Guardians of the patriarchy
Your research, in which you took a closer look at three-generation families, is reading for women with nerves of steel. Did the results surprise you a lot?
Bernadeta Zakrzewska: We didn’t have to wait for the final results, we were already surprised during the interviews. We conducted them with nine families. Or, more precisely, with three generations of women. For simplification’s sake we call them grandmothers (here we had women aged 65 and over), mothers (these are ladies between 45 and 55 years old) and, as one category, granddaughters and daughters, young girls who are just starting their adult life and are between 18 and 22 years old.
Marta Krasowska: I remember Bernadeta saying, “It’s worse than I thought.”.
B.Z.: We saw that it is not as we had thought – that women in Poland are already to some extent liberated from patriarchal principles. We generally have a lot of our mothers and grandmothers in us. Their messages, which we call scripts, are still standing strong.
M.K.: For the purposes of our study, we have defined a script as a set of values and principles that women pass down from generation to generation. It seemed to us that there had been a significant change in many areas, that even if the older generation is still rooted in old beliefs, the youngest girls no longer share them.
But it turned out to be otherwise.
M.K.: Young girls enter life with the baggage of their grandmothers’ difficult, uncomfortable experiences.
B.Z.: The generation of mothers didn’t manage to erase these messages.
I bet it has changed in matters of work, education and sex, and has shifted the least in matters of sacrifice, family and relationships with men.
M.K.: You’re almost exactly on the money. Significant changes have occurred mainly in the area of sex.
B.Z.: Nobody talked to our grandmothers about it at all.
M.K.: Nor about menstruation. There was no talk on this topic, because it was believed that girls were meant to remain virgo intacta for their husbands who would show them everything. So, theoretically, there was no risk of an unwanted pregnancy.
B.Z.: Grandmothers also didn’t talk about sex with their daughters, i.e. women in the middle group. They were the ones who told us that when they were going camping with a boy, their mothers would have only raised a finger and said, “Just remember.” And that was it, without specifying exactly what they meant by that.
But mothers, that is, the middle group, would talk to young girls?
B.Z.: Things are beginning to change there, but these are perfunctory conversations, embarrassing for both sides. Mothers would talk to their 19-year-old daughters who had already had their night-time adventures, so to speak. They would tell us, “This is when she decides to talk about it?”.
It is clear in your research that the youngest girls are open to pre-marital sex, which was not the case with the generation of their grandmothers and mothers.
M.K.: Yes, but this is more the influence of the environment and new customs than the openness communicated by their mothers.
You asked whether sex was a woman’s responsibility. And this is where you were the most shocked by the answers.
M.K.: A quarter of the oldest women believe that sex is a wife’s responsibility. Perhaps it’s not that many for some people, but for me this number is just sad. Grandmothers received a script stating that if a man wants to go to bed with you here and now, you have no choice but to agree.
B.Z.: They would tell us, “That’s how it was. If he wanted it, it had to be done.”.
I’m quite shocked that this percentage is not much lower in the middle group. A fifth of women aged 45-55 believe that sex is a marital obligation.
B.Z.: Not all messages are passed down from generation to generation verbally, some are simply absorbed from everyday family life. Of course, women didn’t spy on their parents in the bedchambers, but you could sense some things, you knew. Building scripts is also based on observations, not just conversations.
M.K.: For me, in this part of the study, our question about whether a woman can refuse her husband was important. And here, of course, there is a change – with time, more and more women think they can.
And the youngest ones?
M.K.: 75% are of the opinion that a woman can refuse – and that’s a good result, it must be emphasised. But what about the others? A quarter of the youngest Polish women, aged 18-22, are convinced that they cannot refuse intercourse. That’s a lot. And this shows how much we need sex education. Of course, in an ideal world such learning should take place at home, but we will never have all parents do it.
Now that we’ve come to sex education, what has the research shown with regard to education in general?
M.K.: In terms of education, it has changed a bit, but less than you might expect. Grandmothers said that they wanted to study very much, so as not to have to work in a shop or clean flats.
