Gender politics explored on International Women's Day

There's no lack of socio-political issues to intertwine with International Women's Day, which is celebrated around Hungary this Saturday, March 8. The 93-year old holiday, known as nőnap, is often heavy with flowers, cards, and politics. However statistics illustrating the (in)equality suffered by the "fairer" sex often present a vaguely depressing situation that's then glossed over with thankful cards. Meanwhile these opposing poles of inequality and gratefulness leave out the nuances that make people's lives meaningful and complex. So how does Hungary stand on gender equality for the rest of the year?

Wikipedia

Flowers such as the Hungarian snowdrop are historically given to women on International Women's Day which is on Saturday, March 8. The 93-year-old holiday is an important reminder of the politics surrounding gender in Hungary and around the world.

International Women's Day is historically a trans-Atlantic import from New York via Copenhagen during World War I. The Russians appropriated the holiday as a social pacifier in 1913, but when that went flop after widespread protesting by women, universal suffrage ensued and the day was thereafter associated with gender-related political movements.

In the years that followed, the holiday in Hungary has become a day to celebrate women, mothers, lovers, and a strategic occasion for politicians of all colors, including liberals, socialists, and activists.

However, just as it's too simplistic to say that suffrage and socialism brought equality of the sexes, surveys reporting that gender inequality in Hungary is the worst in the region are equally vague assessments of the complex lives that women and men lead today. Women in Hungary don't have it any worse, it seems, than women living in neighboring countries.

Miklos Hadas, a professor of sociology at Corvinus University, says these data sets are misleading.

"This is a strange mixture of tabloid press, news journalism, and an Orientalist view of the Hungarian situation," he says about the translated article.

It isn't that men and women are completely equal - the world is flush with gender-related human rights violations such as violence against women and the feminization of poverty - it's that assessing equality or inequality using a limited set of statistics is a poor indicator of an already vague term.

"You can argue just about anything with statistics," says Éva Fodor, a professor of gender studies at the Central European University. "I don't happen to think that gender equality is worse here than it is in any given Western European country."

For instance, she points out that while fewer women work in Hungary than in Western Europe, they work for longer hours, whereas in the Netherlands, for instance, more women work but part-time.

"You could call it more unequal but there are ways in which this might not be any more equal, part-time work is often paid less and not taken as seriously," she says.

Furthermore, while the number of women in Hungarian parliament is low, "I don't think parliament is terribly important as an overall indicator of all women's equality," Fodor argues.

In fact, she points out, there are worse places to be a woman. Fodor spearheads a research project that studies the feminization of poverty. She points out that the relationship between the welfare state and single female-headed households leaves more single women in the United States living in poverty than in Hungary.

So when it comes to International Women's Day, a holiday ripe with political discussions that are all too often tied to political agendas (or even to the profits of greeting card companies) it's worth remembering that gender equality is a messy topic that should be considered thoughtfully, not neatly dismissed with one normative clause.

At the end of the day, simple pleasures can be a welcome addition to International Women's Day.

"I remember how all the boys had to bring us girls snowdrops in elementary school," Fodor says. "And I prefer to [associate International Women's Day with] these happy days."

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