F E M I N I S M:
Moderate and Sensible:
Higher education and the Czech women's rights movement

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Dagmar Kotlandova Koenig

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in International Studies, University of Washington, 2 June 1997.

Preface

This study concentrates on the position of Czech women in higher education as it evolved from the second half of the nineteenth century to the present. The focus of the study is the continuously progressive advancement of Czech women in society. The Czech women's rights movement had been characterized by a progressive liberal tradition ever since its beginnings in the last century. It is my proposition that the whole history of Czech women in higher education is rooted in the continuity of this liberal tradition, and that this tradition was frequently supported by the ruling elites of the day.

It is crucial to realize that this liberal continuity of development of the women's rights movement had never been completely interrupted in the Czech Lands. The Czech women's rights movement started to form in the second half of the last century under favorable conditions. The First Republic provided a positive environment and stimulated further growth of women's activities. World War One caused stagnation of women's position in higher education. World War Two brought a setback to Czech women in higher education, but the setback was a result of the closure of all Czech institutions of higher learning for both men and women. The period of 1938 - 1948 was a turbulent one, and is mentioned in this study only briefly, mostly due to lack of sources analyzing this period. The communist period had mostly positive effects on the position of women in higher education, although not without significant negative effects that certainly will be mentioned. The current post-1989 period has barely been long enough to provide material for serious research, but it is clear that Czech women maintain their position in all areas where they had already increased their participation, such as the workplace and higher education.

I decided to use higher education as a showcase example in this study for several reasons. For one, higher education was the sphere in which Czech women, more than a hundred years ago, first demanded equality. Thus, this field holds a significant position in the history of Czech women's rights movement. The second reason was the scarcity of research on this topic. The women's rights movement in the Czech lands in general began to receive the attention of researchers only a few years ago. Non-Czech historians and writers paid most attention to the field at first, and it seems that Czech academic interest in this field developed only after some significant works of foreign researchers had been published. The third reason was my personal interest in the field of education.

The historical development of the position of Czech women in higher education presents an interesting illustration of women's journey to equality. The necessity to search out for scattered sources made this topic even more interesting. I researched sources in the Czech, Slovak, and English languages. I also found one valuable source in French. The majority of my sources were collected in the library of the University of Washington in Seattle and in the Czech Republic. In Prague, I collected sources in the National Library and the Gender Studies Centre Library.

Finally, I would like to emphasize that this study is about Czech women. Slovak women and German women might be mentioned wherever they were concerned, but Czech women are the primary focus of this study.

Introduction

"It is strange that while worrying about schools we forget about half of the human society, about women. Woman should be educated better, because she herself is the educator ... and thus secondary schools and universities should be open for women. And that is what I ask for."
T G Masaryk in the Austrian parliament, June 1891 (1)(2),

"While in the year 1948/49 only 23.2% out of the total 55,788 university students were women, in the year 1989/90 women constituted already 45.0% out of the total 137,905 university students."
Marie Cermakova , Czech sociologist, in 1991(3)

Why were Czech women so advanced within the borders of the empire? Predictably, the answer is rather complex. Successful social movements usually occur in economically developed societies. Bohemia and Moravia belonged among the most economically developed lands of the late Austrian Empire. Bohemia was doing so well that some historians claim Austria could not ever have become what it had been without Bohemia.(4) The Czech lands differed from most other Slavic lands of the empire in that they were not predominantly agricultural. The development of industry went hand in hand with urbanization and the demographic revolution which, in turn, triggered progressive political movements. The resulting progressive environment was very favorable for the unfolding of the women's rights movement.

The first women students at the gymnasium Minerva and at the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague were almost invariably of middle class origin. They were most often daughters of administrators, teachers, tradesmen, and well-to-do craftsmen, only about one-eighth of Minerva students came from provincial and village familes. (5) They came from families which could afford to pay for their tuition. The Minerva gymnasium, for example, was a private school and the students had to pay tuition. At the same time, these young women came from families which were liberal enough to understand and support their daughters' desire to achieve higher education. Such families were able to dismiss, or at least disregard, the two most common objections of the day to higher education for women. It was generally believed at that time that if women joined the work process, it would disrupt the balance of the economy as it would take jobs away from men. Men would thus be forced into unemployment or into jobs of lower qualifications. The other perceived problem was the potential isolation of women from their place in the family and household. It was taken for granted by many that university study for women would concern only a narrow group of women who had the desire and the talent to become educated professionals and who did not plan to have a family of their own. Young women from upper middle classes thus rarely belonged among the first educated Czech women, since they found their life fulfillment in marriages which were often arranged by their families. Working class women could not afford higher education for obvious lack of financial support.

High economic development was not the only Czech advantage. The Czechs were also known for their inspired national revival which motivated other Slavic nations under Austrian rule. It is worth noting that the greatest names of the Czech cultural and intellectual revival found nowadays in books are those of men. Most of these men, however, were loyally supported by dedicated and outstanding women. Czech history still owes a great debt to many remarkable and memorable Czech women. Numerous female family members of male politicians and activists contributed in no small share to the Czech cultural rebirth through supporting the men in their families. Thus Vojta Naprstek had a unique support in his wife Josefa, and T G Masaryk's opinions on the position and rights of women were shaped directly by his wife Charlotte's influence.(5)

The strong National Revival provided a cause and an opportunity for women to begin working on their own alongside men. The National Revival united women and men in a common cause. Modern historians and sociologists claim that there was a certain coordination of interests between the national revival movement and the women's rights movement.(6) Such coordination was present in all Slavic lands where national revivals took place. The struggle for the national cause created a common interest for men and women and contributed to the acceptance of the women's rights movement within the Czech population. This struggle for national independence and national identity belongs among the most important factors which helped shape gender relations in modern Czech society. Current Czech women generally do not see men as the primary cause of women's inferior status. Most current Czech women cringe at the mention of "feminism" and see the notion of "women's rights" as something unnecessary and exaggerated.(7) To them, the concept of "women's rights" logically constitutes an integral part of "human rights". Perceiving "women's rights" in this way is not limited to Czech or East European women, but viewing "women's rights" as superfluous within the context of "human rights" may be seen as one of Czech specifics. This approach may be seen as an outgrowth of the past struggle for the common cause of national sovereignty. In the nineteenth century, it was imperative that every Czech be a "good Czech", before being a good man or a good woman. When this environment produced its first "feminists", they were moderate and sensible. Their work and their tactics exhibited signs of viewing feminism as a means to an end, not as an end in itself.

The convergence of interests and cooperation between Czech feminism and the Czech National Revival was further encouraged by a high level of tolerance for women's demands for equality. Czech sociologists argue that modern Czech society has not had as strong a patriarchate as other societies in the area.(8) Some Czech sociologists also argue that Czech society has had "an uninterrupted continuity of liberal tradition"(9) in its approach to gender questions, and that the public sphere had been opened to women's endeavors since before World War Two. Thus, when socialism gave Czech women the right to equal education and employment after World War Two, they did not see it as a novelty. Gender equality had been guaranteed by the interwar constitution of the First Czechoslovak Republic. That in itself did not mean that Czech women enjoyed complete gender equality in the interwar republic, but the guarantee in the constitution was not an empty promise. At the same time, women in the interwar Czechoslovak Republic understood that they could achieve equality in professional life only if they actively worked toward its fulfillment.

Several economic reasons stimulated Czech women's desire to enter institutions of higher learning in the last century. The 1866 war, in which Prussia defeated Austria, left many women widowed and fatherless. A small group of intellectual women led by Karol na Sv tl reacted to the situation by founding Zensky vyrobni spolek cesky (The Czech Women's Production Association) in 1871. The association created and ran practical training schools for women. Similar efforts quickly developed into demands to let women enter secondary schools and colleges. Karen Johnson Freeze argues that the Czech women's effort to enter secondary and university education was pragmatic and well-timed -- deliberately. She argues that Czech women understood they would have angered the male politicians of the day if they had been more radical in their demands.(10)

Pavla Horska argues that bourgeois Czech women were ready to assert themselves in higher education also due to the improved position of the Czech bourgeoisie.(11) The Czech bourgeois women of the 1860s were so well off that they could afford to do extensive charity work, and they soon expanded their activities into creating courses and vocational schools. Indeed, the first two Czech female activists for women's right to gain academic education, Karolina Svetla and Eliska Krasnohorska, were daughters of a moderately wealthy Prague tradesman and a well-to-do Prague craftsman respectively.

