During the last couple of decades, paid childcare has become one of the central issues of feminist research. Agencies mediating childcare are a relatively new actor in childcare arrangements in the Czech Republic. This article argues that these agencies do not fill a gap in the market by offering childcare. Far from providing simple supply that reacts to a market demand, the agencies create the demand for specific care. Drawing upon qualitative research conducted with owners of these agencies, the text looks into the ways in which childcare is constructed. The issues of qualified, specialized, and professionalized care are discussed. The article aims to show that childcare in the agencies is deconstructed as a natural female activity and is reconstructed as a gendered activity requiring particular skills that are subjected to professional screening., Adéla Souralová., and Obsahuje bibliografii
"If the present border cannot be preserved..." On the Participation of Czech Scholars in Resolving the Czechoslovak-Polish Territorial Conflict over Orava and Spiš in the Years 1918-1920 /
In the years 2004 and 2005 a survey was conducted that focused on recording of authentic testimonies about the everyday lives of women in the country predominantly in the second half of the 20th century. Correspondents of the Czech Ethnographical Society, students and female seniors from different parts of the Czech Republic took part in the survey. this report reveals the results including characteristic quotations. The information was obtained from different localities on an uneven basis. There is a compact set of records from four villages in eastern Moravia and four authentic testimonies from Těšín region in the foothills of Beskydy Mountains. The information was either handwritten by the respondents, or their narration was recorded by the Czech Ethnographical Society correspondents, students of Silesian University or by a local chronicler. The outline of the research was available to everyone. We were above all interested in the changes which rural families had to go through in the second half of the 20th century due to collectivization of land and changes in social and economic conditions.