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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 transformations of their socio-cultural position. The main problem—the lack of emancipatory 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 appreciated. 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 contradictions (see Toniak 2008). The official and dominating discourse, which was supposed to be ‘pro-feminine’ unveiled its inconsistencies in various contexts. Thus, the idea of emancipation, although widely used in slogans and programmatic assumptions, was far from its initially ascribed meanings. Rather, the (male) state officials 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 photographs 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. Photographic 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
