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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 January 2025
The Czechoslovak oppositional initiative Charter 77 produced dozens of documents on human rights between 1977 and 1992. Yet it never dedicated a separate document to women's rights, even if the issue of women's equality was well represented in global human rights discourse at the time. This article explores this absence in Charter 77's intellectual production. It analyses in detail several Charter documents and samizdat publications that touched upon issues of women's equality, showing that some Charter signatories were ready to acknowledge that the socialist state granted women formal equality, while suggesting that neither material conditions nor cultural norms provided full emancipation. However, a more prevalent critique marked the socialist agenda of women's emancipation as something that restricted women's individual freedom in their personal lives. I argue that in their legalistic approach, the Charter milieu largely lacked the conceptual tools to explore discrimination against women as the manifestation of the broader imbalance of power between men and women beyond the law.
1 Although Communist Party rule, which Charter 77 opposed, ended in 1989, Charter 77 officially continued its activities until Nov. 1992.
2 Robert Brier, ‘Gendering Dissent: Human Rights, Gender History and the Road to 1989’, Eurozine, 2 Sept. 2019. https://www.eurozine.com/gendering-dissent/.
3 Lóránd, Zsófia, ‘Socialism’, in Smith, Bonnie G. and Robinson, Nova, eds., The Routledge Global History of Feminism (Abingdon: Routledge 2022), 364–78 (373)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 For more on Soviet and Yugoslav feminist dissent see Holt, Alix, ‘The First Soviet Feminists’, in Holland, Barbara, ed., Soviet Sisterhood (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 237–65Google Scholar; Ruthchild, Rochelle, ‘Feminist Dissidents in the “Motherland of Women's Liberation”: Shattering Soviet Myths and Memory’, in Molony, Barbara and Nelson, Jennifer, eds., Women's Activism and ‘Second Wave’ Feminism (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), 99–120Google Scholar; Lóránd, Zsófia, The Feminist Challenge to the Socialist State in Yugoslavia (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the Hungarian case see Judit Acsády, ‘The Ambiguities and Contradictions of the State-Socialist Way of Women's Emancipation in Hungary (1948–1989): Overview and Search for the Traces of Feminist Resistance’, Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnography SANU 3 (2023): 41–64. For an overview of East German women's peace activism see Horch und Guck (2001), no. 34, 2.
5 See e.g. Heitlinger, Alena, Women and State Socialism: Sex Inequality in the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia (London: Macmillan, 1979)Google Scholar; Nečasová, Denisa, Buduj vlast – posílíš mír: Ženské hnutí v českých zemích 1945–1955 (Brno: Matice moravská, 2011)Google Scholar; Havelková, Hana and Oates-Indruchová, Libora, eds., The Politics of Gender Culture under State Socialism: An Expropriated Voice (London: Routledge, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wagnerová, Alena, Žena za socialismu: Československo 1945–1974 a reflexe vývoje před rokem 1989 a po něm (Prague: SLON, 2017)Google Scholar.
6 Suk, Marek, ‘“Dílna” Charty 77’, Soudobé dějiny 30, no. 2 (2023): 385–413CrossRefGoogle Scholar (397).
7 Here it is important to distinguish between what I am referring to as a ‘document of Charter 77’, i.e. documents published collectively by the Charter and signed in the initiative's name by its current spokespersons, and other documents produced by dissidents (who may or may not have been Charter signatories), such as essays, letters, interviews, etc., usually published in samizdat or abroad.
8 See e.g. Penn, Shana, Solidarity's Secret: The Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Krátká, Lenka, ‘The Visible and Invisible Role of Women’, West Croatian History Journal 9, no. 11 (2016): 111–29Google Scholar; Linkova, Marcela and Straková, Naďa, eds., Bytová revolta: Jak ženy dělaly disent (Prague: Academia, Sociologický ústav AV ČR, 2017)Google Scholar. Jonathan Bolton also devotes some attention to the myth of ‘invisible’ female labour in dissent in his seminal book Worlds of Dissent, but notes that this topic requires further research. See Bolton, Jonathan, Worlds of Dissent: Charter 77, The Plastic People of the Universe, and Czech Culture under Communism (London: Harvard University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 Oates-Indruchová, Libora, ‘Blind Spots in Post-1989 Czech Historiography of State Socialism: Gender as a Category of Analysis’, East European Politics and Societies 36, no. 3 (2022): 1061–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 Bolton, Worlds of Dissent, 43.
