Suchergebnisse

Unlike in most Western contexts, women's emancipation in communist Romania was a
top down processes, part of the social change platform imposed by the Communist Party. And
unlike the Romanian political regimes that preceded communism, it was justified by the latter as "natural", with women presented as integrated in all everyday life activities. Permeating throughout all layers of society, this emancipation was performed through propaganda in the written press and cinematography, as the Party used varied means to promote a positive imaginary
of women in communism. However, the difference between the Party's propaganda on women and the reality of women during communism was not only striking but had a significant impact on women's status and role in Romania even after the fall of the communist regime.

The present study investigates the participation of French women at war as reflected in documents, media, diaries. Women emancipation, pacifism, socialism, feminism, are but a few issues introduced with this study. The main purpose was to analyze the impact of interventionist state policies on women life in France, and to reveal its social, political and cultural outcomes that altogether generated the upheaval of the French Civilization.

Divorce, common-law marriage and illegitimacy (irrespective of its forms) were, no matter the society typology as the phenomenon is approached, forms of social deviation that entailed the dilution of the family image and norms. We do not discuss here about a dilution of the traditional norms concerning family, as someone might misunderstand, it was an erosion of the idea of family in general. The "family" could acquire different forms as compared to the "official" one. Paradoxically, all these were not only the result of personal emancipation, when the youth broke from the traditional norms, which were strongly influenced by religious norms and values, and would have got involved in "dangerous and shameful relationships". The peasant "forgot" to marry his woman not out of emancipation. The theory of personal emancipation leading to the erosion of the idea of family through the dilution of traditional norms, which was valid from the urban perspective (here, due to the affirmation of modernity, the alterity of religious norms led to such relationships), was not supported in the peasant countryside.
The Church fought all these. In fact, the bishopric sent guidelines to priests to take steps against common-law marriages very often. Despite priests' endeavours, the results were not considerable. Few priests could boast (after the first recommendation) in their subsequent parish report to have significantly contributed to diminishing the number of common-law marriages in their parish. The Church faced another issue brought about by its long debate with the State to control the act of marriage. The marriage laws set out in 1894 were the most complex laws regulating the political-religious relations in the matrimonial field in the second half of the 19th century. Due to their clarity, they managed to put an end to the conflicts between the lay and church authorities. Moreover, the debate concerning matrimonial issues for different confessions ended, too, in favour of the State. The State managed to impose its authority in the matrimonial field. The Church was thus compelled to accept the increased competence of the State by introducing the civil documents. All these caused mutations that triggered very different behaviours. Nevertheless, the Church kept imposing religious marriage, divorce and re-marriage for all its parishioners. In such a situation, by analysing the evolution of common-law marriages from the perspective of the Church, we may notice that, on the level of the whole area we focused on, there was a greater easiness in approaching religious marriage after 1895, once the compulsory civil marriage was imposed. The perception of the divorce also changed when the civil matrimonial law was introduced at the end of 1894. Through a last effort, as the Church did not acknowledge lay divorce, they did not grant the right to a second marriage to the individuals. Moreover, from the perspective of the Church, the possible future marriage was considered as a mere common-law marriage, although the State approved of the divorce and the second marriage in which a divorced partner was involved.

The socio-professional element in marital options was extremely reduced taking into account that we have considered a rural area almost in its entirety. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, this world used to have a strong traditional propensity with a low number of professional options, as most inhabitants were mainly involved in agriculture. As a consequence, when speaking about the socio-professional determinism in choosing a marriage partner, we have to take into account the fact that most youth getting married had mostly rural professions. On the other hand, the socio-professional element was more active in urban area and in the environment dominated by Roman-Catholic or Reformed population.
The social and professional status undoubtedly had an important role in achieving and settling a family despite the reduced number of options. Personal emancipation and socio-professional status had a determining influence on choosing a partner. The phenomenon was more obvious in the city and towards the beginning of the 20th century in other rural places, where the traditional left room to a process of socio-economic modernisation under the influence of the increasing number of non-agricultural activities. As one can easily anticipate, these changes led to new mental perceptions and hence to a new reaction of the community. Deep changes could be noticed as this area joined an economic circuit leading to new mutations in several economic sectors. Economic development and the spreading of non-agricultural activities associated to urban development whose influence was ever growing entailed changes in family relations. There were also mutations in family relations, domestic group and household resources. These changes were not yet visible in all places in the region: some were still anchored in the traditional where the new had a hard time to penetrate, while major changes on the level of the collective mental could not be seized during the time we analysed.
The large scale analysis of the phenomenon has led to the conclusion that where there were better socio-professional options, their determinism on marriage could be identified as highly important. How can we determine the way in which the socio-professional element influenced marriage? To what extent a young man with a superior social and professional status had more marital options? To what extent other "constraints" (confession, ethnie, civil status, age, etc.) were less important when facing strong socio-professional determinism? More precisely, was a man with a superior socio-professional status wanted by many young women despite old age, his civil status as a widower or a divorcee, of if he had a different confession or ethnie? To identify the mechanism of this determinism, we suggest a more complex analysis where the socio-professional element should be corroborated with other marriage determinisms or constraints. From these premises, we will attempt to make a methodological analysis of the socio-professional status from three points of view: ethno-confessional element, civil status and age of partners.