Soon after the Velvet Revolution in 1989 that brought down the Communist regime, Czech sociologists acknowledged that it might be desirable for Czech women to return to the household after all the years of mandatory employment.(12) This prognosis, however, has not come true. Statistics show that Czech women and men are a little older at the time of their first marriage than they used to be just a few years ago. Interviews with university students show that young women now see possibilities for their personal development other than just care for family and children. Gradually more female names appear in politics. In fact, the Czechs recently nominated a woman minister to their cabinet: Vlasta Parkanova became the first female Minister of Justice. All this indicates that higher education and professional jobs are open for Czech women, and that women do not hesitate to take the opportunities if they so desire. Krasnohorska, Svetla, Plaminkova and many others would have been happy to see this progress. They might have, perhaps, just wondered why it took Czech women so long.

"So many times I heard that there was no need for a woman to know how to write; as long as she knows how to read a bit, that's just enough! I must give my personal opinion on this matter. It is true that in the larger picture there are more women who do not need to pick up a pen the whole year round, but, on the other hand, there are many who either lead some sort of business or have to assist their husbands. They do need to know how to write properly. I know that it is still impossible to ask that a girl should know, besides writing, reading, and counting, also something else, because to date we do not have any institutions for such purpose."
Bozena Nemcova in 1846 (13)

"School education for girls ... ended at about twelve years of age and was achieved in private schools or, for the richer classes, in boarding schools, which concentrated mostly on the teaching of foreign languages and various women's crafts."(14)

The work of women such as Krasnohorska bore fruit in their own lifetime. One hundred years will pass this spring since Czech women were first permitted to enter university as full-time students and to obtain a university degree. After years of hard work and repeated petitions to the government, the women of Prague scored a victory not just for themselves, but for all women in the whole monarchy. The Austrian government ruled on March 23, 1897, by the ministerial decree number 7.155, that women in the Austrian Empire be allowed to enter and graduate from the faculty of philosophy.(15) This decision was preceded by a ministerial decree on March 9, 1896, which allowed women to study at and graduate from gymnasium, and to have medical school diplomas from foreign countries recognized as valid in Austria-Hungary.(16) The 1897 ministerial decree was accompanied by an explanatory note, stating, among other things, that

"Such provisions concern only a small study field which is not to be expanded artificially by the educational administration through establishing new public gymnasia. Let such actions be left to private endeavors, whose experience and results the administration will watch carefully." (17)

The Ministry's attitude can hardly be seen as progressive, and it certainly was not surprising, either. In 1890, most politicians in the Austrian government were conservative bureaucrats accustomed to certain ways of life. While an independently educated woman might have crossed their path on occasion, they were far from ready to accept such a phenomenon on a regular basis. What might be surprising is that the Austrian politicians seemed to have been a lot more conservative in their reaction to women's endeavors in education in the 1890s than the Czech parliamentary representatives. This difference becomes more understandable if one realizes that Tom Masaryk with his small Realist Party won a seat in the Austrian parliament already in 1891. Masaryk's ascent was a part of the March, 1891 parliamentary victory of the progressive Young Czech Party which defeated the conservative Old Czech Party of Frantisek Ladislav Rieger. (18)

Tomas Masaryk was assigned, in 1891, together with deputies Blazek and Adamek,to work in the area of secondary and university education.(19) The deputies Masaryk and Blaz ek spoke about higher education in the June, 1891, parliament session, and they were very clear about their ideas concerning women and their desire to enter higher education. Masaryk stood firmly behind women's demands when he said that

"I cannot but urgently recommend to the educational administration that it positively answer the petitions sent to the respectful Assembly in these matters, namely the petition from the Czech lands and the petition from Women's Congress in Vienna from May 14, 1891, demanding that women be allowed to enter secondary schools and universities, and that the administration take care to ensure not only the support by the state in this matter, but also the management and guidance by the state."(20)

When Krasnohorska founded Minerva, the first gymnasium for girls in Austria, in 1890, women in some European countries, for example Switzerland, and in the United States, had already enjoyed free access to university education for about two decades. At the same time, Czech women in Austria were slightly ahead of women in Germany, who had to wait until 1893 before the first door to gymnasium classes opened for them.(21) In this context, the opening of Minerva was a great achievement for Czech women in Austria. That does not mean that the gymnasium had a wide social support. On the contrary, most of the population felt that a school for girls which prepared them for things other than household work and child care was a useless invention good for just a few affluent or eccentric women.

It seems overly progressive that Ottuv slovnik naucny, the most extensive and popular Czech encyclopedia of the time, should mention under the entry zenska emancipace (women's emancipation) that the Czech public continued to underestimate the importance of equal education for women.(22) The claim is not so surprising after one discovers that it was written by two distinguished Czech feminists of the time, Frantiska Plaminkova and Albina Honzakova. In several other accounts of the day, writers openly acknowledged that Czech society had been somewhat narrow-minded and too open to "various assumptions, largely unsubstantiated, that girls perceive scientific information differently from boys". (23) It is easy, with the benefit of hindsight, to dismiss such evidence of social stubbornness. In the context of the time, however, social thinking was influenced by a variety of different theories.

The ideas of Otto Weininger serve as an example of a more extremist view of women's social and cultural role. Shortly after the turn of the century, the Viennese public and scientific community experienced a burst of interest in the theories of this popular scientist and mystic. Weininger attracted a great attention by his radical theories on the characteristics of the sexes. Weininger believed that every human being consisted of a certain amount of maleness and a certain amount of femaleness. He claimed that women functioned only as the objects of men's desires, only as the "plaything of husband and child".(24) Woman is "devoted wholly ... to the spheres of sexual intercourse, begetting, reproduction", and "her relations with husband and children complete her life ... " . (25) Weininger concluded that woman's emancipation only occurs as the expression of the maleness in women and should be regarded as a deviation from the proper pattern. To demonstrate the validity of his theory, Weininger cited the practice of women writers to use male pseudonyms, and the tendency of some of them, George Sand, for example, to wear men's clothes. (26) Fortunately, the handful of Czech women who had the courage to persist with their ideas about women's progress were not discouraged by theories such as Weininger's.

The tight link between the Czech National Revival and the Czech women's rights movement has been discussed by many social scientists over recent years. Many researchers agree that Czech women subordinated their demands as a social group to the demands of the nation.(27) There is no question that Czech women, both at the beginning of the women's rights movement in the nineteenth century and in its best days during the interwar period, saw themselves first and foremost as citizens, and only then as members of a social group labeled "women". The problem of women's position in the society was always seen as an integral part of the national problem, a view supported by many leading personalities, including T G Masaryk. Czech women's rights activists loved to use some of Masaryk's famous quotes as their guiding mottos: "There is no woman's question, only the human question", and "Democracy is, first of all, the equality of woman and man, of mother and father, of sister and brother." (28)

The Czech women's rights movement, however, cannot be regarded as purely or overly nationalistic. Many Western researchers agree that Czech women subordinated their demands to the national needs, which, in turn, impeded their rights movement. Katherine David, in her article on Czech Feminists and Nationalism, argues that integral Czech nationalism was "hardly an extremist ideology among the Czechs or other minorities in the Habsburg Monarchy at the turn of the twentieth century."(29) She concludes, however, that Czech feminists might have been distracted from their pursuit of sexual equality by devoting too much time to the national cause. In discussing Czech women's entry into medical education, author Freeze claims that Czech women's entry into higher education was intentionally timed precisely because women were preoccupied with fighting for the national cause.(30) Bruce Garver claims that women subordinated their interests to national goals because political and economic autonomy was more important to them than their autonomy as women.(31) Sharon Wolchik is even more explicit and claims that women "couched their demands in terms of their contribution to the good of the nation as a whole" (32).

The same pattern of Czech women's behavior is seen by Czech researchers as an enlightened relationship between the Czech National Revival and the women's rights movement. They explain, however, that there were other factors which produced the mildness of the women's rights movement and steered its coordination with the National Revival. Havelkova, for example, stresses that the sex-indifferent solidarity arising from the rule of Habsburgs was coupled with economic, religious, and social class factors.(33) Horska and Peskova see the Czech National Revival and the women's rights movement as an integral whole of one large united emancipation movement(34).

