engleski

Religion, welfare and gender: the post-communist experience

The chapter focuses on religion, welfare and gender in four post-communist countries: Croatia, Latvia, Poland, and Romania. Besides the many similarities among post-communist countries, there are also important differences, which are crucial to understanding the relation between religion, welfare and gender in each context. The social context is described using the concept of variageted welfare capitalism which underlines the very contradictory social development, while the very different role of religion in these countries by analysing tensions between legacy of communism and revitalization trends in post- communism, and between mainly collectivistic identity-oriented religion and the limited role of religion as a service provider and / or having a critical social role. Thus, in analysing the role of religion in welfare a combination of factors is at play: the legacy of (inefficient) public welfare system developed during communism, prominent public positions of Churches which at the same time do not fulfil social expectations of people, the functionality of formal-informal actions and actors, etc. The role of gender is an illustration of different and competing gender ideals, and economic and social circumstances, and in particular the weak social support of state, which all shape the actual position of women in society. The empirical part of the paper is based on the data gathering in the WaVE project in the four countries, which are combined with other existing data, such as the EVS 2008 data, and Eurostat data.

religion, welfare, gender, post-communism

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