TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/110890/1108009.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 11.5 KB | 225 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 30

Challenge In the East


The emerging democracies offer a chance for women to share
real, rather than cosmetic, power

By JOHANNA MCGEARY


    Even where it has long been entrenched, democracy has not
proved invariably hospitable to women. Despite the growing
number of women entering politics in the U.S., the country is
just beginning the journey toward full equality. In the West,
women like British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former
Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Brundtland have had to struggle
against the traditional demands of gender in order to impress
their visions on national policies. For decades the Communist
states of Europe boasted of political egalitarianism, making a
show of filling token government posts with women. But
revolution has torn down the facades, revealing just how
cosmetic was the "power" shared by the East's women. Now the
emergence of a new order is challenging women to show themselves
both willing and able to take on real responsibilities.

    In the few months since the upheavals that reordered the
regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, a handful of
extraordinary women have seized this moment in history to join
in the challenge and begin the work of catching up with their
sisters in the West. One is an economist turned Prime Minister,
another a sociologist who presides over a parliament, a third
a onetime model who speaks for her government. Then there is the
former law clerk who has taken over a Prime Minister's office
and influences government policy from within.

    In the rarefied levels of real political power, three women
in particular have emerged who may set the pattern for others
to follow: Marju Lauristin, the deputy speaker of the Estonian
parliament; Lithuanian Prime Minister Kazimiera Prunskiene; and
Sabine Bergmann-Pohl, parliamentary president of East Germany
until the recent union of the two Germanys. Between them,
Lauristin and Prunskiene have managed to place the Baltic
struggle for independence high on the world's political agenda.

    The no-nonsense Lauristin has parlayed her academic
background in sociology into a sharp appreciation for the role
of public opinion in postcommunist Estonia. She first dipped
into politics in 1987 and learned her new craft chiefly by
championing environmental issues, which have become a pivot for
political rebellion, providing an entree into politics for a
surprising number of East bloc women. In the spring of 1988 she
became one of the founders of the rebellious Popular Front of
Estonia, and her expertise in using the mass media helped propel
the movement into a formidable force that convinced Estonians
they could break with Moscow.

    Intellectually, Lauristin had long ago left doctrinaire
communist ideas behind. In the late 1960s she attended the
university at Tartu, where Western thinkers were widely studied.
At the same time she set out to shed the unhappy legacy of her
father, who in 1939 signed away Estonia's freedom to the Soviet
Union. A statue of him honoring that deed still stands beside
the newly constituted independent parliament in Tallinn. Now
Lauristin is asking parliament to remove it.

    In her parliamentary post, Lauristin operates from the
inside. Rather than lead the debates, she more often wields her
influence in drafting the new laws that will govern the country.
"My work is to put our ideas into legislation," she says, "and
it is often more important than leading the debate." Aided by
a natural, direct manner and an air of honesty that works well
on television, she is responsible for communicating the
government's programs and ideas to the Estonian people.

    For Lithuania's Prunskiene, the challenge is far greater.
Working alongside a President she outspokenly disagrees with,
she has been the leader in seeking a negotiated agreement with
Moscow to give Lithuania its independence. An economist for much
of her 47 years, Prunskiene has become Lithuania's voice of
reason. She made the short leap from economics to politics two
years ago when she helped found Sajudis, the independence
movement. "I was very unhappy seeing what should be done but was
not done," she says. From the beginning she has reached out for
Western expertise and advice.

    But her innate skill at negotiation and compromise is what
has made Prunskiene such a forceful leader. She always expresses
herself firmly and directly, she says, but "in such a way that
when the conversation is over, it can end without conflict and
leave open the possibility of continuing later." Her private
discussions with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, she says,
have been marked by this ability to disagree without insulting
or demeaning the Soviet leader. Yet if her tactics are non
confrontational, she is unwilling to compromise her goals. "The
most important thing," she says, "is to reach our independence."

    Her methods have earned her a working relationship with
Gorbachev, but not with Vytautas Landsbergis, Lithuania's fiery
President. While he represents the mystic Lithuanian dreams, she
concentrates on practicalities. The two have disagreed strongly
about how to deal with Moscow, and many emotional Lithuanians
share with Landsbergis his dismay at her conciliatory moves.
Prunskiene dismisses the criticism as irrelevant: "As a leader
I do not have to follow what I believe is the wrong way just to
show unity."

    Germany's Bergmann-Pohl has the poise of a practiced
politician, despite her background as a physician. She has been
a member of the Christian Democratic Union since 1981 because
it was the only way, she says, to have an impact on her
country's social problems. But she rose to prominence chiefly
because of the swiftness of the East German revolution and its
need for new people without Communist ties to take over
government jobs. The CDU urged her to run for parliament last
March, and when her faction won the most seats, she was named
president.

