Through the use of a historical-institutional perspective and with particular reference to the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia; this study explores the state of family policies in Post-Communist Europe. It analyzes how these policies have developed and examines their impact on gender relations for the countries mentioned.

Now in a fully revised and updated edition, this essential text provides a comprehensive introduction to Central and Eastern Europe, including the Baltics and Ukraine. Broad but nuanced, it offers a reader-friendly overview of the globally and regionally significant changes and challenges the region faces. Divided into two parts, the book first presents thematic chapters on key issues, including nationalism and challenges to democratic institutions and practices, the contentious politics of memory, debates over demography and migration in a region with a shrinking population, and Russian efforts to retain regional influence through hard and soft power. The case-study chapters that follow highlight key political developments after communism as well as providing a strong foundation for readers on regional history and the political and economic experiences of the communist years. Each covers the foundational topics of political history, political competition, economic development, social problems, relationships with European institutions, and threats to good governance. For students and specialists alike, this book will be an invaluable resource on this dynamic region of Europe.

This Handbook is the key reference for contemporary historical and political approaches to gender in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Leading scholars examine the region’s highly diverse politics, histories, cultures, ethnicities, and religions, and how these structures intersect with gender alongside class, sexuality, coloniality, and racism. Comprising 51 chapters, the Handbook is divided into six thematic parts: Part I Conceptual debates and methodological differences Part II Feminist and women’s movements cooperating and colliding Part III Constructions of gender in different ideologies Part IV Lived experiences of individuals in different regimes Part V The ambiguous postcommunist transitions Part VI Postcommunist policy issues With a focus on defining debates, the collection considers how the shared experiences, especially communism, affect political forces’ organization of gender through a broad variety of topics including feminisms, ideology, violence, independence, regime transition, and public policy. It is a foundational collection that will become invaluable to scholars and students across a range of disciplines including Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Central-Eastern European and Eurasian Studies.

This volume provides a much needed update on the state of civil society in post-communist Europe and Russia more than two decades after the fall of the communist regimes. The chapters offer new perspectives on social movement strategies in post-communist Central-Eastern Europe and Russia. The chapters illustrate how social movements develop particular repertoires of action and contention, which are better suited for their specific local contexts in the post-communist setting. In Russia and Poland, the most popular and effective choices are using domestic and transnational legal opportunities, judicial activism and litigation that complement the traditional lobbying and mass mobilization. Human rights framing has become important in Hungary and the Czech Republic. The chapters analyse various types of rights-based activism that operate in otherwise prohibitive social and political environments, thereby raising highly contentious issues, such as animal rights, environment and sustainability, human rights, women’s rights, and gay rights activism. The contributions richly illustrate the often surprising and multiple ways in which transnational discourses and norm pressure are received, translated or resisted in the local contexts. Finally, the volume provides a novel reconceptualisation and offers new understandings of the relationships between the state and civil society in the post-communist context. This book is based on a special issue of East European Politics.

This volume combines approaches from three disciplines – economics, sociology, and demography – and empirically analyzes the key aspects of the labor market and social demography processes in post-Soviet transitional societies while focusing on the gender perspective. Here, readers will find empirical studies on such countries as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. The volume contributes to the literature by addressing the lack of academic empirical research on gender difference issues in the labor markets of post-Soviet countries as well as gender inequalities in fertility preferences, gender disparities among the youth and elderly, the gender pay gap, gender differences in employment, and female voices. The book brings together researchers of different disciplines from a variety of countries, distinguishing this project as international and interdisciplinary. The authors use the quantitative survey micro-data approach as well as the qualitative methods of interview data analysis to provide a comprehensive and detailed overview of the economic and social developments in the region regarding gender differences. The volume consists of three parts tackling the following topics: 1) gender differences and demography (family formation and fertility, youth and elderly employment); 2) gender differences and labor market (gender wage gap, motherhood wage penalty, gender differences among freelancers, and women in STEM science); and 3) gender differences, well-being, and gender equality attitudes (women’s voices, women’s collective actions, gender equality attitudes, and spending patterns of housewives).

The Handbook of Family Policy examines how state and workplace policies support parents and their children in developing, earning and caring. With original contributions from 44 leading scholars, this Handbook provides readers with up-to-date knowledge on family policies and family policy research, taking stock of current literature as well as providing analyses of present-day policies, and where they should head in the future.