Gender and social policy: comparing welfare states in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union

How are the distinctive gender regimes in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union changing? What is the impact of the transition - and especially of the loss of state expenditure and state legitimacy - on women as paid workers, partners/wives, mothers, carers and citizens? Have women become more familialized as a result of transition processes? The Monee statistical database of 27 countries, and policy questionnaires to 12, show growing social, economic and cultural diversity. But the soviet legacy and the transition processes give these countries common ground too. Equal rights at work and womenÕs need for paid employment remain from the soviet era. But the gap between rights and practice widens. Legal equality in marriage remains, but domestic violence and the domestic division of labour give evidence of unequal relationships. While the soviet state socialized many costs of motherhood and care work, in some countries families are now bearing much heavier costs. Women as citizens now have more freedoms to organize, but action is more focused on coping and survival than on wider politics: women are - broadly - more familialized, more dependent on family relationships if perhaps less dependent in them.