Women's Access to Political Power in Post-Communist Europe

Extract

Women's Access to Political Power in Post-Communist Europe. Edited by Richard E. Matland and Kathleen A. Montgomery. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. 400p. $85.00 cloth, $35.00 paper.

It was something of a truism that within the political institutions of the Soviet bloc states, women and power were found in inverse proportion to each other. While women occupied roughly 30% of the seats within the faux-parliamentary bodies of the communist region, true power was never located in those institutions. Instead, political power was found at the Communist Party's zenith, where women were seen rarely, if at all.