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Feminism in Central and Eastern Europe: Risks and Possibilities of American Engagement

1997; The Yale Law Journal Company; Volume: 106; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/797168

1939-8611

Frances Olsen,

Historical Gender and Feminism Studies

Alice described the Looking-glass House: "First, there's the room you can see through the glass-that's just the same as our drawing-room, only the things go the other way.... [T]he books are something like our books, only the words go the wrong way."'As the looking glass was hanging right over the fireplace, Alice could not see whether the Looking-glass House really had a fireplace with a fire in it, as their room did."[Y]ou never can tell, you know, unless our fire smokes, and then smoke comes up in that room too--but that may be only pretense, just to make it look as if they had a fire." 2 When she entered the Looking-glass House, the fireplace was the first thing Alice checked, and "she was quite pleased to find that there was a real [fire], blazing away as brightly as the one she had left behind." 3 But as she began looking about, she "noticed that what could be seen from the old room was quite common and uninteresting, but that all the rest was as different as possible."Some Western observers see the countries of Central and Eastern Europe much as Alice saw the Looking-glass House: The stodgy supporters of the status quo are the Communists; the local Catholic Church hierarchy extols the value of democracy; and every election results in a decrease in the number of women representatives in government. 5 Westerners often wonder whether the notion of women's equality, extolled by these governments for some forty-odd "