11 Jiřina Šiklová (1935–2021) was one of the pioneers of Czechoslovak sociology in the 1960s. Demoted from her university post after the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, she worked in manual jobs and was involved in smuggling foreign literature into Czechoslovakia. After 1989, she founded the organisation Gender Studies and helped to establish gender studies as an academic discipline in the Czech Republic. Mirek Vodrážka (b. 1954) worked in various manual jobs and was active in the cultural underground. After 1989, he was a freelance musician and writer, with an active interest in questions of feminism and transgender rights. Today he works at the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes in Prague. Milan Machovec (1925–2003) was a philosopher at Charles University in Prague who was forced to leave his position in 1970 for political reasons. He was subsequently active in the ‘underground university’ that was organised in dissidents’ private apartments. His eclectic work covered dialogue between Marxism and religion and, later, ecofeminism. See, for example, his essay ‘Lidstvo nemůže přežít bez ženských složek lidství’ [Humankind Cannot Survive without Female Components of Humanity], in Milan Machovec, ed., Filosofie tváří v tvář zániku (Brno: Zvláštní vydání, 1998).
12 See Sullivan, Donna J., ‘Women's Human Rights and the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights’, American Journal of International Law 88, no. 1 (1994): 152–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Donert, Celia, ‘Women's Rights in Cold War Europe: Disentangling Feminist Histories’, Past & Present 218, suppl_8 (2013): 180–202CrossRefGoogle Scholar; De Haan, Francisca, ‘Continuing Cold War Paradigms in Western Historiography of Transnational Women's Organisations: The Case of the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF)’, Women's History Review 19, no. 4 (2010): 547–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ghodsee, Kristen, Second World, Second Sex: Socialist Women's Activism and Global Solidarity during the Cold War (Durham: Duke University Press, 2019)Google Scholar; Gradskova, Yulia, The Women's International Democratic Federation, the Global South and the Cold War: Defending the Rights of Women of the ‘Whole World’? (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021)Google Scholar.
14 The full text of the Convention is available here: https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-elimination-all-forms-discrimination-against-women (accessed 19 Aug. 2024).
15 See document 43/1983, ‘Rozbor Výsledného dokumentu madridské schůzky účastnických států Konference o bezpečnosti a spolupráci v Evropě (KBSE)’ [Analysis of the Concluding Document of the Madrid Meeting of Representatives of the Participating States of the Conference on Security and Co-Operation in Europe], in Blanka Císařovská and Vilém Prečan, eds., Charta 77: Dokumenty 1977–1989 (Prague: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, 2007).
16 Denisa Nečasová, ‘Women's Organizations in the Czech Lands, 1948–89: An Historical Perspective’, in Hana Havelková and Libora Oates-Indruchová, eds., The Politics of Gender Culture under State Socialism: An Expropriated Voice (London: Routledge, 2014).
17 Jechová, Květa, ‘Emancipace shora: Ženské organizace v českých zemích v druhé polovině 20. století’, Paměť a dějiny 7, no. 4 (2013): 3–18Google Scholar (14).
18 Havelková, Barbara, ‘The Three Stages of Gender in Law’, in Havelková, Hana and Oates-Indruchová, Libora, eds., The Politics of Gender Culture under State Socialism: An Expropriated Voice (London: Routledge, 2014), 31–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
19 Rákosník, Jakub and Šustrová, Radka, Rodina v zájmu státu: Populační růst a instituce manželství v českých zemích 1918–1989 (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2016), 59–74Google Scholar. See also Hana Havelková, ‘(De)centralizovaná genderová politika: Role Státní populační komise’, in Hana Havelková and Libora Oates-Indruchová, eds., Vyvlastněný hlas: Proměny genderové kultury české společnosti 1948–1989 (Prague: SLON, 2015).
20 For detailed analysis of this debate see Placáková, Marianna, ‘Člověk, nebo sexus? Diskuze k českému vydání knihy Simone de Beauvoir “Druhé pohlaví”’, Filosofický časopis 68, no. 6 (2020): 865–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
21 Placáková, Marianna, ‘On the Czech Translation of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex’, Kontradikce: Časopis pro kritické myšlení 4, no. 2 (2020): 155–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
22 For instance, Anna Šabatová recalls that she received the West German magazines Courage and Emma. Quoted in Linková and Straková, eds., Bytová revolta, 319.
