International Council for Central and East European Studies World Congress

Kateřina presented a paper titled “Divorce, Motherhood and Women's Emancipation in Late Socialist Czechoslovakia.” Analyzing divorce statistics, marriage manuals, and ministerial debates about the family and sociodemographic research from late-socialist Czechoslovakia, she argued for the power of unintended consequences: women managed to keep great levels of agency despite the conservative discourse on marriage and gender roles, and sometimes even precisely because of it –  since the state assigned children to the care of the mother, the divorced woman could enjoy generous child benefits and a not-insignificant child-alimony from her ex-husband. This form of ‘the support of the family’ led to unintended consequences of bolstering women’s emancipation.