Oldal 107 [107]
GENDER HISTORY RETROSPECTIVE
IN HUNGARY AFTER 1949
Spaces and opportunities after the Declaration of Gender Equality and
the shadow of the ideology of the Party
INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, I am attempting a comprehensive introduction of how his¬
torical changes in the second part of the 20th century have affected women’s
and science policies, the educational, employment as well as family support
system in Hungary, i.e. how the contradictory ideological and practical condi¬
tions of the world emerged as a result of the interrupted process of civilisation
(the interrupted development of the middle class), and how these affected the
structure of social roles.
I would like to remind readers that this chapter is also part of a qualitative
research project executed in 2017 and 2018, within the scope of which I recorded
semi-structured interviews with 11 female academics and 21 female doctors
of science (DSc). As I have mentioned in the former chapters, I was primarily
aiming to find out if they had encountered any disadvantages that can be traced
back to their gender during their scientific career, and whether the fact that
women are extremely underrepresented to this day in the upper echelons of
Hungarian science can be attributed to gender discrimination (the percentage
of women among academics and DScs in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
[Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, referred to henceforth as MTA] is 6.7%
academics and 15.5% DSc, respectively). As I have already mentioned, the
member election in 2019 changed the ratio of the female academics to 8.7%
and in 2022 to 10.4%.”
Since the members of the analysed population were mainly born between
1940 and 1960, and typically gained their first academic degrees in the ’60s,
’70s and ’80s, the domestic historical context of the research was state social¬
ism. Though the multi-perspective survey has shown general hindrances
rooted in gender differences, especially in leadership roles and with regards to
the election process of the Academy, it became clear nonetheless that the in¬
terviewed scientists have fundamentally encountered difficulties related rath¬
er to the typical political-ideological frame of the second part of the 20th
century than those based on gender during the offset of their scientific career.
296 Cf. Lamm-Nagy: 2019 ismét a , nők éve", 1653.
+ 105 +