23 Milena Bartlová notes that her mother, economist and later dissident Rita Klímová, had both Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique and Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch in English in her library. See Bartlová Ženy, které nechtěly mlčet (Prague: Nadace Rosy Luxemburg, 2021), 247.
24 Havelková, ‘The Three Stages of Gender’, 31. For an overview of the topics that were of concern to contemporary sociological research see Scott, Hilda, Does Socialism Liberate Women? Experiences from Eastern Europe (Boston: Beacon Press, 1974)Google Scholar.
25 Matonoha, Jan, ‘A Preliminary Survey of the Near Past: Periodizing Works of Czech Literary Authors Published from 1948 to 1989 from a Gender Perspective, with Special Regard to Dissent and Exile Literature of the 1970s and 1980s’, Contradictions: A Journal for Critical Thought 4, no. 2 (2020): 87–111Google Scholar (95).
26 For more on the socialist conception of human rights, see in particular Kopeček, Michal, ‘The Socialist Conception of Human Rights and Its Dissident Critique’, East Central Europe 46, nos. 2–3 (2019): 261–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for further discussion, see the entire special issue of East Central Europe 46, nos. 2–3 (2019), ‘New Perspectives on Socialism and Human Rights in East Central Europe since 1945’, as well as Richardson-Little, Ned, The Human Rights Dictatorship: Socialism, Global Solidarity and Revolution in East Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
27 Donert, ‘Women's Rights’, 179.
28 See, for instance, Scott, Does Socialism Liberate Women?; Šiklová, Jiřina, ‘Are Women in Central and Eastern Europe Conservative?’, in Funk, Nanette and Mueller, Magda, eds., Gender Politics and Post-Communism: Reflections from Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (Abingdon: Routledge, 1993), 74–83Google Scholar; Einhorn, Barbara, Cinderella Goes to Market: Citizenship, Gender, and Women's Movements in East Central Europe (London: Verso, 1993)Google Scholar; Todorova, Maria, ‘Historical Tradition and Transformation in Bulgaria: Women's Issues or Feminist Issues?’, Journal of Women's History 5, no. 3 (1994): 129–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
29 See the interviews in Linková and Straková, eds., Bytová revolta.
30 For Tominová's discussion of equality, see Tomin, Zdena and Nulty, Christine, ‘Human Rights and Socialism’, The Crane Bag 7, no. 1 (1983): 119–21Google Scholar; for her critique of gendered forms of repression, see Eva Kantůrková, Sešly jsme se v této knize (Köln: Index, 1980), 47–60.
31 Lóránd, The Feminist Challenge, 3.
32 Ruthchild, ‘Feminist Dissidents’.
33 Document 7/1977 ‘Analýza stavu hospodářských a sociálních práv v Československu’ [Analysis of the State of Economic and Social Rights in Czechoslovakia], in Císařovská and Prečan, eds., Charta 77, 26–29.
34 Ibid., 26.
35 For an overview of contemporary research and statistics on the topic of women's employment, see Scott, Does Socialism Liberate Women?, esp. 1–27.
36 Document 7/1977 in Císařovská and Prečan, eds., Charta 77.
37 Ibid., 27.
38 Linková, Marcela, ‘Disidentská herstory: Ženy a jejich činnost v prostředí Charty 77’, in Linková, Marcela and Straková, Naďa, eds., Bytová revolta (Prague: Academia, Sociologický ústav AV ČR, 2017), 373–89Google Scholar (376).
39 Modern Woman, 1977-05-10; HU OSA 297-0-1:266/34; Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty Russian Broadcast 1953–1995; Broadcast Records of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives at Central European University, Budapest. Available at: https://catalog.osaarchivum.org/catalog/0qW72eBpl8.
40 An extract from the text was published in 1969 and a more extensive version in French in 1980, together with the longer collaborative text ‘Programme of social self-management’, authored by Uhl, Suk and others. Metelec, Matěj, ‘“Vsadit i sám sebe”: Petr Uhl, 1968–1989’, in Metelec, Matěj, ed., Petr Uhl: Za svobodu je třeba neustále bojovat. Vybrané texty 1968–1989 (Prague: Neklid, 2021), 15–46Google Scholar (24).