"... it is still impossible to ask that a girl should know other things besides writing, reading, and counting, since we have not even had any institutions for it. ... But in my opinion, each [woman] should know, besides reading, writing, and counting, also a little bit of geography, natural sciences, and especially the history of her own country." (35)

The foundation of Minerva was born of several decades of hard work, activism, and personal achievements. One of the first reasons for girls' education that Czech women articulated was the belief that an educated woman would become a better mother and housewife. Magdalena Dobromila Rettigova was the first woman who publicly acknowledged the value of education for a woman. It was in the 1820s that she organized so-called besidky (popular educational gathering for adults)for young women, a type of social gathering at which they learned various household work, but also read and held discussions. Soon, the cause of education for the sake of good motherhood and housewifery was surpassed, and Czech women began to understand the importance of education for their professional development and for practical life. The first Czech institution for Czech women teachers was I Vychovavaci ustav pro divky (The First Educational Institute for Girls), a secondary school for teacher education, founded by Bohuslava Rajska in 1843.(36) The need for practical professional skills which would translate into the ability to provide for oneself increased especially after wartime periods. The 1866 war with Prussia, for example, left many women widowed and many girls fatherless.

The 1848 revolution, even though unsuccessful, stirred the national consciousness and stimulated social activity. Many social, charitable, and interest associations were founded in the second half of the nineteenth century, and many of them were founded by women for women. Most documentation that we have today about such activities concerns middle class women who were also the first to get access to higher education. By the 1860s, important developments were on the way. Ottuv slovnik naucny informs us that Mestska vyssi divci skola (Higher Municipal School for Girls), the first secondary school for girls of its kind in Austria, was founded in Prague in 1863.(37) Unfortunately, the entry does not mention anything more detailed about the classes or the students at this school. It seems clear, however, that this was a type of terminal secondary school for girls, with no possibility for its graduates to continue on to college level.

The consequences of the 1866 Austro-Prussian war inspired a group of active middle class women led by Karolina Svetla to found Zensky vyrobni spolek cesky (Czech Women's Production Association) in 1871.(38) The Association soon opened a school for women with two divisions, business and industrial. The industrial school taught crafts such as sewing, embroidery, and knitting, as well as music, drawing and painting, and foreign languages. The business school mainly taught accounting skills. The foundation of the Association is credited first and foremost to the Czech writer Karolina Svetla, assisted by a group of other middle class women. These women developed a great effort to enable most students to attend free of charge. The Association membership cost the minimal fee of one golden coin a year.(39)

The few recent accounts of this period of attribute the foundation of the Czech Women's Production Association not only to the consequences of the 1866 war.(40) Some inspiration probably came from the activities of an association of German women in Prague, called "Der Deutsche Prager Frauen-Erwerb-Verein", founded in 1869.(41) The Czech Women's Production Association might have also been preconditioned by the fact that the Czech bourgeoisie acquired certain material wealth around the 1860s, and thus increased its ability to invest in new activities. Several associations of an educational nature blossomed in Prague under the care of the Czech bourgeoisie, especially since the 1880s. The Czech historian Horska claims that the context of women's educational associations in Prague after 1880 was so rich that it is difficult to find one's way around it. According to her, the city archive and the archives of the Prague police headquarters contain abundant but highly fragmented material concerning such associations. The activities seemed to have been highly diversified, from teaching practical skills such as sewing to running libraries and discussion lectures on women's movements. It is safe to assume that such associations would stimulate the desire of women to seek more for themselves in higher education.

The end of a decade of neo-absolutist rule in the Austrian Empire in 1860 inspired a search for new solutions also in the area of education. The new educational law of January 18, 1866, established the equality of the German and Czech languages and stipulated that the language of instruction would be either Czech or German, with the other taught as a foreign language.(42) All Czech boys and girls were now guaranteed the possibility of receiving elementary education in Czech. This law further improved the already high levels of literacy among the Czech population. The law also made changes in the education of teachers. Teachers were to be educated in special secondary schools for teachers, the so-called pedagogical institutes, which were gender-separated. These institutes allowed women to become professional teachers at elementary and secondary schools. In order to graduate, the students had to pass the so-called maturity examination (zkouska dospelosti), after which they could become assistant teachers. Only after a minimum of two years of practice could an assistant teacher apply for a so-called teacher skills examination (zkouska ucitelska zpusobilosti), which enabled him or her to become a full-time teacher. (43)

Teachers and other female state employees were, at the same time, bound by a rule concerning marriage and occupation, popularly called celibacy law. Women employees were not allowed to marry and work as state employees at the same time. This rule applied to two state service professions which women performed at the time, teaching and postal services, where women started to work in 1872. (44)

In these occupations, it was either marriage and family life, or professional life. This law was reversed for teachers in 1919, and for other state employees in 1926. (45) The teacher, feminist, and politician Plaminkova was the main organizer of the campaign for overturning the celibacy law.

It did not take long for women teachers to form the first professional organizations. The first organization of women teachers, Spolek prazskych ucitelek (The Association of Prague Women Teachers), was founded in 1874. Their journal, Casopis ucitelek (Women Teachers Journal ), began publishing in 1885.(46) Such organizations and activities provided the environment in which important personalities of the later period of women's rights movement grew. It is no accident that Frantiska Plaminkova and other important women's rights activists were teachers. Teaching was the first field in which women could gain recognition as professionals and which provided inspiration for women to continue pushing for access into other learned professions.

The 1880s saw a lot of activity among women, both middle class and working class women. The activity of middle class and intellectual women was crucial for women's advancement in higher education, since intellectual women such as writers and poets were precisely the kind of women who inspired and ran the movement for a woman's right to higher education. The poet and translator Eliska Krasnohorska led the campaign for allowing women to enter gymnasium, and she also founded the association Minerva with its first gymnasium for girls in Austria in 1890. At the time of its foundation and the first years of its existence, the Minerva gymnasium was treated as a rarity by the Czech public. But once the gymnasium was up and running, with 53 students in its first year(47) , it was only the beginning of a quickly growing interest. Minerva's primary task was to clear the way for its graduates to university studies. In order to do that, women first had to take and pass the final gymnasium examination, the so-called maturita. This examination was a prerequisite for any university study.

But taking and passing the final examination was not the only students' worry. The students had to pay tuition for attending gymnasium. When the Minerva gymnasium opened in September 1890, it was a private institution, not supported financially by the government. It was supported solely by tuition payments, its own gainful activities, private donations, and the care of community administration. Other gymnasia for girls that opened in the following years were supported in similar ways. A private gymnasium for girls in Pardubice, founded in 1910, was funded generously by the local municipal administration and by the local savings bank. (48) Needless to say, such schools could be attended only by young women from financially secure families. Minerva tried to be generous whenever possible and helped less affluent students by waiving half or whole tuition fees. Soon, scholarship foundations appeared and helped to fund talented and interested young women's way through secondary education. One of the large foundations, Bradkova nadace (Bradek's Foundation), was founded in 1898 for young women studying at Minerva, and other smaller foundations soon followed.(49)

The decision to let women enter the faculty of philosophy of all universities in Austria in 1897 might have been motivated by the desire of the administrators to have qualified female teachers for secondary school female students. Its was believed strongly at that time that the best education for a girl was the so-called "vyssi divci", ie, higher school for girls, a terminal educational institution designed to guide young women towards "true femininity"(50)

Once the philosophical and medical faculties opened their doors for women students, other associations in Bohemia and Moravia began to express an interest in founding their own gymnasia for girls. Minerva, in the meantime, was busy attempting to receive recognition as a state school, which would enable it to administer its own maturita examinations. But when Zensky krouzek Slavie (Women's Circle Slavie) and Ustredni spolek ceskych zen (Central Association of Czech Women) asked Minerva in 1903 to help them with founding a new state gymnasium for girls, they were turned down. (51) And when, in 1905, an attempt materialized in the Prague quarter of Kralovske Vinohrady to found another gymnasium for girls, Minerva was embittered and proclaimed that one gymnasium was "more than enough for those professions which women can in reality expect to perform".(52) Nevertheless, the efforts continued and by the beginning of World War One there were five gymnasia for girls. Besides Minerva, there were gymnasia in the Prague quarter of Vinohrady, in Pardubice, in Brno, and in Valasske Mezirici.

