The article offers a comparison of the development of institutions of care for children under the age of three in France and in the Czech Republic. It explains the differences in the forms of institutions, policies and the level of state support using a comparative analysis of the discourses of childcare that have existed in the two countries since the end of the Second World War. Expert discourses in particular were found to have an important role in the development of institutions and policies: psychological discursive framings had a strong influence on the public discourse, political decisions and the resulting form of institutions. While in France mainly empirically‑oriented psychologists and pedagogues entered the debate, in Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic the discursive arena was dominated by clinical psychologists and paediatricians. Other influential factors were identified, such as the economic situation, political actors, social movements; and sequencing of events; but the expert discourse was proved to be crucial for the understanding of the divergent development of childcare institutions in the two countries., Radka Dudová, Hana Hašková., Obsahuje bibliografii, and Anglické resumé
The paper discusses changes that have occurred in the Czech pension system since 1996 in terms of their gender impact. The pension system is considered in a broader socio-economic context. I take into account different working careers of men and women and their unequal share in unpaid care work. I analyse individual steps of the reform (the criteria for entitlement to a retirement pension, changes in the mechanism for calculating pension benefits, and the newly established private second pillar) and show the impact of these changes on women and men in retirement. I conclude that although the reform is presented as gender-neutral just because it maintains the same conditions for both sexes, it ultimately brings significant deterioration in women’s retirement situation as compared to men’s. An increase in the level of equivalence - and therefore the increasing dependence of the pension entitlement on previous income from paid work - means that, in the logic of the pension system, unpaid work associated particularly with childcare is valued less and less and gender inequalities in the labour market are reproduced., Radka Dudová., and Obsahuje bibliografii
The right to end an unwanted pregnancy as an integral part of the full citizenship of women has been influenced, reinfluenced, and questioned by different actors in the Czech Republic since the 1950s. Until 1986 the right to abortion was not viewed as a woman’s personal right, but depended upon the decision of abortion commissions and was influenced by the current demographic and political situation. The decision-making process was a very embarrassing experience for many women, who in fact had no other means of contraception available to them. In this paper, I analyse the legal and political regulation of abortion from the perspective of Foucault´s theory of governmentality and biopower. Abortion regulation is an example of how state power influences and disciplines the bodies of its subjects, how it regulates the population and shapes it according to the government’s needs. Through the regulation of abortion, the state not only attempted to restrict a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body, but also defined which of its citizens should or should not become a parent and under what circumstances, and who should or should not have the right to be born. In the text I first present the theory of governmentality, then I analyse the periods of the regulation of abortion in socialist Czechoslovakia, and finally I show how this regulation can be understood as an instrument of a specific form of governmentality typical of totalitarian communist regime., Radka Dudová., Obsahuje bibliografii, and Anglické resumé
Despite the growing number of statistical analyses of life-history data and a long tradition of biographical research, there is often no communication between these two streams of life-course research. It is possible to examine the life course quantitatively through life histories, which may be used to model synthetic biographies in order to reveal patterns in the timing and sequencing of life events, the durations of states between them, and the causal links between them. It is also possible to examine the life course qualitatively through life stories, e.g. biographical narratives, which reflect how persons understand, experience and attach meaning to events and states in their life. Through a quantitative analysis of life-history data we can describe and explain the morphology of particular events in the observed population, while a qualitative analysis of biographical narratives provides insight into people’s decision-making, perceptions of their options, and how they attach meanings to and experience events. This article summarizes the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches, explains in which sense they are connected or differentiated from each other, what data and analyses each perspective may utilize, and briefly introduces one type of mixed methods life course research that utilizes the complementarity of both approaches., Hana Hašková a Radka Dudová., and Obsahuje bibliografii
Secondary labour markets usually involve job positions with forced flexibility and non-standard working conditions (part-time contracts, fixed-term contracts, work without a contract). They are characterized by no advancement prospects or opportunities for further education, exhausting physical work with inadequate wages and job insecurity, and a frequently long and tiring commute. The working conditions in this sector of the labour market often contribute to marginalization and then to the social exclusion of those who happen to be caught long term in this sector of the labour market instead of preventing and saving them from the risk of marginalization and social exclusion. One of the ways in which secondarization occurs is the universal introduction of part-time contracts in a particular sector of the labour market which then becomes an involuntary trap of underemployment, underpaid wage, insecurity and discrimination. The profession of cashier in foreigner retail chains is an example of such a development. This qualitative study shows the step by step degradation of the employment conditions in this sector and how the lives of women and men working in the sector have deteriorated. At the same time, the condition and status of the profession overall are declining. This phenomenon is referred to as the "secondarization" process, Marcel Tomášek, Radka Dudová., and Obsahuje bibliografii