Women educational and career choices during the Polish People’s Republic period as the individual interaction with the real world

EasyChair Preprint 390

Abstract

The process of educating women and men until 1948 had a universal nature. It have been provided without an excessive institutional. Adult education was a common interest of citizens and of a leading socialist party. Citizens were keen on rebuilding the country and creating better living conditions for themselves and for their children, politicians focused on the implementation of propaganda and economic assumptions of the socialist development of the country. After 1948 a lot changed, previous illiterates after acquiring the ability to write and read, were sent to work and low-education company schools did not provide education in the field of self-education or cultural and educational activity. It was a time of nationalization and ideologisation of education, when the authorities appointed woman's social roles. According to the new ideology of the state, a woman should take care of domestic, family issues and a practicing Catholic who became a worker, the head of the work, a woman building a new social order and a mother raising her offspring in a socialist spirit. The paper describes the experiences of a women who lead an active life during the period of People’s Republic of Poland, taking into account the systemic and educational context. The text analyzes narrative interview of a resident of a small town of Poland inhabited by around 20000 people. PRL was a time of her highest professional and educational activity. The collected material was verified in terms of the choices made by the respondent and her educational and professional paths. According to the sociological concept of Margaret Archer (1995), my paper discusses the problem of agency and the structure in the context of the socialization of respondent who on one hand was subject to restrictions of the state and on the other had benefited from many opportunities offered by the system.

Keyphrases: Education, Polish People’s Republic (PRL), agency-structure, womens

@booklet{EasyChair:390,
  author    = {Ewa Dziwosz},
  title     = {Women educational and career choices during the Polish People’s Republic period as the individual interaction with the real world},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 390},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2018}}