POLANE Women's work is never done "SWEATERS on prescription. What can we wash with? The customeis tread on each others' toes. Shoes will be available in January. Long queues in filthy shops."
No, this is not a surrealist poem. Just some headlines taken haphazardly from November's Zycie Warszawy, the main Warsaw daily. And November was a particularly mild month last autumn: queuing did not mean waiting in the cold as it did later that year. JACQUELINE HEINEN
The official press denounced the organized chaos, all the different sorts of supply shortages and the bad quality of manufactured goods at length. The virulence they used said a lot about the gravity of the situation. The explanations put forward by officials interviewed in the papers to "justify " the absence of this or that article on the market boiled down to a few words that were repeated obsessionally: lack of raw materials and spare parts.
These shortages are an evil affecting the whole Polish economy, but especially the production of everyday consumer goods. They result in real suffering for consumers, obliged to run from one corner of the town to another to hunt for what they need.
However, the press hardly mentioned the fact that most customers in the shops and the overwhelming majority of those queuing are women, and that they are the first to be hit when it turns out to be impossible to buy a pullover, shoes, washing powder or a washing machine.
Veto, the consumer magazine launched in 1982, explained: "In 1980, as in the preceding years, 179 million rolls of toilet paper -40 per cent of what was needed -were lacking. There is nothing to indicate that the industry concerned will manage to overcome this insoluble problem between now and the end of the century." (1)
Another article in the same maga zine told how, in Gorzow, people queued for hours - some for the whole night - in front of a shop that was supposed to receive a consignment of washing machines. They ended up going home when it became and the snow in minus 20 degrees, apparent that they would not even arrive that day, because there was no lorry to deliver them. The journalist protested against the fact that the cooperative had not even taken the trouble to inform the customers. But even here, they write about the hazards of daily life as though they affect everyone in the same way.
Unfortunately, the sharing of domestic tasks is not more widespread in the East than in the West. The figures of the National Statis tics Office (GUS) for 1984 illustrate this.. (2) They show that women do nearly five hours of housework each day, compared to less than one and a half hours for men (this ratio is even more unfavourable than in a country like France). Women take on more than three quarters of repetitive tasks - cooking. washing up, washing and ironing.
Men's participation is not much better when it comes to the daily shopping. It is an activity which de. mands far more effort than in the capitalist countries. Even old people are paid to queue up for others, which they do to supplement their meagre pensions.
Is there any hope of seeing changes one day? "I don't think it is at all shameful for men to do housework. What is shameful is that they don't know how to do it. Why would a man who lays the table and serves the meal, who does the cooking instead of his tired wife, be ridiculous? A waiter in a restaurant isn't! Neither
1. 'Veto', No. I, January 4, 1987.
2. 'Sytuacja spoleczna-zawodowa kobiet w 1983', GUS, 1984. International Viewpoint 20 April 1987
SPOZYWCZY
WEDLINY
Queuing is a daily chore in Poland - usually left to women (DR)
is a decorator hanging curtains, a male chef, a taylor, a baker or a man who works in a laundry.
"We don't find it bizarre when it's a profession, but these same activities are judged to be shameful when they are done by a man at home. The division of tasks between men and women is absurd and false." (3)
These are remarks of a man to Kobieta i Zycie (Women and life"), a women's magazine which has recently reproduced a selection of letters published in its readers' column since its inception more than 40 years ago. Is it a coincidence that this letter dates from the 1940s, when all the official propaganda insisted on the absolute necessity of women's participation in production to aid the reconstruction of a country devastated by the war?
Another reader - this time in the 1960s - complains to the editor that his wife, who also had a job, refused to do everything at home. "She says that she doesn't have the time and that she doesn't want to do the washing. I already iron my trousers, but am I expected also to iron my shirts, help with housework and even the washing? But what is it that my wife wants...?
"I know that she is overworked and that housework tires her. But after all, I work myself, and I really want to rest when I come home, but my wife doesn't want to, or cannot understand this. She has, moreover, raised our son in her own way. He irons his own shirts, washes his socks and, in addition, he cleans the house and makes some meals What sort of a man will he become?' (4)
International Viewpoint 20 April 1987
One would like to think that these arguments were old hat. But unfortunately they are often regur gitated by workers, including Soli. darnosc activists. This division of labour in the family, deeply rooted in both consciousness and reality, sustains an enduring sexual division of labour and discrimination at work. The more women workers, the lower the salaries
Even though women contribute to producing an essential part of national wealth, even though the percentage of women working has increased from less than 25% before the war to 45% today (and most of these fulltime), job segregation has still not declined. It continues to be expressed by the existence of pre dominantly female branches of industry which are not among the "key sectors" of the economy. As in the West, the wages curve is very explicit on this point. the more women workers there are in a sector, the lower the salaries, and vice versa. (5)
Professional segregation equally results in a concentration of women workers in the service sector - finances health, teaching and commerce in particular. Finally, it results in discrimination between "male" and "female" jobs - the latter being nearly always less well paid and looked down on. Skilled machine operators remain predominantly male, unskilled workers female.