An attempt was made in 1900 to consolidate these two differing ways of thinking and to converge them in a new educational institution for girls, the lyceum. The Ministry of Culture and Education established lycea for girls by a ruling December 11, 1900.(53) Even though the lyceum prepared its graduates for a limited range of occupations, its central goal was to prepare women for a cultured family life. Lyceum graduates were allowed to enter universities, but only with the status of auditors (mimoradne studentky), which in reality meant that they were only allowed to audit classes, not study for a degree. This privilege was canceled in 1910.(54) The lyceum was seen, especially by progressive men and women, as a means to stem the flow of young women into gymnasia and university studies. It can be regarded as a tool of conservative politicians. Lycea for girls were eventually abolished in 1922 as they ceased to serve their purpose after coeducation was introduced into all Czech secondary schools in 1919.(55)

Both the lycea and the gymnasia recruited most of their students from the urban population, since more affluent families resided mostly in urban areas. Only a limited number of country girls could think of higher education. The students were mostly daughters of state officials, ie, teachers, professor, state employees. Less common were daughters of craftsmen and tradesmen.(56) The reason for the low attendance of girls from the lower classes was not lack of interest, but very likely the high tuition. Women from higher than middle class society, on the other hand, probably found higher education unnecessary and unimportant for their lives.

It is also true that it required a certain degree of bravery and determination to sign up for university classes in the prewar Czech Lands. Those young women who mustered the courage and pursued a university degree had to face ignorance, rejection, ridicule, and extremely rigorous examination procedures, often attended by a full class of male students. The memoirs of some of these early students suggest that their male colleagues often ignored them and sometimes even proclaimed publicly their disagreement with the study of women. One women described how she and a group of other women students once had to wait for a professor at the German part of Charles University in Prague in 1897, the first year they were allowed to attend the university. While waiting, a group of German students started a conversation with them in Czech, only to accuse them later of intentional provocations by speaking Czech at the German University(57). The Czech women's journal Zenske listy published an extensive article in 1899 describing the protest of medical students in Halle against women studying medicine. The students claimed that presence of women in clinical lessons brought "cynicism" into the classrooms and that women's emancipation "clashes with morality" and "is incompatible with both the interests of proper medical study and the principles of ethics and morality".(58) The Halle university professors were, however, wise enough to deny this complaint and kept women students in their classes.

Despite all difficulties, by the school year 1916-17 there were between 620 and 644 female university students at the Czech universities, including both full-time students and auditors.(59) Women studied at philosophical faculties, at medical faculties, and at the faculties of pharmaceutics, mainly at Charles University in Prague. Within the philosophical faculty, women pursued degrees in classical philology, modern philology, natural sciences, mathematics and physics, history, and philosophy. The total highest number of female students registered in the first semester for the period 1897-98 to 1916-17 was in the field of mathematics and physics.(60) The faculty of law remained closed to full-time female students until 1918, and young women who registered there as auditors before 1918 were generally discouraged by the long fruitless wait for enrollment as full-time students.

The first faculty that women were allowed to enter was the philosophical faculty in 1897. Three years later, in 1900, the Ministry of Culture and Education made another step in its slow progress towards women's equality in higher education. Women students were allowed to enter the study of medicine as full-time students as of September 15, 1900. (61) The first Czech female doctor of philosophy was Marie Baborova in 1901, and the first Czech female doctor of medicine was Anna Honzakova in 1902. Such events were appropriately celebrated, although they were just the very first steps on the steep ladder of social and cultural ascent that awaited women. Except for pharmaceutics, no other university was opened to women until after the establishment of the First Republic of Czechoslovakia in 1918. Coeducation in secondary schools was also introduced only at that time.

"It is apparent that women cannot rest happy with the semblance of political freedom and that they have to persistently demand the application of all components of freedom in real life. To date, we are far from reaching the ideal. I do not want to judge whether it is caused by the omnipresent reactionism or by lack of thinking. ... Let no one be mistaken and believe that this matter is not very serious because it concerns women. It is the principle that is at stake, and the citizens. And in real democracy, every citizen must receive an equal amount of everything."
Frantiska Plaminkova in 1924(62)

World War One brought both suffering and benefits to the Czech people. The Czech nation, as one of the many nations under the Austrian Empire, was subject to Austrian imperialistic propaganda during the war. The educational system suffered some consequences of Austrian propaganda, including strengthening of the position of German in schools at the expense of Czech, confiscation of textbooks and introduction of new textbooks, especially in subjects such as history, and regular singing of the Austrian national anthem in classes. (63) While all schools were preserved in the war years, they suffered the consequences of the war. From a total of two thousand Czech secondary school professors about one-fifth were drafted into the war and more than seventy professors perished. (64) Male students of age were also drafted into the war, leaving more openings for women in higher education in schools into which women had access at the time.

The number of women at secondary schools and universities increased during the war years, which might be considered a positive effect of the war. The most significant negative effect was that the campaign for acceptance of women into the areas of higher education which were still closed to them in 1914 slowed down significantly. Thus, for the next four years, women had to be satisfied with private secondary schools and with the few universities which were made accessible to them before World War One. Unfortunately, no overall data about women students in secondary schools during World War One was available for this study, only limited information about individual secondary schools. This limited data seems to indicate that secondary schools experienced an increase in the number of female students. The lyceum in Jicin, a city in Northeastern Bohemia, for example, saw an increase in the number of its female students between 1914-15 and 1915-16 from 93 to 200. (65)

Before the war there were three types of gymnasia in the Czech lands, together with lycea and the so-called realky, a type of secondary school preparing one for to practical work life. All these schools continued to exist throughout the war and into the First Republic. There were a total of 125 secondary schools in Bohemia and Moravia in the school year 1913-14, and all but one were still around in 1918-19. They were attended by approximately the same number of students throughout these years (66), even though the structure of the student body changed, especially with regard to gender. Structural changes, which significantly affected the position of women, were introduced into secondary schools only after 1918, in the new Czechoslovak Republic.

Czech universities also continued largely unchanged throughout the war. Changes affecting the whole student body, including female students, were to come only after the 1918 independence day. Statistical data regarding the numbers of women students at Czech universities during the war years indicate an unambiguous increase. The data come from a source which lists women students at both Czechoslovak and German universities in the Czech Lands. Between the school years 1913-14 and 1914-15, the number of female university students rose from 187, with 44 German students, to 305, with 61 German students. This represents the largest annual increase since women enjoyed free access to universities at the turn of the century. By the academic year 1917-18, there were over 600 women studying at Czechoslovak universities. Over 140 of the women were German. (67)

When the First Republic of Czechoslovakia was founded, Czech women were starting from a solid foundation. The Washington Declaration, a document prepared and published by the government in exile led by T G Masaryk, proclaimed the equality of sexes in all spheres. It is said that Masaryk himself made sure that the clause "women will be politically, socially, and culturally equal to men" (68) be included in the declaration. The new constitution of the Czechoslovak Republic was adopted at the beginning of 1920.

After a short exhilaration, women's rights activists continued their efforts to educate women about their rights and responsibilities. In her lectures and writing, Plaminkov , the prominent women's rights leader, alerted women to the reality of their lives. Now that women had equal constitutional rights and enjoyed free access to education and all professions, what remained to be done was perhaps the most difficult thing. Turning the written guarantees into reality could only be accomplished through women's own actions. Plaminkova, among others, continued to stress the importance of equality for women in all spheres. Education remained among the most important spheres in the quest for equality. Plaminkova continued to proclaim that "democracy provides unconstrained educational development for boys as well as for girls." (69) Czech women and most Czech men agreed with her.

The first steps towards introducing coeducation into all schools were made in 1918. On November 11, 1918, the Ministry issued a decree stipulating that girls were to be accepted for regular -- as opposed to private only -- study at all secondary schools. (70) Coeducation in all secondary schools was introduced in 1919, and was put into full practice by 1921. Separate schools for girls were still in existence in all parts of the country, and young women could study either separately or together with young men. Girls constituted about one-quarter to one-third of all secondary school students in the 1920s. For example, in the academic year 1927-28 there were 91,015 secondary school students and 23,028 out of this total were girls.(71) More women studied in coeducational schools rather than in separate girls schools.

