In Between The "Waves": The Polish Women’s Movement After 1989

A Central European seminar

Dr Natalia Krzyżanowska (Örebro University, Sweden) outlines the historical underpinnings, current condition and main challenges of the Polish women’s movement after 1989, when Poland fails to witness the ‘natural’ evolution of feminism from the second into a third wave. Instead, a significant regress in women’s rights and their public presence occurs. 

Across the landscape of Polish feminist organizations and initiatives, key (mediated) annual public feminist events such as Manifa (organised annually since 2000) and the Polish Women’s Congress (since 2009), Dr Krzyżanowska will show how dynamics of Polish contemporary feminism and recent anti-feminist debates and tendencies (cf., inter alia, the ‘Genderism’ Debate of 2013) in Polish public sphere are connected. Under a broad contextual background, many key approaches and conceptions of gender widespread in the Polish public sphere are shown to be historical in nature, and impact on various (changing) visions and conceptions of femininity and masculinity. 

Biography

Dr Natalia Krzyżanowska is a Senior Research Fellow in Gender Studies and Feminist Social Research at Örebro University, Sweden. She also remains affiliated to the Chair of Sociology and Philosophy of the Poznań University of Economics where she until recently headed a “Gender in Contemporary Society” research group. Her research focuses on gender and women’s studies in the context of social, political and economic transformation in democratic and post-totalitarian contexts. Research interests and publications >