Nevertheless, some significant progress has been made regarding women's education. In 1983, the proportion of girls in academic highschools was greater than boys. Taken as a whole the same was true for women in the higher education. But in the technical highschools and universities leading more directly to the better paid jobs, women were still in a minority. And, among those getting doctorates, the proportion of women - around a third - has hardly changed in the last ten years. This figure is cut by half in relation to postdoctoral degrees.
This contradiction between the advances in women's education and qualifications and their role in productive and social relations shows up at every level. Their relative weight among skilled industrial workers is decreasing, while it is growing in the unskilled areas. When they have a job requiring further education, three times out of four they have lowprestige administrative jobs with low salaries. There are indeed some in management but nearly always in intermediate posts. Women only represent a little over six per cent of directors, mostly heading up small enterprises.
Asked about it. the great majority of Polish women say that they do not want to become managers, and that, taking everything into account, they prefer wage rises to any other forms of promotion. That is scarcely sur-
3. 'Kobieta i Zycie', No. 1, January 7, 1987.
4. Ibid.
5. See 'Kobieta w Polsce', GUS, 1985 and 'Rocznik Statystyczny Przemyslu' GUS, 1984.
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prising, since on average, women earn around a third less than men. And if women appear so modest in their professional ambitions, is it not because other positions seem to them to be unrealisitic?
Studies show that most women questioned accepted their assigned role of home-maker and housewife. But why should women aspire to greater responsibilities at work when they already have a fulltime job and the burden of domestic tasks, especially when they have young children?
The massive resort to paid parental leave, which was demanded for some years and introduced in 1981 under the pressure of Solidarnosc, is an obvious sign how impossible it is for young mothers to cope with it all. In 1983, 89 per cent of women chose to interrupt their work for one or more years, in spite of the financial loss of a third to a half of their wages and the problem that represents for their career. (6)
When asked why they had chosen parental leave, more than three quar ters of them replied that it was so that they could personally look after their child. But, at the same time, more than half affirmed that it was because they had no one in their family or elsewhere that they trusted to look after the child. This shows, at the very least, a certain ambivalence in the way in which they approach the problem of balance between their family and professional
However, it is striking to note that the argument of lack of creches comes up very rarely in the decision to take up parental leave (in 2.6 per cent of cases). There seems a deepgoing conviction that these sorts of structures do not answer the needs of taking care of very young children.
"We women, must not sacrifice ourselves to the home and to children, but we do not have any other solution. Creches and nursery schools are truly a 'necessary evil' in our country places where children are not always looked after properly and where they fall ill too often." (7) This was the opinion of a young mother who dreamed of being able to work, to have a social life, to be someone children would look up to, instead of only someone who looked after and scolded them.
It has to be said that the creche situation is continuing to deteriorate quantitatively as well as qualitatively. Some major efforts were made following the last war in setting up collective facilities, and particularly nurseries for babies in order to encourage young women to take paid work. From almost nothing, the number of places in creches reached nearly 1520 per cent of the total numbers of 16
Unskilled workers are predominantly female (DR) children under three at the beginning of the 1970s. But this proportion has steadily dropped since, falling to 4.3 per cent in 1982 - a figure that rivals the worst of situations in Western Europe.
But women workers in the West protest against policies seeking to transfer to the family the tasks which, partially, were taken on until now by public services. On the one hand this slows down the progress of women's careers when they work full-time. On the other hand, this process prevents them from having access to steady, skilled and well- paid employment if they "choose" part-time work. Either they cannot get out of it, or they are forced to interrupt their work at a time and an age that is often decisive for gaining skills and responsibilities.
Is Poland a case apart? Are the working class, and women in particular, insensitive to these problems? Obviously, the dominant opinion in this area is essentially the consequence of people's negative experiences over many decades.
The bureaucracy's policies regarding the building of collective facilities - creches and nursery schools in particular - have always been utilitarian and opportunist, decided according to the interests of the day and the scale of the need for women's labour power. Reactionary arguments on the role of women
The immediate post war discussion was on women's paid labour (and, therefore, also collective facilities) in relation to the needs of reconstruction. This was followed by another, inverse, discussion at the beginning of the 1960s insisting on the role of the mother at home and pleading with women to look after their children themselves. As if by chance, this corresponded to a period where unemployment (not officially, but no less a reality) reached four to seven per cent of the active population, and up to 16 per cent of women nationally. (8) And the number of creches, which had tripled during the first ten years following the war barely increased under Wladyslaw Gomulka.
Then, after the riots of 1970 came Edward Gierek, whose development policy relied on a strong growth in the productive capacity, and there was a growth in investment in this area between 1971 and 1974. But then the priorities reversed again, and the economic crisis which broke out at the end of the 1970s was accompanied by a real collapse at that stage leading to the present situation.
The introduction of a ridiculously low paid parental leave no doubt seemed to the authorities to be a way of dealing with the most urgent problems first. This also played into the hands of an increasingly reactionary argument concerning the role of
6. See "Nowe Tendencje w Wykorzystywaniu Zasilkow i Urlopow Wychowawczych" by Adam Kurzynowski in 'Polityka Spoleczna', No. 2, 1985.
