Gen și context social. Considerații privind statutul femeii în societatea românească contemporană

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze women’s status in the contemporary Romanian society by illustrating the social changes that have occurred after the fall of the communist regime. In the first chapter, I presented women’s position in the Romanian society before 1990 and the roles that she was encouraged to fulfill. As a fundamental element of this period, we find the equality relation between men and women encouraged and supported by the communist ideologies. The rights equality offered the modern women access to different domains from the society: education, labor market, political life and to information as much as it was possible in that period. In the second chapter, I wanted to show women’s image in the transition period by highlighting the new elements and the differences between the two feminine ideal types from the two different historical periods. By comparing permanently with the feminine model from the communist era, I outlined the image of the contemporary woman. The woman who wants herself to be independent, powerful, self-confident tries to resist to the inequalities , to gender discriminations in what concerns the labor market and not only this. In the third chapter I introduced the analysis of the types of the informative materials for women existing in the two periods. Thus we can identify a big change between the two feminine types: the type of woman responsible for the social order and equilibrium (who fulfills a multitude of roles in order to ensure the wellbeing of the family, of the community and society) and
the contemporary woman, whose body, beauty and personal wellbeing, seem to be in the center of her attention. In other words, it has taken place a switch from the collective consciousness to individualism. In the last chapter I presented the important aspects of the feminine social change: the problematic of the gender on the labor market, in education, in the political life and woman’s image the way is revealed by the informative materials exclusively for women. At the end of the analysis, I’ve concluded that the status of the contemporary woman is different compared to the one in the communist period and that the entire transition period is an evolving one, in which women try to define their personality and style in their proper way.