Did They Vanish? On Women in the Polish and Czech Anti-Communist Opposition

While they formed a significant part of the dissident movement, few women remained in politics after 1989. Yet among them had been spokeswomen for Charter 77, organizers of the strike at the Gdańsk shipyards, members of Solidarity and committed anti-regime activists. Was the situation of women and men in the dissent different? Why do so few women in Central Europe get involved in politics? A debate between documentary filmmaker and writer Marta Dzido, director of a groundbreaking documentary about women in Poland’s Solidarity movement, sociologist Marcela Linková, co-author of a book of interviews with Czech dissidents and exhibition entitled The Revolution Begins at Home, and sociologist Oľga Gyárfášová, who conducted interviews with women from the Slovak anti-communist opposition for the book Ako sme žili v rokoch normalizácie (How We Lived During Normalization).