It is interesting that there were more women studying at the pedagogical institutes than in any other type of secondary school. This fact is consistent with historical and post-World War Two patterns of women's social position. Teaching was one of the first professional occupations open to women in the nineteenth century, and it was to become one of the over-feminized professions after 1945. The pedagogical institutes were taken over from the prewar period and made a part of the secondary school system. Coeducation was introduced also into pedagogical education; however, many gender-separated pedagogical institutes were preserved.(72) The slow movement towards instituting mandatory college education for teachers, as opposed to secondary education only, started during the years of the First Republic. By the 1930s, there were several college-type institutions for teachers education. This continuing development was to have an enormous impact on women's status in higher education, since women were soon to constitute the majority of professional teachers.

The position of women teachers improved also with the adoption in 1922 of a new law on education, referred to colloquially as the Little School Law (Maly skolsky zakon). This law stipulated that every school had to have an equal number of male and female teachers. Consequently, women teachers had to be allowed to teach at boys schools. The law also established some important changes in elementary education. The most improtant of the changes was probably the institution of mandatory 8-year grade school attendance in all of Czechoslovakia.(73)

Secondary school students constituted only about 1% of the total population in the First Republic. Only about 40% of those who entered secondary schools actually graduated from them. Out of those 40%, only about one half continued their study at a university.(74) According to one source from 1932, there were 3688 women altogether studying at Czechoslovak universities in the school year 1929-30.(75) Most of these women studied at the philosophical faculties.

Universities in the new Czechoslovakia underwent a considerable development after 1918, beneficial for both male and female students. Seven new universities were founded in 1919 and 1920 in the cities of Prague, Brno, and Bratislava.(76) The Prague University was rechristened to bear its original name, Charles University, in 1920. A new relationship between the Czech and German parts of the university was established. The new arrangement favored the Czech part by giving it the exclusive ownership of the historical university building and its center, the Karol num. It also gave the Czechs the ownership of the archives and the official seals.(77)

Women in Czechoslovakia benefitted from this development in many ways. Importantly, they were allowed to study law immediately in 1918. The first female doctor of law graduated from Charles University in Prague in 1922, and many more followed. (78) According to one source, 80 women were enrolled at the law faculties in the first school year, 1918-19, the faculties were open to them. In the 1920-30 academic year, 517 women combined for the Czech and the German parts of all universities were enrolled at the faculties of law. Out of 517 total, 421 were enrolled at the Czech departments and 96 at the German.(79)

All technical colleges were open to women in 1919. According to the same source, technical colleges had 134 women enrolled in the school year 1919-20, and 282 in 1930-31. Here the numbers of Czech and German students were listed within individual departments, and Czechs as a majority ethnic group prevail in all of them.(80)

Czech women were ahead of Slovak women in both secondary school and university education. The joining of Slovakia to the Czech lands in 1918 meant that the Slovaks now enjoyed the same rights as the Czechs, and that was true also for women. The numbers of women in universities in the two parts were quite different. At the beginning of the 1921-22 academic year, 125 women students were enrolled at the Czech part of Charles University in Prague, 23 at the German part of the same university. At the same time, 18 women students were enrolled at Masaryk's University in Brno and 7 at Comenius University in Bratislava. At the same time, 1980 and 906 men were enrolled at Charles, 516 at Masaryk University, and 192 at Comenius. In the 1928-29 school year there were 3452 men and 235 women at Czech Charles, 1389 men and 78 women at German Charles, 986 men and 44 women at Masaryk University, and 843 men and 50 women at Comenius.(81) The numbers show a noticeable increase of both men and women university students, and the increase is proportional to the size and location of the individual universities. This indicates an evenly distributed interest by both women and men in university study in the First Republic.

Czech university women in Prague developed an early awareness as a cultural group and consistently kept proving their awareness through their actions. Already in 1908, Czech women founded Sdruzeni akademicky vzdelanych zen (The Association of Academically Educated Women), which grew out of a loose interest group Zensky krouzek (Women's Circle) and its subgroup Slavia.(82) Sdruzeni was founded with specific tasks in mind. The original goals of Sdru en included securing the entry of women into the law faculty; rearrangement of secondary schools for girls, especially the lycea; care for female students at all levels of higher schools; and assistance to the female graduates with finding appropriate employment.(83) These goals were pushed aside with the beginning of the war, and Sdruzeni instead devoted its time and effort to war-related activities. It arranged various lectures and courses on issues concerning war-related health problems and the effects of the war economy.

Sdruzeni continued its activity soon after World War One only very briefly, at first. The Sdruzeni members decided as early as 1919 that it was not necessary for them to continue in their activities because the new Czechoslovak Constitution guaranteed gender equality in all spheres of life. Sdruzeni was disbanded in 1919, because "women-academics assumed that there was no need for a separatist women's association in the new conditions."(84) The new conditions, however, did not prove to be as favorable to women's equality as had been, somewhat idealistically, expected. Gender equality was established on paper, but such a radical change could not take root overnight. It took the core group of women university graduates only a few years to recognize that it would take time to translate legal change into practice. At the beginning of 1922, Doctor Albina Honzakova, together with several other women doctors and professors, re-founded the Sdruzeni. The continuing tendency to regard feminism as a means, not as a goal in itself, might be best illustrated by the words of the Sdruzeni's main founding member, Honzakova herself:

"Our 'Sdruzeni' must be feminist in the most beautiful sense, it must do away with all that prevents woman from fully developing herself as a human being, [it must] do away with all that puts distance between and alienates woman and man."(85)

The members broke the Sdruzeni down into regional associations. Not surprisingly, one of the first issues to be solved was the question of nationality. At the first meeting, the members decided that women of all nationalities could join Sdruzeni, provided they were Czechoslovak citizens. As a result, the German section of Sdruzeni was established in 1926, as well as a Moravian section in Brno and a Slovak section in Bratislava.(86) Sections were not limited entirely to ethnicity. They were also organized along professional lines, such as the section of women in the legal profession or the section of women medical doctors. Sdruzeni went even so far as to change its rules in 1928 to accommodate a new section of Russian immigrant women with university education.(87) Within all of its sections, Sdruzeni developed a number of educational and cultural activities, aimed principally at expanding the numbers of college-educated women and raising the interest of the public in women's university study.

By the 1930s, women in Czechoslovakia were well-established as students in higher education and as professionals in the work place. The period of the 1930s was, however, a setback for the whole nation, and the educational system was one of the many deeply affected areas. The 1930s disrupted the continuity of the women's rights movement and brought at least a slowdown, if not a setback, to the quest for women's equality. (88) There were multiple causes to the setback, rooted in economic, political, and specific national problems. In the economy, the Great Depression played an important role as it hit Czechoslovakia and caused wide-spread unemployment. As the economy worsened with the approach of World War Two, the woman's question was less and less important and pushed into the background by the more pressing issues of economy and national security. As a result, women were affected by the unemployment crisis more than men.

The appreciable achievement of women in the cultural, social, and economic fields in the First Czechoslovak Republic was initiated and continuously inspired by several crucial personalities of the First Republic. The first President, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, was among men the greatest advocate of women's equality in interwar Czechoslovakia. Masaryk believed in complete gender equality in all areas of life, and Czech women's rights activists adored him for that.(89) He was the first to state openly that his opinion on women was formed and shaped, primarily, by his own wife, Charlotte Masaryk. It is well known that Charlotte was an American from a well-to-do Protestant Boston family, that she received a solid musical education in Germany where she and Masaryk first met, and that she possessed the opinions of a feminist. One of the first books Charlotte and Tom read together was John Stuart Mill's Subjection of Women, a book which Charlotte later translated into Czech. Masaryk loved his wife deeply, and they enjoyed a marriage full of lasting mutual love and respect, as well as continued professional cooperation.

Masaryk was remarkably progressive in his opinions on the rights and status of women. As a in deputy in the Austrian Reichstag, he advocated in the 1890s for the free entry of women into gymnasia and universities. He was also the politician who put the clause about absolute gender equality into the Washington Declaration. Well before he became the celebrated first President, Masaryk wrote and spoke about the necessity of a complete overhaul of the social view of women. He believed that women were equal to men, the only difference being in women's reproductive functions. His famous statement "... there is not a woman's question, and there is not a man's question; there is only the question of society" (90) best illustrates his stand on the so-called woman question. Masaryk was convinced that women's equality could be attained only through a moral rebirth of the whole society. He saw a cure in consistent monogamic relationship between men and women, which, in turn, would help establish healthy and stable marriages. Women must become equal partners to men, not their slaves, he believed.

