Journal 3 in 2003
Das eigene Erleben

weiter I Übersicht I zurück

Wanya F. Kruyer
Men Haters or Bringers of Freedom
The Debate on Feminism in Hungary

For some background on the Jewish Community in Hungary, and to get some insights on the changing position of women in Hungarian society, I found in dr. Katalin Talyigas an excellent equipped and eloquent interlocutor. Talyigas is the former executive of the Joint American Distribution Committee, and recently assigned as director of the department of equal opportunities of Hungary¹s national government.
We meet in Gerbaud cafe, the fanciest of the chic Middle European coffeehouse's annex patisserie for which Budapest is so well known. I find a place at the terrace, not far from the Ice-cream vendor who has many customers for his delicious home made ice creams. Katalin Talyigas, a woman in her fifties, joins me soon, apologizing for being late. However, it wasn¹t much more than seven minutes, not enough to enjoy my place in the sun at this lunch break at Gerbaud.

Talyigas, the chef d'equipe of the newly founded department of equal opportunities, is a supporter of Ester's Bag, Hungary's only feminist Jewish group. For many years she was the executive director of the Joint, short for American Joint Distribution Committee, founded in the Second World War to support Jewish communities in need. Two months ago Talyigas was asked to lead the Equal Opportunities Department of the Ministry of Transport. In addition to Talyigas and one administrative assistant, the department includes only three others. All are excited to have their own department. They see it as a recognition of the subordination of women in many fields in society, including economic, political and social. Also on the agenda of the department are issues derived from gender and sexuality matters such as violence against women, sexual abuse in the workplace and the home, and gay and lesbian rights. However, Hungarians in general are not used to talking about these issues in public, and the debates have not yet reached a wider audience than specialized feminist magazines and the university level.

I show how impressed I am, that two supporters of Ester's Bag have such high positions in the Hungarian government. Next to the Jewish Talyigas, Borbála Juhász, a bright woman in her thirties (not Jewish but as a feminist closely connected with Ester's Bag), holds a policy making job at this tiny department.

Katalin Talyigas didn't know she was Jewish until she was an adult. Jewishness was "an unspeakable issue" in Hungary before the regime change. Since then Talyiagas' has incorporated Judaism into her everyday life. Both of her children went to Jewish schools, both have Jewish pride, and one now lives in the US. While working for the Joint, Katalin got to know the various aspects of the community.

She sees a strong orthodox section, strong in beliefs with much influence on the community. A conservative middle group, called Neolog, is large in numbers, and has an outlook parallel to orthodoxy; women have no equal rights, sit upstairs in synagogue, and hold no formal positions. A lot of the conservatives are atheists and more comparable with Jews in Israel and Europe who call themselves'traditionalists'. They keep in touch with Shabbat, the festivals, and (some) rituals at home, without the belief system of Haredi or Orthodox Jews. In the past years Wizo became a strong player in the organized Jewish field. A new pillar is the youth summer camps. Not without pride, Talyigas tells me that each year roughly 2500 youngsters attend the summer camps. In the first few years, they only had teachers from Israel, but now local ones are madrichim, in leading positions.

The majority of the Jews in Hungary are the unorganized atheists, or the individualists. Recently a new informal group is visible: the teachers, and professors. For the first time in Hungary's history there are professors who are proud to be Jewish. A result of the general raised consciousness surrounding Judaism, and, most importantly, the existence of the Jewish University. This university is unique for Europe, due to the combination of academic Jewish studies and Rabbinical studies. As we speak about the recent history, Talyigas sees clearly the three post-Holocaust generations. First, the survivors, all of whom are in strong denial about their Jewishness. The second generation grew up with lost family, and lost culture, often not even knowing that they were Jewish. The third, born from the 70s on, were young at the time of the political changes and the 'coming upstairs', , increased visibility of the Jewish community. Many of them have picked up the culture and tradition, sometimes dragging their parents along with them.