B.Z.: They often wouldn’t think about higher education, but about technical or vocational schools. A lot of women said, “I couldn’t study because I was the eldest child and had to look after my brothers and sisters”, or, “We didn’t have much money. Only just enough for my brother’s education”. I remember a lady from Radom who got into an economic technical school in another city, but she knew that the household was so poor that she had to come back and help. And she resigned, although no one directly ordered her to do so.
M.K.: “Your place is at home. You take care of looking for a husband and bearing children, not searching for other ways in life” – that was the message for grandmothers. Those who tried to learn and work, often unsuccessfully, told their daughters that they needed to learn. But this “Go and study” was quickly followed by, “Because if you get an education, you’ll be able to get a good job, and it’s necessary for you to be self-sufficient, if a man leaves you”..
You have to work to have money and be independent if your prince falls off his horse.
B.Z.: Indeed. Young girls do talk a little about self-development and broadening their horizons. They can already see that learning is a window to the world, something that allows you to develop, but it is still a side topic.
So let’s get down to money then. Every generation told you that it is the woman that manages the finances of the household. This sounds like we have a proper slice of actual power.
B.Z.: This power is only superficial. Our grandmothers had access to their husbands’ money, but with that came a responsibility. Many houses didn’t overflow with cash, and in many the man had already drunk away half his wages before he got back home.
How about the younger generation?
M.K.: They contribute to the household budget and manage it together with the men, but they also say, “I’m going to make sure that I have my own pile of money”. This, unfortunately, is not a message passed down by their mothers. They learned it by observing the reality they live in. They contribute to the joint budget, but part of their wages remains in their private account.
B.Z.: From the moment we allegedly managed the money, we’ve come to a point where we earn money too. Women therefore have more burdens, because apart from the fact that they are working, the responsibility of figuring out how to spend in such a way as to have enough money to buy food or clothes and pay for the flat or to have the car fixed still hasn’t been lifted off their shoulders.
If a woman who doesn’t work has the whole household on her shoulders, the working woman should do only half the housework. But that’s not the case.
M.K.: The grandmother’s script went like this: the woman is responsible for the house and the children. In the middle group, which was much more professionally active, the responsibility for the home remained. The youngest generation has an interesting script: “Share responsibilities, but remember that you have to be able to do everything yourself. The ‘male’ ones as well”..
The research also showed that women in the middle group are sawing off the branch they are sitting on, because they believe that a woman can do everything better.
M.K.: And unfortunately, that’s why some women have only themselves to blame for having to stay on top of everything. Because if a guy wants to do something at home and she fixes it after he’s done it, it teaches him that it’s better not to do anything.
You say that young Polish women think that responsibilities need to be shared with a partner, but when you asked who was responsible for chores such as washing or cooking, over 70% responded that it was theirs.
B.Z.: It wasn’t as clear when it came to washing the dishes because we have dishwashers now. Helping with shopping is difficult to ascertain too, because it’s usually the man who carries the shopping, but it’s the woman who actually makes the list. She’s the one who checks the cupboards for flour and toilet paper.
What do the respondents say about their experiences?
M.K.: They say about themselves, “We, women, take care of it all”. And it’s not considered pejorative. On the contrary, they are proud of it in their own way.
Did you discover any elements of the patriarchy within yourselves while doing this research?
B.Z.: I, unfortunately, discovered a lot. And now I am watching myself closely so as not to pass such a script onto my daughter. Helena has just signed up for a football class. She is the only girl there and in the first class some of the boys made fun of her. She had a problem with it for a while, but everything is okay now. I would like her to be able to do anything in the future, without considering whether it’s appropriate for her as a woman.
M.K.: I am lucky that my partner provides me with a lot of support. He does the shopping, he cooks (great!). I have become a mum recently. I have a son and I feel like I’ve been given the challenge of raising him to be like his dad. So that he’ll notice that the laundry needs to be done and he’ll do it. And if he can’t or won’t do something, he’ll pay someone to do it, not make a woman do it.
The study was carried out by Ipsos for the PTBRiO Congress of Researchers.
Interview with Marta Krasowska and Bernadeta Zakrzewska, authors of the study of lessons passed down from generation to generation by women in the family.
Graphics: Marta Frej
The interview was published on wysokieobcasy.pl on 10 October 2020