Masaryk was convinced that women were not better or worse that men, rather that they "are generally on the same level of development with men"(91). He cautioned that women's skills in politics and professional fields should not be judged hastily:

"And as regards offices, art, sciences, and politics, women have barely started to penetrate such fields; and with this unreasonable haste we already judge whether they can do it or not. Men had thousands of years to learn such matters, and they still often do their work badly."(92)

There were many important women activists in the First Republic who deserve credit for the continued progress of women in higher education. Every woman who graduated from a secondary school or a university and became a professional in her field deserves a credit for enhancing the position of women in Czechoslovakia. Among all the many professional women, one of the most deserving was Plaminkova, a teacher, activist, and later a politician. (93) She was a woman of many deeds, she was an excellent orator, but not necessarily a writer. Born in 1875, she came of age in time to be involved in the emancipation movement. She participated in the establishment of many Czech women's associations, including the most important one, Zensky klub cesky (Czech Women's Club) in 1904. She was active in many campaigns for women's rights in various areas. She was one of the foremost activists in the struggle for putting an end to the celibacy law, for equal franchise, and for the legal establishment of the equal status of male and female teachers according to the 1922 educational law. Plaminkova later became a member of the National Socialist Party and a Senator.

The First Republic produced other women politicians and women's rights activists, although the number of women parliamentary deputies remained generally low, only around 10-15.(94) Frana Zeminova was a deputy chair of the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party, and Betty Karpiskova was a deputy chair of the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party.

Some numbers from a historical source written some years later might help to illustrate the effects of Nazi-directed germanization on the Czech schools. The number of elementary German schools rose from 130 to 333 between 1939 and 1945, and the number of German secondary schools rose from 36 to 78 during the same time. Czech schools suffered a proportionate drop. Czech elementary schools dropped by 1102 and Czech secondary schools by 147 during the same time. Only 8 out of the 17 Czech classical gymnasia and a mere 13 out of the total 29 Czech pedagogical institutes survived the war. (95)

Czech universities suffered by far the most serious blow of all Czech educational institutions. All Czech universities were closed down as a response to a student demonstration in fall 1939. The students and other Czech citizens demonstrated in protest over the death of a young Czech worker, Vaclav Sedlacek, and Czech medical student Jan Opletal, both mortally wounded by the German police during a gathering to celebrate the national independence day on October 28, 1939. In response, the Nazis arrested and shot, without a trial, nine student leaders on November 17, 1939, and sent about 1200 Czech students to concentration camps.(96) The Germans then ordered all Czech universities to be closed down for three years. After three years went by, this order was extended for an indefinite period.(97) Both Czech men and Czech women students were barred from access to Czech university studies. The German part of Charles University in Prague, however, was open and running during the war years.

Throughout the war, German schools in the Protectorate were maintained and developed. New German schools were founded, while Czech schools were gradually eliminated. This policy affected both elementary and secondary schools. Czech children were encouraged to attend German schools, and they were accepted to German schools even if their knowledge of German was imperfect. The curriculum in the still existing Czech schools had changed as well. The subjects "Czech history" and "Czech literature" were gradually whittled down until they were eliminated from schools altogether in 1941 and substituted by German history and literature, all taught in German.(98) The higher classes of Czech secondary schools were eventually eliminated in 1944 since all the older students were sent to Germany to work in the war industry.(99)

The interim years 1945-1948 in Czechoslovakia went by fast and were filled with political power struggles. The Communist Party finally scored its fateful victory on 25 February, 1948, and Czechoslovakia officially started its journey towards communism. The following forty years were to evolve under the firm hand of communist rules and laws which concerned every single citizen of the country, including women. The foundation of communism was the complete equality of all citizens regardless of gender or any other differences. Thus the Czechoslovak Constitution of 9 June, 1948, which built upon the prewar Czechoslovak constitution, established "freedom of the person ... to all its citizens, men and women alike", and stated that franchise is "universal, equal, direct, and secret". (100) The constitution also stipulated, as a part of Rights and Duties of Citizens, that "Men and women shall hold equal position in the family and in the community and shall have equal access to education, and to all professions, offices and honours."(101) In the section on Social Rights, women were guaranteed the equal right to work and equal remuneration as men for equal work. Women were also expressly guaranteed "special regulations of conditions of work, in view of the circumstances of pregnancy, maternity and child care", and "special care in the events of pregnancy and maternity".(102) These rights and guarantees were repeated in subsequent new editions of the Czechoslovak constitution.

One area in which Czech women had to wait for an improvement beyond the June 1948 constitution was, interestingly, family law. Throughout the First Republic and until 1949, Austrian family law dating from 1811 was still valid. Under the old code, man was the "head of the family who directed the household, specified the location of the family dwelling, decided about the fate of the children, and his wife was obliged to listen to him and to assist him".(103) The new law adopted by the Communists in January, 1950, provided that "man and woman are equal in rights and responsibilities in the family, that they have the obligation to live together, to be faithful to each other and to help each other". (104) Paradoxically, this new communist law was drafted by the attorney Milada Horakova, who, at the time of its adoption, was a prisoner of the communist authorities, waiting for her death as the enemy of the people.

The constitutional wording "equal position in the family" certainly applied only to the legal status, not to the daily functioning of the family. Family remained gender-divided, and this division translated itself into other spheres of life, such as the workplace. Women were expected to perform all household work and child care duties on top of holding mostly full-time jobs. The socialist woman's "double burden" or even "triple burden" of full-time employment combined with running the household in the poorly supplied communist economy and taking care of all child care duties is notoriously known and has been analyzed by many researchers.(105)

Women's equality in political offices was another highly questionable matter under communism. The Communist government instituted a quota system under which a certain number of women had to hold offices in every political body to ensure the fulfillment of provisions asking for equal political representation of all citizens. Thus women were often selected for offices just so that the party could register the proper fulfillment of its quota.(106) At the same time, however, women were rarely promoted to a higher political position than one in which they started. The highest proportion of women Communist Central Committee members occurred in the 1930s. The first female Czechoslovak Minister, Ludmila Jankovcova, was appointed in 1947. The second female Czechoslovak Minister, Bozena Machacova-Docekalova, was appointed in 1954. Close to one third of the deputies in the National Assembly were women during the communist period.(107)

Women made an easy transition from prewar to postwar secondary schools and universities. Several sources list the numerical and the percentile share of women in institutions of higher learning before and after World War Two. In the academic year 1936-37, women constituted 44, 553, or about 34%, out of the total 128, 226 of secondary school students in 1933-34, and 35.4% of all secondary school students in Czechoslovakia. In the academic years 1933-34 and 1934-35, women constituted 4561, or about 14%, of the total 32, 295 of all university students.(108) There had been an increase in the total numbers of university students between the school years 1936-37 and 1945-46, but the share of women as university students increased only a little during that time. In 1936-37, women constituted 4063 university students out of the total 23, 435, or about 17%. In 1945-46, the numbers were 10, 148 out of the total 54, 902, or about 18,5%. Within the Czech lands, the numbers were 3724 women out of the total 21, 356 in 1936-37, and 8530 women out of the total 46, 230 in 1945-46. In Slovakia, the corresponding increase was even more dramatic, 339 women out of the total 2, 079 in 1936-37 went up to 1618 women out of the total 8672 in 1945-46.(109) This increase in the number of all students is partially attributable to the reopening of Czech universities after the war, and to the postwar effort to rebuild the Czech intelligentsia.

