This book considers the state of Czech democracy, following the rise of authoritarian regimes in Poland and Hungary and the ascent of billionaire oligarch Andrej Babiš to the office of prime minister of the Czech Republic, leading to concerns about conflict of interest. The authors argue that civic values, such as tolerance, respect for the equality of people, and readiness to play by the rules of the political game, are key factors in determining whether the Czech Republic will maintain its democracy in the coming years. The book employs a broad perspective, bringing together insights from political science, sociology, cultural studies, and other disciplines to analyse changes in the democracy of the Czech Republic since 1989, taking into consideration various dimensions of civic values, including politics, gender inequality, film, and the media.

Despite recent progress to improve gender equality in the Czech Republic, several gender gaps persist in different areas of the society and economy. This report offers evidence-informed recommendations, tailored to the Czech context to improve governance and capacities for accelerating progress in gender equality.

Despite recent progress to improve gender equality in the Czech Republic, several gender gaps persist in different areas of the society and economy. Based on growing evidence on how gender-sensitive policymaking can underpin inclusive growth and resilience, this OECD review has been developed to help the government of the Czech Republic strengthen its capacities for implementing and mainstreaming gender equality across the whole of government. It assesses strategic enablers such as legal and strategic frameworks, the institutional set-up, and accountability mechanisms for gender mainstreaming in the country. It also examines the tools and practices that can be used to inform gender-sensitive policymaking in the Czech Republic. Drawing upon promising practices across OECD countries, it offers evidence-informed recommendations, tailored to the Czech context to improve governance and capacities for accelerating progress in gender equality

Sixteen essays “apply the intersectional theory in an inspiring way in the analysis of gender issues in the past and in contemporary Czech society” (Aspasia). In this wide-ranging study of women’s and gender issues in the pre- and post-1989 Czech Republic, contributors engage with current feminist debates and theories of nation and identity to examine the historical and cultural transformations of Czech feminism. This collection of essays by leading scholars, artists, and activists, explores such topics as reproductive rights, state socialist welfare provisions, Czech women’s NGOs, anarchofeminism, human trafficking, LGBT politics, masculinity, feminist art, among others. Foregrounding experiences of women and sexual and ethnic minorities in the Czech Republic, the contributors raise important questions about the transfer of feminist concepts across languages and cultures. As the economic orthodoxy of the European Union threatens to occlude relevant stories of the different national communities comprising the Eurozone, this book contributes to the understanding of the diverse origins from which something like a European community arises. “While the collection demands that we understand Czech uniqueness, at the same time it is at its best when this uniqueness comes into focus through comparative study.” —Feminist Review “A colorful bouquet offering an overview of directions taken by Czech feminist scholarship since the 1990s.” —Slavic Review

Upon request by the FEMM Committee, this report provides an overview of the existing gender-equality legislation and policies in the Czech Republic, focussing on the recent developments and achievements. It discusses gender equality in employment, reconciliation of work and family life, presence of women in decision-making positions, recent measures to fight violence against women, and sexual and reproductive health and rights. The Czech Republic is still far from reaching real equality between men and women, in spite of a quite satisfactory level of implementation of EU legislation. In practice and daily life, the country has still a long way to go.

"Since the fall of the Berlin wall there has been a surprising dearth of high quality of scholarship on legal culture in the communist successor states of East Central Europe. In this excellent book Barbara Havelkova engages with the reversal of many of the advances the socialist period made in gender relations, examining the historical roots of the current failure of Czech law to engage with the discriminatory practices that have negatively affected the lives of women. She does this by a forensic excavation of law, discourses and practices of the socialist era revealing the patriarchal assumptions underpinning them that became deeply embedded in Czech legal culture, and that have been carried forward to the present day. The book is a compelling read. It provides answers to many of the questions that have perplexed feminists about the post-soviet transition and at the same time speaks more generally to the debates surrounding the troubling rightward shift in the politics of the communist successor states of Europe." Professor Judith Pallot, President of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies "In Gender Equality in Law: Uncovering the Legacies of Czech State Socialism, Barbara Havelková offers a sober and sophisticated socio-legal account of gender equality law in Czechia. Tracing gender equality norms from their origins under state socialism, Havelková shows how the dominant understanding of the differences between women and men as natural and innate combined with a post-socialist understanding of rights as freedom to shape the views of key Czech legal actors and to thwart the transformative potential of EU sex discrimination law. Havelková's compelling feminist legal genealogy of gender equality in Czechia illuminates the path dependency of gender norms and the antipathy to substantive gender equality that is common among the formerly state-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Her deft analysis of the relationship between gender and legal norms is especially relevant today as the legitimacy of gender equality laws is increasingly precarious." Professor Judy Fudge, Kent Law School Gender equality law in Czechia, as in other parts of post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe, is facing serious challenges. When obliged to adopt, interpret and apply anti-discrimination law as a condition of membership of the EU, Czech legislators and judges have repeatedly expressed hostility and demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding of key ideas underpinning it. This important new study explores this scepticism to gender equality law, examining it with reference to legal and socio-legal developments that started in the state-socialist past and that remain relevant today. The book examines legal developments in gender-relevant areas, most importantly in equality and anti-discrimination law. But it goes further, shedding light on the underlying understandings of key concepts such as women, gender, equality, discrimination and rights. In so doing, it shows the fundamental intellectual and conceptual difficulties faced by gender equality law in Czechia. These include an essentialist understanding of differences between men and women, a notion that equality and anti-discrimination law is incompatible with freedom, and a perception that existing laws are objective and neutral, while any new gender-progressive regulation of social relations is an unacceptable interference with the 'natural social order'. Timely and provocative, this book will be required reading for all scholars of equality and gender and the law.