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IZOLDA TAKÁCS: THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
As we can see above in the division of Zsuzsa Ferge based on the shifts in
view, the official women’s ideal in the 4th period, after 1980, culminated in the
triad of “good wife”, “good mother” and “good caretaker”. Moreover, the role
of “self-sacrificing woman” appeared much more accentuated than before.
If I had not learned to work diligently in my younger years, I would indeed be in a
tough situation right now. (Subject no. 10, doctor of technical sciences)
A woman has to be good in multiple roles. She needs to be a good mother, a good
partner, she needs to be feminine, she needs to excel in work. A successful man can
allow himself to be a bad husband, a bad father, he will not be judged for it the
same as a woman would be. This means disproportionately more strain for women.
(Subject no. 17, social sciences)
In relation to this, Ferge adds that because people are universally diverse,
the spectrum of socially accepted and acceptable values and views cannot
always lead to a narrow, one-sided notion of an ideal woman. A stable model
based on choice and diversity would be needed.**°
CONCLUSION
Summarising the above, we can establish that the emancipation efforts of state
socialism were doomed to fail in practice, because the ruling approach in
families was still conservative, and the role of the male assisting in household
tasks became neither natural nor typical.
So, from a female perspective, the period was characterised by the tension
between paid labour and unpaid housekeeping duties. Hungarian women had
to endure a disproportionately high degree of suffering due to this, as well as
significant structural disadvantages, because gender-based work segregation
remained typical, with the leadership positions, as well as positions in profes¬
sions of higher prestige and bigger salaries having mainly been taken by men.
Susan Zimmerman asserts that most working women in Hungary experienced
paid employment as a possibility of a positive, group-specific identification of
sorts nonetheless, because — even if only in a limited manner — it appeared as
a prerequisite of a new lifestyle and the possibility of personal, social advance¬
ment.**! At the same time, Schadt pointed out that it was not the need of
women for economic independence and a new lifestyle standing behind the
dual-earner family model, but more likely the fact that wages were kept low
350 Tbidem.
351 Zimmermann: À térsadalmi-nemi (gender-) rezsim, 87.
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