Women in Times of Change: 1989-2009

The twentieth anniversary of the 1989 breakthrough is an occasion for summaries. In spite of the twenty years of democratic transformation,
women did not manage to reduce their distance from men enough for their voice to be clearly heard in public debate. Furthermore, the account of the past two decades, as seen from the women's perspective, is not exactly in tune with the celebratory anniversary atmosphere. It is a paradox that for women in the former Eastern Bloc the freedom regained in 1989 was often combined with significant limitations of economic, social and reproductive rights.

In the face of the lack of public debate on the role of women in the time of transformation, the publication of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Warsaw attempts to present a multidimensional dialogue about the transformation experiences, giving voice to women. The Authors of the publication judge the past twenty years of reforms from the point of view of women from the former countries of the Eastern Bloc: the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine and former East Germany, and in this context, from the perspective of personal experiences. At the same time, the publication constitutes a platform for inter-generational dialogue. In the publication, personal texts meet more theoretical reflections, and literary accounts often complement more objective attempts to describe the past twenty years.