2 - The Big Picture: Social Change Makers and Social Change Organisations in Historically Variable Contexts

Summary

The end of the Cold War, symbolised by the fall of the Berlin wall in November 1989, and the end of state socialism in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) between 1989 and 1991, had far-reaching consequences for SCOs around the world. In Europe, these developments encompassed the enlargement of the European Union (EU) to include CEE countries such as Poland, Hungary and Slovenia, among others, as new member states. The consequences for SCOs, including those addressing gender equality in CEE countries, were significant.

A historical look at European women’s movements (Roth, 2017) illustrates the ways in which various political and gender regimes enable and constrain the work of SCOs. As we noted in the Introduction to our book, gender equality movements around the world have been able to achieve significant gains with respect to political, economic, and social rights. Nevertheless, gender equality has still not been achieved at the beginning of the 21st century. Neo-liberalism, as well as the end of socialism, changed the context in which SCMs addressing gender equality in the CEE countries could mobilise. Their activism was shaped by several factors. First, the end of state socialism ended repression and surveillance. This enabled groups that previously met in a clandestine manner around kitchen tables, like the participants of the East German women’s peace movement (Miethe, 1999; 2000) to, instead, organise openly. Second, people in the former socialist countries were confronted with high unemployment and a massive dismantling of the socialist welfare state. Third, CEE countries that, during the Cold War, had provided assistance to countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America then became recipients of ‘aid’ focused on strengthening and restoring democracy and civil society. We are putting ‘aid’ in inverted commas to draw attention to the deeply unequal relations between those who deliver and those who receive aid (see Roth et al, 2024). That means that aid is not necessarily oriented at the needs of aid recipients. We discuss humanitarian assistance further later and in the following chapters. Much of this ‘aid’ was delivered by Western SCOs, notably women’s NGOs and political foundations that supported the projects of their CEE partners (Wedel, 2001; Roth, 2007).