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The 1989--1990 revolution that took place in Poland as well as in the rest of central and east Europe led to fundamental changes at the local level. The aim of the decentralization reforms was to establish new governing structures and governance practices and to create local self-government as a strong local actor, autonomous from central control. The administrative, fiscal, and political decentralization was to change drastically the role of the central state by providing local authorities with a new set of responsibilities, fiscal resources, and the decision-making power to implement them. Such a shift also implied major clashes over power, resources, and group interests. Why then do such tensions continue to persist? What are the processes through which the central state is returning to the local level? This paper argues that the return of the central state and its increasingly visible presence at the local level is caused by persistent conflicts surrounding the form, structure, and function of the Polish state. These conflicts are aided by a weak civil society and fragmented party system. This paper will examine the case of Poland and ways through which the central state has been (and still is to the present day) imprinting its presence on local spaces of democracy and governance during the last two decades. Adapted from the source document.

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The paper argues that Poland's emerging democracy has yet to open political space for women. Through an analysis of three case study communities, the authors that Poland's political culture—whether communist or democratic—cannot be relied on to ensure women's equal participation. Formal mechanisms of power continue to favor the experience of men. By focusing on the ignored context of women's local activism, the study draws attention to the barriers and opportunities for women and how these barriers play out differently in which political cultures are similar yet distinct.

Die vorliegende Untersuchung macht deutlich, daß die sich entwickelnde polnische Demokratie Defizite hinsichtlich der politischen Partizipation von Frauen aufweist. Tradierte Einstellungen aus der Vergangenheit, Nationalismus und Religion und eine unveränderte politische Kultur des Patriarchalismus bilden hohe Barrieren gegenüber der politischen Partizipation von Frauen. Anhand von Fallstudien aus drei polnischen Gemeinden arbeiten die Verfasserinnen typische Strukturen fehlgeschlagener Bemühungen von Frauen um politische Partizipation heraus. Sie zeigen, daß die formalen Strukturen politischer Partizipation die Partizipation von Männern begünstigen und arbeiten Rahmenbedingungen für die politische Partizipation von Frauen auf kommunaler Ebene heraus. (BIOst-Wpt)

1. Battling for peace : the transformation of the women's movement in Cold War Czechoslovakia and eastern Europe / Melissa Feinberg -- 2. "Democracy could go no further" : Europe and the women in the early United Nations / Jan Lambertz -- 3. Women and social work in central and eastern Europe / Darja Zavirsek -- 4. Psychoanalysts on the radio : domestic citizenship and motherhood in postwar Britain / Michal Shapira -- 5. Women as the "motor of modern life" : women's work in Europe west and east since 1945 / Francisca de Haan -- 6. "What's new" and is it good for you? : gender and consumerism in postwar Europe / M. Jane Slaughter -- 7. Happy motherhood and lesbian spaces : women's initiative and the sexual mores of postwar Europe / Cynthia Kreisel -- 8. Political participation, civil society, and gender : lessons from the Cold War? / Belinda Davis -- 9. Gender, race, and utopias of development / Young-Sun Hong -- 10. Gender and reframing of World War I in Serbia during the 1980s and 1990s / Melissa Bokovoy -- 11. Post-Soviet masculinities, shame, and the archives of social suffering in contemporary Lithuania / Arturas Terskinas -- 12. Post-1989 women's activism in Poland / Joanna Regulska and Magdalena Grabowska.

"Women and Gender in Postwar Europe charts the experiences of women across Europe from 1945 to the present day. Europe at the end of World War II was a sorry testimony to the human condition; awash in corpses, the infrastructure devastated, food and fuel in such short supply. From Soviet Union to the United Kingdom and Ireland the vast majority of citizens on whom survival depended, in the postwar years, were women. This book charts the involvement of women in postwar reconstruction through the Cold War and post Cold-War years with chapters on the economic, social, and political dynamism that characterized Europe from the 1950s onwards, and goes on to look at the woman's place in a rebuilt Europe that was both more prosperous and as tension-filled as before. The chapters both look at broad trends across both eastern and western Europe; such as the horrific aftermath of World War II, but also present individual case studies that illustrate those broad trends in the historical development of women's lives and gender roles. The case studies show difference and diversity across Europe whilst also setting the experience of women in a particular country within the broader historical issues and trends, in such topics as work, professionalization, sexuality, consumerism, migration, and activism. The introduction and conclusion provide an overview that integrates the chapters into the more general history of this important period."--Publisher's website