'Kobiela i Zycie', No. 32, August 8, 1986. International Viewpoint 20 April 1987
women, essentially coinciding with that of the Catholic Church.
Today, however, the contradictions have reached a watershed, since the labour needs are obvious and the enthusiasm of women for parental leave is beginning to pose a real problem.
In fact, the economic crisis which has existed since the start of the 1980s, and the increase in the foreign debt, have prevented the renewal and modernization of machine stocks, as well as the purchase of licences necessary for a real rationalization and automation of both industry and the services. It is also necessary to build a system of production relying on an extensive use of female labour in a growing number of sectors of the economy. But since the till is empty there is no possibility of spending the sums needed in order to release these women from "their" domestic tasks. However serious the official promises are, as soon as the time comes to choose the priorities for investment the usual bureaucratic logic wins out: the money goes to the key sectors of the economy (or those considered as such) and other needs fall by the wayside - starting with the social services.
This has nothing to do with the feeling expressed by the population about the usefulness of one facility or another. Take the example of nursery schools, which the great majority of workers consider to be indispensible (as opposed to creches), but which barely provide for 50 per cent of needs for children between 3 and 6 years old. The cost to families - about 2,000 zlotys including meals • is also a far from negligible sum for a family with several children, and the calculation is on the basis of a salary of 8,000 zlotys, as was pointed out by a reader of Kobieta i Zycie in summer 1986. (9)
In the East, as in the West, it is of course on the basis of the woman's wages that the decision is taken. Except for very exceptional cases, there is no question of the man thinking of stopping work, because the woman earns less and the family tasks are "rightfully" her's.
The authorities' contempt for all the specific problems faced by families and women in particular is, in general, striking. Whether it is the growing inadequacy of school transport in the countryside where children often have to walk several miles to go to school, or the ridiculously small number of canteens in schools and factories or the lack of laundries: all the figures are there to demonstrate the chasm between the speeches and reality.
Of course, Polish women themselves say that they prefer to cook for the whole family and do their
International Viewpoint 20 April 1987 washing at home. But three-quarters of them explain that they say this because of the low quality of canteen meals and the health problems this causes, or the high prices in the laundries whose services also leave a lot to be desired. In any case, their preference for individual automatic washing machines has no effect on the investment policy in this sector of production, as the articles in the official press show quite blatantly.
So it is clear that on the question of social services, as in the field of production of consumer goods, quantity can not be dissociated from quality - both are affected by the same policy. The scepticism displayed by most Polish families to the idea of resorting to creches, and the fear - justified or not - that children catch all sorts of illnesses there, are by and large understandable when all the drawbacks are taken into account. These include the excess numbers of children (sometimes 20-30 per cent higher than the registered places); the lack of staff (often there are 30 to 40 children for one teacher); and, above all, the lack of qualified personnel. These are all defects which are decried time and again by the authorities themselves. Examples of Sweden and East Germany
But would the conviction that the child would develop better if its mother stays close by be so strong if there were cheap and good quality facilities nearby, in the block of flats or the local area, with a small number of children looked after by well-trained, highly motivated (and therefore well-paid) staff? I would say that this is not a convincing argument.
For proof, the example of the neighbouring countries such as Sweden and East Germany can be looked at. Here, there is not the same discussion on creches as in Poland - whatever the differences economic systems and whatever criticisms could be made of them on other questions. The tone is rather one of the popular demand for more and better quality services for infants. But this attitude is based on a different experience, on a situation where the need is met for 40 to 60 per cent of children under three and almost 90 per cent of the children from 3 to 6 years old in East Germany). Of course, the question of the number does not stop the discussion on the quality or the type of creches desired, or the best way of paying for or running them. But at least it gives some
"Man holding baby" - a rare species in Poland, as in the rest of Europe (DR) meaning to such discussions.
It would be useless to talk of women's emancipation while such deep inequalities between men and women continue. This article has only illustrated some aspects of a so-called socialist regime as in Poland The continuation of unequal wages alone, which has been criticized for years, is a factor of dependence for women and thus of oppression. Job inequality leads to different social status amd value, and thus to power relations unfavourable to women. To say nothing of the fact that the unequal division of labour within the family automatically means less leisure and relaxation for women. How can it be claimed that a more just society can be built in such conditions?
Far be it from me to put forward the idea that it is possible to overcome the present inequalities without a radical challenge to existing social relations. The bureaucracy, like the bourgeoisie, has every advantage in maintaining the existing divisions between the sexes - "divide and rule" as the saying goes.
But in Poland, as in the West, the battle against the discriminations suffered by women cannot be put off until tomorrow under the pretext that it is a long term fight. There are a certain number of preconceived ideas on the "natural" differences between women's work and men's work which all of us could begin to think about while making an effort to have an effect on what is within our scope.
8. These statistics can be found in series of works, including 'Rownosc kobiet i meszozvzn w Polsce Ludowej' by R. Wieruszewski, Poznan, 1975.