Our prejudices make us blind to the wealth of inspiration in the area of gender democracy making and the progress to be found outside of the Occident, in this case to that of Costa Rica. The country´s historic milestone is undoubtedly the abolition of its army in 1948, with the ensuing cummulative effect of the so called peace dividend, particularly in education. The latter in turn played a major role in the advancement of Costa Rican women, as well as fostered in large measure a gender sensitization of the society over an arguably short span of time - much in defiance of persistent dire problems any developing country faces. The cornerstone of its nascent gender equality is the 1990 legislation: every political party must state in its statutes how it will work to ensure equality between women and men within its ranks. The electoral law stipulates a binding 40% quota for women on ballots, or else the defaulting party cannot participate in elections. Women currently account for 38,6% in the Parliament, take up almost a third of all ministerial positions, well over a third of managerial positions in the state administration and at the local level there is almost a parity balance.
Over the course of the past twenty years, a diverse feminist and gender scene has formed in the Czech Republic. It contains academic institutions (Gender & Sociology at the Czech Academy of Science, FSS MU in Brno, FHS UK in Prague), a plethora of NGOs (Gender Studies, o.p.s., Fórum 50%, o.s., proFem, o.p.s., etc.) as well as solitary thinkers and associations (anarchofeminism, DIY culture, zines). The scene engages with feminist theories often coming from a different historical and social context. While this engagement has been partly mapped out (e.g. Kapusta-Pofahl 2002, Kodíčková 2002, Chaloupková 2006, Oates-Indruchová 2011) many topics remain unaddressed. This paper offers a comparison of claims made in literature on the scene with insights from twenty-seven semi-structured interviews with representatives of the Czech feminist scene concerning mainly the theories used and preferred by the research participants interviewed. The goal of the research is to map out topics concerning theories the scene uses. Five of these, the ones most resonant with the literature reviewed, are presented in the paper – self-identification with feminism, typology of feminisms, heterogeneity and a missing debate, sociological mainstream, and provincialism., Blanka Nyklová., and Obsahuje bibliografii
Are social movements responsible for their unfinished agendas? Feminist successes in opening the professions to women paved the way for the emergence of the upper middle-class two-career household. These households sometimes hire domestic servants to accomplish their child care work. If, as I shall argue, this practice is unjust and furthers social inequality, then it poses a moral problem for any feminist commitment to social justice., Joan Tronto., and Obsahuje bibliografii