The number of women at all educational levels grew steadily throughout the communist period according to official Czechoslovak statistical sources. By 1973-1974 academic year, women constituted 62.8% of all non-vocational secondary school students, and 55.6% of all vocational secondary school students. In the same year, 39.8% of all university students were women.(110) Fifteen years later, in 1989-90, women constituted a little over 60% of all Czechoslovak gymnasia students. (111) Women accounted for 39, 575 out of the total 88, 751 university students in the Czech Republic, or about 44.6%; and 22, 486 out of the total 49, 154 in the Slovak Republic, or about 45.7%, by the academic year 1989-90.(112)

The number of women in the workforce also showed an increase between the First Republic and the communist Czechoslovakia. According to the yearly statistical figures, women accounted for a little over 28% of the total workforce in the year 1930.(113) After the war, the number of women in the workforce kept rising until it reached a relatively stable level in the 1950s. Women constituted 37,8% of the total workforce in 1948, and the percentage rose to 42.2% by 1957.(114) The distribution of women in the workforce, however, underwent some dramatic changes between 1948 and the 1990s. There were only several branche s of industry in which women workers constituted the majority of workers in 1948, health care combined with social work, and agriculture. Women accounted for 60% of the former and for a little over 50% of the latter.

The situation is different today. Women constituted 75% of the total workforce in health care in 1995. Only a little over 35% of workers in agriculture were women. Women accounted for 70% of all workers in financing and insurance, and more than 70% in education by 1995. Women also constituted more than 50% of employees in services and sales of consumer goods, and in catering and hotel services.(115) All these professions showed a steady increase in the participation of women throughout the whole communist period. The 1990s, so far, do not show much of a difference in this trend.

"... the communist emancipation 'from above' was not perceived as outlandish and cruel an implant as it was perceived in other countries, where communism invaded a conservative and strongly religious environment. That is why we can consider it, in a way, a continuation of this 'traditional' continuity."(116)

Under communism, all universities and secondary schools were open to Czech women. After just two decades of communism, however, patterns developed which indicated women's preferences for certain professions. Some of the most heavily feminized professions included teaching, health care, law, sales, and the service sector. Statistical sources indicate a corresponding distribution of women at Czech and Slovak universities according to field of study. Pedagogical colleges, together with philosophical and pharmaceutical faculties, had a steady seventy-plus percent enrollment of female students from the academic year 1959-60 to 1979-80. Close behind, with fifty-plus percent enrollment of women students over the same time period, were medical and law faculties, and the natural sciences. Finally, the colleges of economics saw an increase from about 35-40% in 1959-60 to 60% in 1979-80.(117) Women tended to pay the least attention to technical colleges, especially to electrical and mechanical engineering faculties, and to colleges of agriculture.

Feminization of certain professions brought with it serious negative effects. Heavily feminized professions tend to have low average salaries and low social status. A typical over-feminized profession in the modern Czech Lands is teaching. This profession was one of the first open to women in the nineteenth century, but only the 1922 school law instituted measures to insure an equal share of female teachers in all schools. It is necessary to realize, however, that the majority of women teachers drops proportionately with the rising educational levels. Thus in 1970 Czechoslovakia, all preschool teachers were women, in primary schools women constituted over 70% of all teachers, at secondary schools women teachers accounted for about 40% of all teachers, and at universities women teachers barely reached 20% of the total.(118) This picture reflects the influence of several factors. More women than men prefer to work with young children which facilitates the channeling of women into kindergarten and elementary school jobs. Teachers at schools of higher learning receive higher salaries, and secondary school and university jobs have a higher level of prestige attached to them.

Feminization of teaching has been commonly attributed to several factors, which include the need for men to work in other areas of the industry, and"the surviving traditional views in public opinion that teaching and educational professions are especially suitable for women".(119) It is hard to tell where this alleged tradition was supposed to have survived from, since women only began achieving equal representation as teachers after 1922. According to the yearly Czechoslovak statistical data, women accounted for 49.8% of the total workforce in education, culture, and physical training in 1948.(120) Regarding women as prime material for the teaching profession might have originated prior to communism, but it certainly took full effect only under communism. Many individuals who spent their life in education could probably confirm it, as one older teacher did when she wrote:

"'When I started to teach in the year 1956, every second teacher used to be a man.' ... ' When the older male teachers were leaving, there was no substitute for them. By the end of the 1960s, men became an exception in the schools."(121)

A communist researcher expressed this reality quite well when she wrote that"the inner conflict between the role of woman in the family and her social mission is perceived relatively less (122) in teaching than in other professions.

"the conservative opinions of woman's occupation which evaluate the socially productive activity of woman first of all as a means to gaining a supplementary income for the family. Such opinions have the nature of the residual bourgeois and petite bourgeois thinking."(123)

This argument was common under communism, but it does not mention that women did not, with the exception of health care, form a majority in any of these professions at the end of the "bourgeois" period. It also does not explain a variety of other factors affecting over-feminization of certain professions. Women's majority in such professions should be more properly viewed as evidence of intentional channeling of women into professions which the society needed, but which did not bring an income substantial enough for the male family breadwinner. These professions were ones which many women in any society prefer, for example professions involving work with young children, and health care professions.

This gendered segmentation of the workforce was closely connected with the situation of women in higher education. By the 1960s, women formed the majority of students at all secondary schools, including gymnasia, vocational schools, and technical schools. Most women secondary school graduates, however, went directly into the workplace. This was true even about women graduates from gymnasia, which were designed primarily to prepare students for further university study. About 65% of female gymnasia graduates went directly into the workplace, while about 80% of men gymnasia graduates went into universities.(124)

Unfortunately, very little material exists on Czech women's participation in the dissident movement. The sociologist Jirina Siklova is one of the few who attempted to clarify the status of Czech women in that movement. In a short lecture from 1991, she stated that women formed 18% of the Charter 77 signatories, and that there were 34% of women among its speakers. Another well-known dissident organization, Vybor na ochranu nespravedlive stihanych, or VONS, allegedly had at least a 50% female membership. There were three women among the ten defendants in the 1979 trial against the VONS members, and women formed one quarter of all defendants in the following large political trial in 1981.(125)

A unique book was compiled by one Czech female dissident, the writer Eva Kanturkova. Entitled Sesly jsme se v teto knize (We Met In This Book), it is a collection of interviews with twelve women who in some way participated in the dissident movement, mostly through the involvement of their husbands, fathers, or sons. Most got involved after the crushing of the Prague Spring. Kanturkova sat down with each of them and let them answer her questions concerning their respective ways of dealing with the consequences of the communist persecution. Why did she decide to create a uniquely female account? "Not for feminine reasons," she said. "After all," she continued, "Feminism was eradicated from our society by its insensitive transformation into a new way of enslaving woman through her forced employment. Thus if women in Czechoslovakia strive for something for themsel ves, then it is their undeformed feminine humanness rather than their employment." (126)

"... socialism gave woman actually only one right, the right to work a lot. ... Even today woman is asked mainly to work and work. To have functions and be beneficial to the public. To stand in lines for hours and to cook well, to do the laundry and to keep the house clean, to do homework with children because school does not manage it too well, but also to educate her children and to find the time to go outdoors with them, but also, for God's sake, to educate herself and if she does not have any profession, to go to school or some classes and also to some political courses and, on top of it, to look nice and well-groomed and to look ahead with certainty to the socialist future." (127)

It is probably safe to assume that had communism not come to Czechoslovakia, Czech women would have continued their prewar ascent to equality in higher education and the learned professions. They would have done well mainly because of their prewar record as a highly literate social group. In the context of Western Europe and the United States, women in Czec hoslovakia enjoyed a very similar share in higher education after Worl War Two. (128) Communism, however, speeded up women's rise to equality in higher education.

"Single, college-educated women older than 26? These girls just don't have any chances to find a matching partner. In a dating agency run by a marriage counseling office such women had about a 10% chance -- and they could not be too demanding." (129)

"I would like to mention another very important factor, and that is the handicap of college-educated women. At the time these women graduate, their female peers already push strollers around or take their kid to day care or to kindergarten. Universities provide solely a chance for the possibility of a start of a certain specialized profession, but to be successful at such a profession, one must continue the process of studying and self-education. Women-academics are delayed at this start first of all because they want (at least the majority of them) to be mothers at an age which is optimal for motherhood - or, more precisely, for the first child, ie, around the age of 25. If I exaggerate it a little bit, I will call the situation which occurs for such women a state of schizophrenia." (130)

"You will never get married with this education!", proclaims the title of one of the articles cited above. It is obviously directed at college-educated women, who, for reasons not completely understandable to the majority of their peers, give up their best childbearing years in order to gain an entry into the world of professional jobs. One tends to gain an impression from this and similar articles that attending a university and attempting a professional career is still considered something close to a social suicide among Czech women. The language of statistics, however, speaks differently. The average age at which young people in the Czech Republic get married rose from 24 years to 26.2 for men and from 21.4 to 23.9 for women between the years 1990 and 1994.(131) Interestingly, the average marriage age returned from the communism-induced low age of about 20 - 22 for women to where it used to be during the First Republic, to around 25. The number of women students both at secondary schools and at universities has not decreased since 1989, and women have maintain a steady presence in the workforce. What is happening?