41 Petr Uhl, ‘Československo a socialismus’, in Metelec, ed., Petr Uhl, 47–134 (118).
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid., 119.
44 One such area where the influence of the revolutionary internationalist commitment of the HRM group can be traced is in Charter 77's documents relating to human rights in the Global South. See Holečková, Marta Edith and Pehe, Veronika, ‘Anatomie jedné další zdrženlivosti. Dokumenty Charty 77 k zemím třetího světa’, Soudobé dějiny 30, no. 2 (2023): 413–42Google Scholar.
45 Linková and Straková, eds., Bytová revolta, 320.
46 Marie Mašterová, ‘Odvolání proti zamítnutí vystěhování’, Informace o Chartě 77 13 (1978), 16–17.
47 ‘František Maštera polemizuje s Rudým právem’, Informace o Chartě 77 1 (1979), 23.
48 Document 16/1978, ‘Dopis Federálnímu shromáždění, České a Slovenské národní radě, Výzkumnému ústavu penologickému a Sboru nápravné výchovy ČSR o podmínkách vazby a výkonu trestu odnětí svobody s návrhem na přiznání zvláštního statutu pro politické vězně’ [Letter to the Federal Assembly, the Czech and Slovak National Councils, the Research Institute of Penology and the Correctional Education Corps of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic on the Conditions of Detention and Imprisonment with a Proposal to Grant Special Status to Political Prisoners], in Císařovská and Prečan, eds., Charta 77, 134–52 (138).
49 Ibid., 139.
50 See ‘Otevřený dopis generálnímu tajemníkovi OSN Kurtu Waldheimovi’ [Open Letter to Secretary-General of the UN Kurt Waldheim], 13 Oct. 1978, in Císařovská and Prečan, eds., Charta 77, 171–74. Though not mentioned in the letter, there were additional similar cases. Riva Krieglová, Gertruda Sekaninová-Čakrtová and Zdena Tominová were also physically attacked by masked men. See Groman, Martin, Kriegel. Voják a lékař komunismu (Prague: Paseka, 2023), 438Google Scholar, 475.
51 ‘Dopis prezidentu Československé socialistické republiky’ [Letter to the President of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic], Informace o Chartě 11 (1978), 21–22.
52 Document 23/1978, ‘Dokument o postavení romských spoluobčanů předložený jako podklad k veřejné diskusi’ [Document on the Status of Roma Fellow Citizens, Presented as a Basis for Public Discussion], in Císařovská and Prečan, Charta 77, 198–206. A separate document dedicated to the sterilisation of Roma women was published at the very end of Charter 77's existence, in 1990. The document criticised the widespread practice of involuntary sterilisation but did so largely from anti-racist positions, rather than framing it as a gendered problem. See document 3/1990 ‘O sterilizaci romských žen’, Informace o Chartě 15, 3 (1991), 21–22.
53 A testimony published by Elżbieta Ledererová in Infoch in 1978 recounts how she was taken away for interrogation by the State Security (StB) together with her eight-year-old daughter. According to the account, the security officer threatened that Ledererová would be put into custody and that her daughter would be placed in an institution (Lederová's husband was in prison at the time). This conversation happened in front of the child. See ‘Ze zprávy E. Ledererové o srpnu 1978’, Informace o Chartě 77, 1, 10 (1978), 31–32. For retrospective interviews, see Linková and Straková, eds., Bytová revolta.
54 ‘Žádost o přerušení výkonu trestu D. Šinoglové’, Informace o Chartě 77, 5, 3 (1982), 5–6.
55 Situation Report: Czechoslovakia, 29 Mar. 1982; HU OSA 300-8-47:15/2-6; Situation Reports; Publications Department; Records of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Institute; Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives at Central European University, Budapest. Available at: https://catalog.osaarchivum.org/catalog/Q8WwG2zRWD.
56 Document 14/1984, ‘Dopis České národní radě a Ministerstvu zdravotnictví ČSR s analýzou československého zdravotnictví’ [Letter to the Czech National Council and the Czechoslovak Ministry of Health with an Analysis of the Czechoslovak Healthcare Systém], in Císařovská and Prečan, eds., Charta 77, 642–57 (642).
