Narrating Gender in the Hungarian Democratic Opposition (1969-1994)

Visegrad Lecture Series

Narrating Gender in the Hungarian Democratic Opposition (1969-1994)

by Máté Konkol, documentary filmmaker

This research – done as part of developing a documentary – aims to make visible what the so-called Democratic Opposition was lacking in feminist ideas and women's rights policies during the (late) Kádár regime, and also shedding light on the internal gender roles and male dominance of the regime-changing intellectual circles. As "the woman question" is rarely a focus of memoirs, interviews and documentaries of the time, this presentation will focus on women's rights and social status before 1989, their experience in politics after that, and the occasional mentions of the inequalities between the young activists – some of them already unknown by the mid-90s, some of them leading Hungary to this day.