    Taking on such a post without any training, says
Bergmann-Pohl, "was like a person who can't swim jumping into
a river." But she clearly felt comfortable with her position
several months later, despite criticism that she is disorganized
and dwells unnecessarily on details. When she meets a reporter,
she is all careful calculation. "We have got to show that women
have competence in politics," she says. She will be a member of
the united Bundestag until national elections are held in
December. Upon unification she was named a Minister Without
Portfolio.

    Among the other women who walk the corridors of power in
Eastern Europe, Malgorzata Niezabitowska, the official
spokeswoman of the Polish government, was attracted by the
prospect of fundamental change. A free-lance writer in Warsaw,
she was electrified in 1980 by the rise of Solidarity. "Freedom
was suddenly possible, and you had to help fight for it," she
recalls. Like many previously quiescent East European women, she
flung herself into active opposition to the Communist regime.
The political education she received as the trade union rose and
fell, and the relationship she developed with Tadeusz
Mazowiecki, later to become the Prime Minister of Poland,
propelled her to her present prominence.

    Some in Warsaw say Niezabitowska owes her position to her
stunning looks and the new government's shrewd sense of public
relations, but she shrugs off both the criticism and her lack
of experience. "I think I'm one of the Prime Minister's closest
advisers," she says. "I discuss all the issues with him, try to
convince him of my ideas, keep him informed about what is
happening in the country. That is influence."

    Influence, but not necessarily power. Like Niezabitowska,
40, East Germany's Sylvia Schultz is, at 34, a woman who chose
to wield her influence through the man she served. In her case
it was East Germany's last Prime Minister, Lothar de Maiziere.
She was his chief of staff, the aide who ran the P.M.'s office,
advised him on every issue and traveled at his side wherever he
went.

    Also like Niezabitowska, Schultz came by her position
through propinquity: her husband, older by 12 years, used to
play music with De Maiziere and afterward chat about politics.
Unable to complete her studies in history or get a job because
of her antigovernment political views, Schultz eventually went
to work in De Maiziere's law office. In that free-thinking
environment, she developed her own liberal ideas, "thinking
about what the future could be." But when East Germans who
shared her secret dreams took to the streets Schultz "made a
decision to stay in the back row."

    Oddly, considering the activism of millions of women during
the heady days before the Wall came down, few have since made
their voices strongly heard. "We had no political experience,
no training," explains Schultz. "I think most women are not
competent enough" for the job of transforming a revolutionary
movement into practical governance. Schultz herself does not
seek an executive post in the united Germany, but she does plan
to stand for parliament in December. "In the second row, you can
still be very powerful."

    Women like these remain exceptions in the East. The number
of women in the Hungarian and Polish parliaments is minuscule.
In East Germany only 20.5% of the Volkskammer were women.
Eventually, some striving female politicians, like Hungarian
Klara Ungarn, 32, a cheerful and dynamic leader of the small
Federation of Young Democrats, may rise higher, but for now
their activism is their greatest claim to power. Ungarn's party
holds only 21 seats in the parliament, but she is confident its
influence is growing. "We will control the government in 10
years," she says, "but not before." With rare wisdom, she
acknowledges that the women of the East "need time to learn the
profession of politics. Being in the opposition is very
different from running the government."

    Yet activists like Ungarn face parlous times ahead. In
conservative, Catholic countries like Hungary and Poland, there
is a strong reassertion of traditional values, and that puts
political careers for women at risk. Ungarn hid from her
constituency the fact that she was divorced, and is careful to
keep her personal life spotless. "Any smear on the purity of
your image can totally spoil your chances," she says. "Here
women are still judged differently from men."

    Until times are better in the old East bloc, few women will
be able to muster the energy or time to compete with men. The
economic realities of Eastern Europe's revolution are sobering
for all, but especially for women: faster than anyone, they are
losing their jobs, their social services, their economic
independence. As conservative values are revived, the rights to
abortion and divorce, for example, are coming under increasing
fire. Yet women themselves often share that conservatism:
communism never really erased traditional family values from
their countries.

    One result is a curious reversal of Western feminism's
emphasis on careers for women. The new female leaders want to
use at least some of their power to reverse the communist diktat
that all women have to work. All over Eastern Europe and the
Soviet Union, women have dreamed, says Poland's Minister of
Culture and Arts, Izabella Cywinska, "of reaching the point
where we have the choice to stay home." That, more than a place
in the power structures -- more than anything else -- is what
communism deprived them of, and what they want to retrieve.