The Joint organized a dialogue group of righteous people (people who fought in the resistance against the nazi's) with survivors, and the second generations of both groups, to implement the idea of mutual help and cooperation, not separation. This is of great importance, because righteous people were the heroes in the communist times. Jews were not considered to be a specific group. They could be communists, resistance fighters, even collaborators, but not an ethnical, cultural, and let alone, religious entity.
Its clear from Talyigas perspective as a policy maker that Hungary has been through a time of transition, from a traditional society as Katalin Talyigas in the pre-1990s, to today's modern world. This causes many problems. Talyigas offers as an example, how people have to get used to a totally new work ethic, specifically being responsible for their own achievements, their own business, and to the internationalization of the market. One year you work in Budapest, the other maybe in Berlin, or even Tokyo. Those changes are especially difficult for women over forty, and those living on the countryside.

Traditionally Hungary is a strong patriarchal society. Men are assumed to be the boss, in the home and elsewhere. Talyigas explains that there is no culture of conflict management if something goes wrong in a marriage. The divorce rate is extremely high (over fifty percent of all marriages break up), and some women find no possibility of making a living, resolving in a high suicide rate. If men move out, women stay behind with the kids, and are unable to pay the daily costs on one income. This is a major problem for Hungarian women, and one tackled by the Social Innovation Society. Founded in 1995 by Talyigas and others, it helps with research and implementation of new ideas, supports NGO¹s of women by putting them together with local governments, and supporting donation systems and community funding. Most of those involved do traditional social welfare work like caring for the elderly and disabled. Through this kind of initiatives, a feminist consciousness is raised about the need for equal opportunities. For me, being in college in the late seventies from when on feminism played a huge role in public awareness, it was a big surprise hearing Talyigas describe that in the communist era in Hungary social inequalities had been associated with the gypsies and the disabled only, never with women. The excitement of the pioneers on women's issues at the department of equal opportunities of Hungary's government, is more than understandable.

We walk to the Ministry of Transport at Vörösmarty square, where Borbála has a nice office with four desks, next door to the office of her chef Katalin Talyigas. While Bori, as she likes to be called, takes time for the interview, the secretary is nonstop busy typing. Bori has piles of paperwork on her desk, and the phone rings constantly.

When I asked her how she fits into the three generation of postwar Hungarian Jewry Katalin Talyigas has showed me just hours ago, Bori says straightforward: "not at all". After a little silence from my side, Bori, a smart, elegant dresses woman of 36, with short brown hair and dark eyes explains: "I am not Jewish, even not in the farthest away twig of my family tree." She joined Ester's Bag because it is an active feminist group. Those are rare in Budapest, and non existent in other parts of Hungary.
Feminism is a new phenomena in this in so many other respects modern town. Books with feminist issues hasn¹t been published in Hungary before the mid 90s. There are no women's studies at the Universities, except at the Central European University, an English Language University for post doctoral studies. It is at this University that Juhász followed a Ph.D. program in women¹s studies, specializing in women's mobility in the 50's.

"Feminism is still a taboo", tells Borbála. A feminist is seen as a man hater, or lesbian, even as a woman who doesn't like kids. The fear felt all over when a book of the french writer Robert Merle ("The Protected Sex" was translated in Hungarian. The novel, originally published in the seventies, is a dystopia on male as a disappearing sex. Lots of women have internalised patriarchal ideas, even women in high position don't consider themselves as feminists.) Bori: "women themselves are the obstacle. Successful women lead a feminist life, but don't associate with the underlying ideas."

The word gender doesn't exist in the Hungarian language. The word 'emancipation' is associated with the communists who used it in the context of the 'double burden for women', who had to hold a full time job and do the household and childcare by themselves. So now, for many women having not the pressure of having a job, means living a modern life, and is an anti-communist, or anti-traditionalist, statement by itself.

Feminism is seen as a foreign force, put upon the Hungarian society. "In a way this is true" says Bori, " I got my feminist education at the Central European University."

There are no laws in Hungary to protect women against domestic violence. The word is just introduced. After the political changes all that intervenes with family life was stopped, based on the ideology of "the holy family". The communist government intervened in a huge way in the lives of families by forcing people to work at places and in towns they didn't want to be. So the holiness of the family, untouchable for the law makers, was seen as a modern response to communist intervention in the private atmosphere.

To change that now into an acceptance for protective intervention by the policy makers, we need the European Union, says Juhász. They will force us to implement all kinds of equal opportunities laws, and protective laws etceteras. So Borbála cann't wait for Hungary to become a full member of the European Union, which had become reality on May 1, 2004.

Wanya F. Kruyer, writer and photographer based in Amsterdam.