The article analyses the most current myths regarding the sexual harassment in the Czech Republic. Specifically the author examines firstly the myth of non-existence and insignificancy which does not respect its latent nature; secondly she speaks about the myth of subjectivity and selfhood which denies the role of symbolic power and existence of unequal relations between men and women. Thirdly she identifies the myth of irrelevancy and impossibility to define the limits that denies equal moral value of all people; and finally she discusses the myth of malfeasance that denies possible serious harm caused to victims, the most frequently women. These myths are identified on the basis of qualitative analysis of focus groups with representatives of labour union. The author aims to confute these mentioned myths that contaminate the representation of the phenomenon of sexual harassment in the public discourse in the Czech Republic. For defence of significance of sexual harassment she elaborates the parallel with domestic violence and highlights common tendency to deny these gender based inequalities and oppression on the basis of the idea of ''natural sex relations''.
The graves of the Merovingian period in Central Europe show typical grave inventories which allow us to determine the sex (and not only the gender) of the buried persons with high accuracy. In the year 2000 a skeleton of the Alamannic cemetery of Niederstotzingen (Germany), which was equipped with weapons as a male component of the grave goods, was identified as female by DNA-analysis. This surprising result gave us a reason to investigate some skeletons of the Bavarian region, which seemed to be female by the morphology of the bones but also had weapons. We found no further ‘female warriors’, and recent investigations of the skeleton from Niederstotzingen carried out by other scholars have shown that it also belongs to a man. So we have no archaeological traces of women in the Early Middle Ages who filled the role as a warrior in life. This is also the case in view of the written sources. Surprisingly, in our Bavarian sample we found two persons with a male genotyp and beads from a necklace. These finds have to be interpreted with caution and we cannot be sure to find a proof of ‘cross-dressing’ in the Merovingian period. and Výbava hrobů merovejského období ve střední Evropě se vyznačuje charakteristickou kombinací předmětů, umožňující s vysokou pravděpodobností určit biologické pohlaví zesnulého. Zbraněmi vybavený jedinec z alemanského pohřebiště v Niederstotzingen byl v roce 2000 pomocí DNA analýzy určen jako žena. Tento překvapivý výsledek zadal podnět k prozkoumání několika hrobů z bavorské sídelní oblasti, které sice obsahovaly zbraně, kde ale morfologie koster naznačovala ženské pohlaví. Další bojovnice ovšem nalezeny nebyly a nové rozbory niederstotzingenského hrobu mezitím prokázaly, že i tam se jednalo o muže. Z raného středověku tedy ve zkoumané oblasti neznáme nálezy, u nichž by existovalo podezření, že se jedná o pohřby bojovnic, a ani v písemných pramenech pro tento jev nenalézáme oporu. Naopak jsme ale právě v Bavorsku identifikovali dvě kostry s mužskou DNA, které měly na krku korálkové náhrdelníky. Takové nálezy nutno posuzovat obezřetně, v žádném případě ale nejde o archeologický doklad „crossdressingu“ v merovejském období.
The labour market is segregated both vertically and horizontally by gender. Some research has concluded that gender segregation results in a lower prestige being attributed to occupations labelled as feminine (Merkel et al. 2012, Formanowicz et al. 2012). On the other hand, gender-sensitive language that uses feminine labels for better contingency with social reality is considered a basic tool for gender equality. This article explores whether in Czech society there are differences in the level of prestige attached to 37 occupations labelled as feminine and masculine. The survey results show (sample of 642 adults that a gender difference exists only in a few occupations. In fields with a real prevalence of men or women the prestige of gender-congruent labelled occupations was significantly higher. Men’s and women’s opinions on occupational prestige are similar; this finding is interpreted in relation to social identity theory and system justification theory.
The article introduces feminist political economy as an analytical tool or interpretative frame for exploring current economic crisis. In the beginning of the article, the authors focus on the wider context of feminist theories and approaches to capitalism within their development. The point is to show that contemporary feminist critiques of global capitalism tie in with the earlier tradition of feminist thought. In the next part, the authors introduce the theoretical grounds and basic theses of feminist political economy through the work of V. Spike Peterson and J. K. Gibson-Graham. The last part of the article focuses on specific issues linked to the current crisis of global capitalism and on the questions raised by this approach. The main questions are: how can we describe the crisis and what solutions can we search for? Is it a crisis of the hegemonic capitalist mode of production, a crisis of the capitalocentrist order, or just a crisis of certain institutions? Is the current economic crisis only a negative phenomenon, or does it open the way to establishing alternative paradigms to that of the global hegemony of capitalism?, Veronika Šprincová, Miroslav Jašurek., Obsahuje bibliografii, and Anglické resumé