Partycypacja kobiet w obsadzie organów parlamentarnych i wpływ posłanek na stanowienie komunistycznego prawodawstwa na przykładzie reprezentantek Ligi Kobiet w Sejmie Ustawodawczym (1947–1952).
The Participation of Women as Members of Parliamentary Bodies and the Impact of Female Members of Parliamention Communist Legislation. The Case of Women’s League Parliamentarians in the Legislative Sejm (1947–1952).

Summary/Abstract: After the communist-rigged election to the Legislative Sejm in January 1947, women gained 26 seats, comprising 5.85% of all members of parliament. Over the term of more than five years, the parliamentary activity of female MPs was very diverse. The analysis of shorthand reports from the Sejm reveals that, apart from the representatives of the Women’s League and several individual MPs cooperating therewith, a sizeable group of female members of parliament never took the floor during plenary sessions, restricting themselves at best to speaking at sessions of parliamentary committees. The small representation of women in the parliament was not sufficiently nonconformist to publicly articulate the actual needs of Polish women in the Stalinist era. Additionally, the parliamentary activity of female MPs was restricted by higher instances for political reasons. The most that decision-makers did was to formally support parliamentary feminists, both those aligned with the Women’s League and those outside its structures, in creating a pro-emancipation image of the Communist party among Polish women. In practice, the veracity of this image was belied [by the] insignificant impact of female MPs on the legislative process, as well as by the eventual marginalization of the women’s needs in laws adopted by the parliamentary majority. Consequently, the gap between the propaganda narrative and the actual impact of women on politics (governance)became the reason for the failure of the Party’s endeavours to win the “women’s masses” over for the Communist project. Therefore, in the perception of most Polish women, the announcements of full empowerment of women in the People’s Republic of Poland remained nothing but a hollow propaganda slogan.

• Details
• Contents