Summary (English)

The social security reforms that the new governments in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland adopted in the 1990s affect women and men in quite different ways. The differential impact depends in large part on the particular benefits that were altered, and thus the domains of social and professional life touched by the reforms: work, unemployment, child bearing, parenthood, sickness, disability, or retirement. It is quite possible that different observers concerned with gender equality will assess these reforms differently, depending on their own views of what constitutes equal treatment, their priorities for addressing unequal conditions, and their notions of the shared rights and obligations of members of society. Without abandoning our own preferences, we have tried in what follows to provide an objective account of the gender dimensions of reform in the three countries.

The study analyzes two broad categories of benefits that address distinct areas of experience and need: on the one hand, a set of family benefits that supports parents with children (family allowances, child care benefits, and maternity benefits) and, on the other, one that replaces lost income as a result of old age or death (retirement and survivors’ pensions). Although support in each case facilitates a retreat from the work force, the first may anticipate return while the second typically does not. More relevantly for this study, the first category includes a mix of benefits, some of which are shaped by biological differences (i.e., maternity benefits) and others that are provided without regard to these (family allowances and child care benefits), while both benefits in the second category address contingencies experienced by women and men.