Emancipation's dead-end roads? Studies in the formation and development of the Hungarian model for agriculture and gender, 1956-1989

Abstract: The thesis explores the formation and development of agricultural production co-operativesin the context of market socialist transition. It examines how changes in the organisation ofproduction and reproduction affected gender relations. At the same time, it explores the waysin which the prevailing relationships between men and women provided incentives andcreated patterns for economic development. State socialist emancipatory rhetoric aimed atdeveloping a 'humanised' society. Humanisation was to come about through participation insocialist wage labour, while the functions of the family household were to shrink and giveway to the all-pervasive expansion of the state. These two principles were common in thestate socialist projects of agricultural collectivisation and of women's emancipation. However, the proletarianisation of the peasantry could not be accomplished due to the stubbornresistance of the peasantry. They kept alive the institution of household-based production.,Meanwhile, the state placed dual demands on women's creative forces: they were to reachparity with men in the labour force while, at the same time, they were also to nurture thecoming generations. The economy's demands for more workers mobilised the female labourreserves, but women's integration presupposed a reduction of women's reproductive responsibilities. However, rather than balancing out the burdens between men and women, reproductive rights were constructed as women's rights. Consequently, women were integrated as a 'deviant' labour force. The evolving gender segregation of labour in the collective and household sphere was explained by the changing constructions of 'masculinities' and 'femininities'. The evolving economic differentiation served as the basis for the materialisation of gender relations yet could not by itself determine the gender specific outcome of the changes in economic cycles.