When the 1989 Velvet Revolution hit, Czech women suffered from long-term fatigue produced by the double work burden. They were tired of any type of political involvement. The fact that most of them kept their jobs was often caused by economic necessity, in many cases coupled with the women's desire for social and professional satisfaction which many of them derived from their jobs. On the other hand, the majority of women did not feel like creating mass organizations defined solely by the concept of "womanhood", whatever the concept might entail to them, and they did not feel like getting politically involved.(132) Czech women prefer to gather around issues of specific interest, such as concern for the health of their children, or their professional interests, rather than on the sole basis of belonging to the female part of population.

The formation of the universally accepted concept of an employed and educated woman started in the Czech society early, in some ways already before World War One. The process was fully launched in the interwar democratic Czechoslovakia, and forty years of communism completed it in many ways. Czech sociologists of the 1990s agree that "'to be employed' is generationally fixed into the values and value systems of both men and women"(133). Women in the Czech society are "fully integrated into socially demographic or socially professional groups"(134). Czech women are perceived as different from Czech men primarily in the context of the firmly embedded cultural paradigms of gender-divided housework and child care. This gender segregation is demonstrated strongly in high feminization of certain professions, such as preschool and elementary school teaching and certain areas of health care. In interest groups, social groups, higher educational institutions, and workplaces other than the feminized fields, Czech women do not form a monolithic group of their own, and they also do not see themselves as separate or different from the men in the group. And yet, their potential as an educated and culturally mature social group remains in many ways underestimated and under utilized in the 1990s Czech society.

The current Constitution of the Czech Republic supports the concept of women as a fully integrated group. The constitution includes "women" in a group called "social minority", together with "youth" and "bodily handicapped persons"(135), for only one purpose. The purpose is "the right to an increased protection of health at work and for special work conditions".(136) One will not find the word "women" or "woman" ("zena", "zeny") associated with the right to equal education or to equal franchise. Instead, the constitution speaks of "everyone", "every citizen", "citizens" ("kazdy", "vsichni", "kazdy obcan","obcane") and other gender-nonspecific terms.(137)

Czech women thus form a social group of interesting characteristics. Some of these characteristics are the specific results of four decades of communism, but some appear universally in modern human societies. Czech women are used to a high level of their own independence, including financial independence, even though their labor is often rewarded less than comparable labor performed by men. They are used to studying at universities, but they also try to get married and start a family during or immediately after their college studies, which in turn puts them at a disadvantage in comparison with their male peer group. They know they are underpaid, but their attitude is often passive, even ignorant of this reality. Their characteristically uninformed attitude is reflected also in the way they think of the new women's movement activities. According to the December, 1991 research of Czech sociologists, only 5% of the women in the interviewed sample expressed a definite desire to participate actively in "the newly formed women's movements". 21% indicated they might participate, 68% sympathized with such initiatives, but would not participate, 5% would not like such activities at all, and 2% would be in an outright opposition to such activities. (138)

Women's relatively high satisfaction with the educational system in the early post-1989 society is also expressed in another measurement taken by researchers in the same study. Women were asked whether particular institutions and/or areas of public life held: 1. more advantages for men, 2. the same advantages for both men and women, or 3. more advantages for women. Education fared best here, too. Only 16% of Czechoslovak women chose option 1. 83% chose option 2, and only 1% chose option 3 about education. (139)

Women's positive perception of educational institutions in post-1989 Czech society should not be considered a remarkable matter, even in the context of the communist past. The educational system was supposedly one of the most heavily indoctrinated under communism. In reality, however, many teachers in Czech communist schools disregarded or circumvented official doctrine wherever and whenever they could. Unfortunately, no research was done to support this proposition, and one can rely only on the words and impressions of individuals who spent their lives under the system.(140) Objectivity in judging this issue is to large degree compromised. The impressions differ depending on what type of community and school the teachers experienced. Women's high level of confidence in the school system can, nevertheless, serve as yet another piece of evidence in favor of women's positive standing in higher education under communism.

Statistics confirm women's well-being in the workforce and in higher education in the post-1989 society. Women maintained a steady presence in the workforce in the 1990s, ranging from 44.3% in 1990 to 44.5% in 1995.(141) Women constituted 54,670 university students out of the total 91,409 in the Czech Republic during the academic year 1995-96, or almost 60%.(142) Data collected at the Gender Centre Library in Prague offers another perspective. Women with a completed university degree formed 3.2% of the total population of the Czech Republic in 1991, while men formed 7%. By comparison, in Slovakia the numbers were higher, 6.3% for women and 9.5% for men.(143)

The results of the sociological research mentioned above offer yet another perspective.(144) Out of the sample of 897 Czech women, 7.4% held a university degree, and 34% had completed some sort of secondary education. 50.4% were employed full-time, and 11.2% were on maternity leave.

The current generation of twenty-something Czech women will be the third or fourth generation of employed and educated women. It is highly unlikely that women will decide to leave the workplace to return to the home in large numbers. Women still form the absolute majority, or 80%, of workers in health care, 75% of workers in education, and more than 66% of workers in the finance industry and insurance.(145) But the internal segmentation of the female workforce is also beginning to show new variations, caused by the new possibilities afforded by private enterprise. Women as well as men are becoming private entrepreneurs, even though women accounted for only about 5% of all employees in the private sector in 1991.(146) Many of these women probably follow the pattern of helping in their family enterprise, frequently run by their husbands or fathers, rather than running an enterprise of their own.

The picture of women's organizations and agencies in the current Czech Republic is quite colorful, despite the previous suggestion that Czech women are generally unwilling to take active initiatives in political activities. The controversial communist women's organization, Ceskoslovensky svaz zen (The Czechoslovak Union of Women), was disbanded in 1990. In its place, an organization called Cesky svaz zen (Czech Union of Women) was founded, with about half a million members in 1990.(147) This new organization created a poor reputation for itself right from the start by retaining for itself the majority of the funds and the real property left over from the compromised communist Czechoslovak Union of Women. Newly founded associations and organizations felt that funds and places such as meeting and lecture rooms should have been shared.

Despite the fact that the newly founded women's organizations were starting from scratch, there are many of them and they seem to be thriving. Kapesni atlas zenskych iniciativ, published by the Gender Studies Centre in 1994, lists altogether 34 women's organizations. The groups range from professional associations such as Asociace podnikatelek a manazerek - APM (Association of Women Entrepreneurs and Managers), and Gender Studies Centre, through political and religious organizations such as Komise zen pri ekumenicke rade cirkvi v CR (Women's Committee by the Ecumenical Council of Churches in the Czech Republic, also called ERC), and SSD - Socialne demokraticke zeny - (Czech Social Democratic Party - Women of Social Democracy, also called SD ), to purely interest organizations grouped around very specific interests, such as Prazske matky (Prague Mothers), Bily kruh bezpeci (White Circle of Safety), or Rozkos bez rizika (Bliss Without Risk). (148)

These groups are living proof of Czech women's appreciation of their recent freedom. Overall, however, the social situation of Czech women has not changed very much seven years after the Velvet Revolution. Czech women retained their once forced employment, while they continue to carry the dual burden of working outside and inside their homes. It is necessary to note here that public services and the availability of merchandise have improved vastly since the pre-1989 period, albeit with increased prices. Czech women have also retained their reproductive freedom. Interestingly enough, the number of abortions declined since 1989, reflecting perhaps an increase in the use of preventive contraception methods. At the same time, the birth rate declined sharply in the Czech Republic in the last few years, showing possible new conflicts between women's employment and their family functions.(149) Even though political representation by women as a percentage of the whole declined since 1989 (150), the recent elections produced some successful women candidates, and there is now a female Minister of Justice sitting in the Czech cabinet.

Dagmar Kotlandova Koenig

See the accompanying article:A Quiet Ascent