that functioned in the society. Photo¬
graphic representations, in order to be socially accepted and understood, had to be
arranged, directed and staged in ways that blurred the border between reality and
fiction.
> "The women working in factories were also housewives, or— to use a pre-socialism term—guardians of
values and traditions.
399