57 Ruthchild, ‘Feminist Dissidents’, 111–12.
58 Document 14/1984, in Císařovská and Prečan, eds., Charta 77, 642.
59 The most famous of these documents, which sparked a far-reaching debate, was the ‘Prague Appeal’. The Appeal set out a vision for the future geopolitical system of Europe that would guarantee peace, which included a demand for a unified Germany, as well as the dismantling of both the Warsaw Pact and NATO. See document 5/1985, in Prečan and Císařovská, eds., Charta 77, 692–94.
60 Šabata's initial letter was published in Jan Kavan and Zdena Tominová, eds., Voices from Prague. Czechoslovakia, Human Rights and the Peace Movement (London: Palach Press 1983). E.P. Thompson responded in the New Statesman.
61 Kavan, Jan and Tominová, Zdena, ‘Introduction’, in Kavan, Jan and Tominová, Zdena, eds., Voices from Prague: Czechoslovakia, Human Rights and the Peace Movement (London: Palach Press, 1983), 3–10Google Scholar (4).
62 Václav Havel, ‘Anatomy of a Reticence’, trans. Erazim Kohák, in Václav Havel and Paul Wilson, eds., Open Letters: Selected Writings, 1965–1990 (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), 291–322 (293).
63 Ibid.
64 Kelly, Catriona, Rights, ‘Defending Children's, “In Defense of Peace”: Children and Soviet Cultural Diplomacy’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 9, no. 4 (2008): 711–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
65 Havel, ‘Anatomy of a Reticence’, 308.
66 Yurchak, Alexei, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 50Google Scholar.
67 Havel, ‘Anatomy of a Reticence’, 294.
68 Hana Havelková and Libora Oates-Indruchová, ‘Expropriated Voice: Transformations of Gender Culture under State Socialism: Czech Society, 1948–891’, in Havelková and Oates-Indruchová, eds., The Politics of Gender Culture, 3–27.
69 Fidelius, Petr, Řeč komunistické moci (Prague: Triáda, 2016)Google Scholar, 172.
70 See also Skovajsa, Marek, ‘The Absent Past: The Language of Czech Sociology Before and After 1989’, in Andrews, Ernest, ed., Legacies of Totalitarian Language in the Discourse Culture of the Post-Totalitarian Era (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2011), 15–38Google Scholar.
71 Bartlová, Ženy, které nechtěly mlčet, 217–88.
72 For a discussion of human rights as utopianism, see Moyn, Samuel, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2010)Google Scholar.
73 Havel, ‘Anatomy of a Reticence’, 301.
74 Snitow, Ann, Visitors: An American Feminist in East Central Europe (New York: New Village Press, 2020)Google Scholar.
75 Kantůrková, Eva, Sešly jsme se v této knize (Cologne: Index, 1980)Google Scholar, 189.
76 Placáková, ‘Člověk, nebo sexus?’
77 Ibid., 885.
78 Ruthchild, ‘Feminist Dissidents’, 114.
79 The full text of the letter was reprinted in a June 1985 RFE/RL situation report. See Situation Report: Czechoslovakia, 3 June 1985, 1985-06-03; HU OSA 300-8-47:16/1-9; Situation Reports; Publications Department; Records of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Institute; Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives at Central European University, Budapest. Available at: https://catalog.osaarchivum.org/catalog/Ryv82kD2WZ.
80 Ibid.
81 Ibid.
82 As reported in: Situation Report: Czechoslovakia, 4 June 1987, 1987-06-04; HU OSA 300-8-47:16/4-6; Situation Reports; Publications Department; Records of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Institute; Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives at Central European University, Budapest. Available at: https://catalog.osaarchivum.org/catalog/GRlYy4dblg.
83 For more on how labelling the communist past as an ‘aberration’ functioned in Czech politics of memory see Kopeček, Michal, ‘In Search of “National Memory”: The Politics of History, Nostalgia and the Historiography of Communism in the Czech Republic and East Central Europe’, in Kopeček, Michal, ed., Past in the Making: Historical Revisionism in Central Europe after 1989 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2007), 75–95Google Scholar.
84 Šiklová, ‘Are Women in Central and Eastern Europe Conservative?,’ 76.
85 Eva Kantůrková, ‘Som antifeministka’, Literárný týždennik, 1 Mar. 1991.