Women in the Building Era of Czechoslovakia 1945–1948: “Two-Year Period Unfeasible without the Participation of Women!”

Abstract

After World War II, women represented a wide reservoir of available workforce with which the Government of the Czechoslovak Republic counted for the recovery of the country. Already the Kosice government program talked about working women, to whom it promised adequate work and proper pay compensation. It was a breathrough in the status of women because in the period of the Slovak Republic in 1939–1945, the idea of returning women to the family was promoted due to the authoritarian state policy. The government favoured a housewife and presented women leaving their jobs as a patriotic sacrifice. After World War II, the opposite became true and the inclusion of women into the work process and the broader social life was a major social phenomenon, which means a patriotic duty for women. Governments of the Czechoslovak Republic in the period 1945–1948 created working and social conditions for women that were supposed to contribute to improved labour productivity and thus meet the objectives resulting form the two-year economic plan.