Feminist Debates on Past State Socialism and Authoritarian and Neoliberal Presence in Eastern Europe

The social, political and economic transformation in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia (CEE&E) during the last three decades, with its transformation of gender relations at the center of it, has been a big political and theoretical challenge for feminist scholarship. The issues at hand are 1) how to evaluate state socialist policies and realities concerning gender relations as well as the political leeway in that time, 2) how to evaluate and perhaps change the role different feminist and women’s activisms have played in willingly or unwillingly spreading neoliberalism in the region and 3) how feminism is challenged by the merger between neoliberalism and the increasingly authoritarian course in the region. The paper characterizes the transformations since 1989 by tracing the rise of neoliberalism in Eastern Europe and its gendered impact as well as the development of women’s activism. Subsequently, the paper offers an analysis of the main scientific deliberations in this context, the Drakulić-Funk-Ghodsee debates that have shaped the field of gender in CEE&E. The first debate centers on the interaction between Western donors and feminism on the ground in the region, the second on the impact of women’s organizing under state socialism, the third on more contemporary dynamics including the current backlash. Underneath is an argument about science, whether Western concepts and methods apply to the region and how these debates can open up new ways of seeing and knowing. The contribution ends with a plea for differentiated scientific analyses as they can help to counter the current neoliberal and right-wing authoritarian currents, in the core of which is the debate about a new gender order.