Search results

This paper examines gender, work and equal opportunities in central and eastern Europe (CEE) countries. The worker‐mother contract in socialist systems is discussed and reveals how transition from a communist economic system to a market economy has eroded women's equality within the workplace claimed with the Communist and economic social legacy. The aim is to explore the opportunities and constraints on women's professional career advancement in post‐socialist societies.

The paper consolidates research on gender and work within CEE countries and draws on international datasets including, the Gender Development Index and Gender Empowerment Index.

The results show that women's high representation in management and professional occupations, once the hallmark of socialist employment structures, is now being threatened by the erosion of state childcare services and the increasing level of discriminatory practices in recruitment, selection and development. It is suggested that the formal state structures have acted to foster neo‐traditionalism and a traditional gender identity. Economic and political transition is argued to be a process of remasculinisation, which reaffirms gendered hierarchies and gendered power relations in public and private realms.

The paper contributes to the limited subject of equal opportunities and gender issues within an organisation context within CEE regions. The paper examines gender‐mainstreaming methodologies and considers implications for the development of equal opportunity and diversity management policies at state and organization level.

The aim of this paper will be to examine the social and economic changes that have shaped women's work identity in the USSR and Russian Federation. Based on interview research with 30 female professionals in St Petersburg, Russia, we unravel the complexities of the “woman question” in soviet discourse and explore the individual subjectivities of managing gender and managing transition.

The paper adopts a life‐history qualitative research approach. We examine how transition from a Marxist system to a free market economy has impacted employment experiences of women.

It is shown that women have traditionally progressed in managerial and professional fields in Soviet society but that this advancement is being reversed during transition stages. Emphasising the socio‐political legacies of the Soviet gender order, we highlight how dominant gender roles are being reinforced along essentialist lines. The results highlight how women's work identity is being reconstructed along stereotypically feminine lines. This feminisation of work identity however, focuses on the aesthetic qualities of being a professional woman rather than on personal managerial qualities. We argue that the construction and reconstruction of a feminine professional self is an important aspect of managing gender and transition. The results also highlight an increase in discriminatory practices in HR systems and that women face both cultural and organisational barriers to their career advancement.

The paper argues that socialist ideology did not solve the woman question, but rather produced different forms of gendered inequalities. It suggests that equal opportunities will only be achieved when organisations comply with employment legislation. The research provides important insights into the gendered management processes within transitional contexts, which have previously remained uncharted.

The aim of this paper is to examine the gendered nature of work‐life policies in and the work‐life conflicts of managers in a multinational corporation in Hungary.

The research is based on 30 qualitative interviews with male and female managers at junior, middle and senior management levels located in Unilevers Eastern European headquarters in Budapest.

The results show that while legislative measures for family‐leave related policies are being encouraged in the EU, this is not the case with employer organizations in transition states, yet this is an important aspect of gender and employment policy as accession states begin to redesign their programmes to fall in line with EU guidelines. The research reveals that attempts to introduce family‐friendly policies still create gendered effects and gendered dilemmas for individual managers. The results reveal that men and women have different perceptions of work‐life balance and adopt different coping strategies to manage work and family commitments. Overall it is found that work‐life balance is constructed as an individual, rather than a corporate responsibility and this also creates gendered inequalities.

The study focuses on one organisation in a transition context and so results cannot be generalised.

The paper aims to contribute to the limited knowledge that currently exists on work‐life initiatives in a transition context and attempts to clarify how gender equality measures can be understood and further developed within the Hungarian context.

To address the research gap on East German women managers and to examine some of the experiences of post‐socialist East German women who entered management positions during 1990s. The discussion focuses on the nature of women's commitment to career and organisation.

The study presented adopts a methodology based on a qualitative approach, the grounded theory approach as developed by Glaser. One‐to‐one, semi‐structured interviews were carried out in 2000 with 24 East German women managers and five human resource managers in eight companies located in Eastern Germany, headquartered in Western Germany.

The case of post‐socialist East German women managers shows that gender can in fact become secondary criterion in employing women managers. It was revealed that opportunities for advancement were greater for East German female managers than West German managers due to the existence of childcare and women's programmes. The support structures, however, are currently being dismantled and women's growth and development in management levels is uncertain. The data show that women managers have coped with transition very effectively and are highly committed to their organisation and their career. However, their high commitment needs to be understood in relative terms as it is strongly context‐related.

Considering the qualitative nature of this study research results should not be generalised, rather they serve as a base for future research.

Particularly, the identification of personnel strategies employed towards post‐socialist women managers and an insight into East German women's commitment could benefit HR practitioners.

This paper contributes to the limited literature on women in management Hungary as well as literature on women in post‐socialism.

The paper critically reviews women managers' experiences of managing transition in post‐Soviet Belarus. The main aim of the paper is to explore the emerging learning experiences and learning practices of women managers in Belarus who are working in small and medium‐size business enterprises.

The paper commences with an exploration of the country context. It then seeks to draw attention to ongoing economic, political and cultural transformations within Belarus with a view to highlighting ways in which these transformations have impacted on the professional identities of women in Belarus in the post‐Soviet era. Interviews with 16 female managers were constructed to investigate specific issues such as how women managers in Belarus learn to be managers, how they perceive their own positions within organisations, the ways in which women managers use learning strategies as sense‐making mechanisms, and the career‐related obstacles faced by women managers in Belarus.

The findings indicate that women managers have adopted a variety of learning strategies to adjust to the changing nature of Belarusian business culture. These strategies involve drawing on multiple notions of a feminine work identity, which both resists and reaffirms traditional gender roles. The findings highlight women have learn to cope with a fragmented learning organisational context that is devoid of established networking and mentoring systems that are accessible normally to women managers. As such, the interview data indicate that women are developing and adopting individualised learning strategies and mechanisms to enable them to survive and succeed within business organisations.

This research describes experiences of middle‐aged, urban, educated women employed in small and medium business enterprises without taking into account generational, ethnic and other differences.

Although this paper was written from the experiences of women in Belarus, it will be of interest to women experiencing career‐related obstacles.

To display both the statistical data and the subjective evaluation on the situation of women in management in Hungary.

In the last ten years research activity on gender and work countries have concentrated on the investigation of the sociological issue of the extent to which equal opportunity programmes at the company level have been accomplished in Hungary. The investigations consist of two interrelated parts: questionnaires on women's situation in top management completed by HR departments, and in‐depth interviews with employees. This paper brings together these studies and reports on women's management position at senior levels in Hungarian organisations.

The results show that, although women's share in the elite pool of economic life increased, women are badly represented in higher managerial positions. Neither employers nor employees find this situation problematic, and continuously emphasised the liberal meaning of equality. There were various ideas about the explanation for the poor representation of women in the company boards, but none of them stressed the organisation as the hindrance of women's advancement.

It is not based on a representative sample.

There have been minimal investigations on gender issues at companies in Hungary. These results display not only companies' official opinion but also the employees' perceptions on gender inequality. The paper contributes to the neglected area of gender and management research with the Hungarian and Eastern European context.