Pressuring the Politburo

The Committee of the Bulgarian Women's Movement and State Socialist Feminism

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4211751
AutoresK Ghodsee (0000-0002-9494-3741, autor correspondente)
Ano2014
Volume73
Fascículo3
Páginas538-562
Data de publicação2014-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoSlavic Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0037-6779 • E-ISSN: 2325-7784
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.5612/slavicreview.73.3.538
OpenAlexW2335692319
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas15
Referências citadas27

National women's organizations were a ubiquitous feature of all of the eastern European communist nations. Although the specificities of these organizations varied from country to country, they were all state-run mass organizations variously charged with mobilizing domestic women and representing their nations at international forums concerning women's rights. In the west, these state women's organizations were treated with suspicion; they were often viewed as tools of authoritarian control, mobilizing women to fulfill party goals. It is rarely considered that eastern bloc women may have used their privileged relationship with the Communist Party to promote policies that actually helped women, or that they could push back at male patriarchal elites by appealing to higher communist principles regarding the woman question. This article is a case study of the Committee of the Bulgarian Women's Movement. It demonstrates that this organization, despite its entanglement with the state bureaucracy, was relatively successful in pressuring the Bulgarian Politburo into expanding rights and entitlements to women between 1968 and 1990

Authoritarianism · Bulgarian · Bureaucracy · Communism · Democracy · Feminism · Feminist movement · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · European history and politics · Gender Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Law · Public Administration