Who teaches gender in Hungary today? Despite strongresistance from colleagues and institutions, why dogender studies professors hold firrnly to their demoeraticprinciples of seholarship and education? This volume iscomprised of personal essays by published, lead ingfigures in the profession who approach gender from avariety of disciplines: literature, economics, linguistics,history, philosophy and sociology. They write directlyand honestly about the recent history of and the currentshifts in their disciplines under the Bologna Process andwithin the transitioning higher education system inHungary.

TEACHINGGENDER STUDIES

IN HUNGARY

Edited byAndrea Pető

BUDAPEST, 2006

~L~ ~ _

Supported by the Ministry of Youth, Family,Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities

AuthorsErzsébet Barát, Enikő Bollobás, Zsuzsanna Halász-Dabasí,

Judit Friedrich, Mária Joó, Erika Kegyes-Szekeres, Katalin Koncz,Edit Lukács, Sarolta Marinovich. Marianna Lizák-Matiscsák

Mária Neményi, Andrea Pető, Nóra Séllei, Mária Schadt. 'Judit Szap,or, Dorottya Szikra, Judit Takács,

Eva Thun, Anna Wessely

TranslationBEASÁNDOR

ProofreadingRACHEL MILLER

EditorJUDIT BORUS

ISBN 936 229 467 X

© 2006 by the Authors

Printed byOBR 2000 Informatikai Kereskedelmi

és Szolgáltató Kft.

Published byMinistry of Youth, Family,

Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities1054 Budapest, Akadémia u. 3.

CONTENTS

Andrea Pető: Introduction 7

Erzsébet Barát-Sarolta Marinovich: Is There a Spacefor Teaching Gender Studies in HungarianHigher Education? 13

Enikő Bollobás: From Consciousness-Raising to IntellectualEmpowerment: Teaching Gender Since the Early 1980s 22

Marianna Lizák-Matiscsák-Zsuzsanna Halász-Dabasi-Edit Lukács: Gender Studies at the Faculty of EconomicSciences, University of Miskolc 29

Judit Friedrich: My Feminist Critical Thinking 37

Mária Joó: "Nice Ferninist" Philosophy 40

Erika Szekeres-Kegyes: Gender and Linguistics 50

Katalin Koncz: The History, Mission and Workof the Women's Studies Centre 58

Mária Neményi: Women's Issues-Minority Issues 68

Andrea Pető-judith Szapor: From the Teachingof a "Discriminative" Women's Historyto That of Gender Studies in Hungary 75

5

Nóra SéIIei:Reflections ......................................................................... 85Mária Schadt: "Man's Work" .............................................................. 93

Dorottya Szikra: Characteristics of Teaching Social Policyand Gender in Eastern Europe 100

Judit Takács: From Sex to Gender 108

Éva Thun: Gender Studies in Educational Sciencesand the Pedagogy of Teacher Training 116

Anna Wessely: Perspectives 126

Contributors 129

6

Andrea Pető

INTRODUCTION

My concept for this volume arose in response to the forthcoming bookin Balassi Press' s Feminism and History series, due out in 2006and orig-inally published in German as Breathing Space. The author, UteGerhard, Professor of Law and Sociology at the University of Frank-furt and the first scholar to receive the titIe of Professor of Women' sStudies in Germany, encourages us to step out of the relentless pres-sure of work and stop for amoment, keeping in mind the existentialand structural problems at hand, to examine and reflect.

The Bologna Process, which is altering the structure of Europeanhigher education, makes this volume especiaIIy timely. Educationalinstitutions and curricula are both changing, and this process urgesus to reexamine the place of gender studies in academia. As for pere-grinatio, or the migration of students, Hungary has been a piace ofdispatch rather than a host country. Students-who are making useof the Bologna Process and applying for increasingly more attractivescholarships-are heading to places where they receive a high stan-dard, interesting and relevant education. The fact that Hungarianhigher education cannot hold onto more open-minded students hasserious political and strategic consequences.'

Although brief, but still aiming to be representative, this bookintends to show who is teaching and what is being taught in the fieldof gender studies in Hungary. At the beginning of the Bologna Process,this is an account and examination of our current situation, whichseeks to clarify the theoretical frameworks and point out possiblefuture paths.

7

Éva Thun

GENDER STUDI ES IN EDUCATIONALSCIENCES AND THE PEDAGOGY OF TEACHER

TRAININGl

It would seem obvious that pedagogy would be receptive to theacceptance and application of gender studies, as its researchmethodologies have always been interdisciplinary, and it aims toexamine how people of different age groups study among differingcircumstances. Feminist philosophy as well as psychoanalytic,sociological and anthropological theories, raise issues which havetheir parallels in the field of pedagogy too.

Regarding the Hungarian traditions oforganizing public education,we could assume that pedagogy has not become part of themechanical production process of education technology, and that ithas preserved at least some marks of its philosophical foundations.

We would also have reason to assume that in teacher training, thatis, in the course of the training for a feminized profession, it wouldbe easier to bring up issues related to women and gender, reflect onthe significance of gender and discuss the teaching methodologies offeminist pedagogy.?

It would seem logical that interdisciplinary dialogues would beespecially present in a segment of pedagogy and teacher training thatdeals with the pedagogy of teaching English as a foreign language,as it has been engaged in an international professional dialogue withthe culture of English-speaking countries. We might assume that agood command of English helps the free flow of different ways ofthinking, as weHas the surfacing, intersections and local applicationof newapproaches.

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Another route for the inclusion of gender studies into public andhigher education could be the active engagement of its professors ininstitutional and professional politics,which would lead to the inclusionof gender studies into the educational structures, especially now thatwe can use the chances stemming from the reform and restructure ofour higher educational system through the Bologna Process.

Despite ali the above arguments, gender studies is not aninstitutionalized and legitimatized theme within the discipline ofpedagogy. It is definitely useful to map out and list the reasons forthis gap and for the lack of theoretical discourses and practicalstrategic development, as reflecting upon these questions may providepoints of reference for future action.

Gender Course Development Based on Personal Praxis

I began teaching the course, Gender Studies in Education andPedagogy, at the Faculty of Teacher Training at Eötvös LorándUniversity, in the Department of English Language and Literature in1995.This seminar was announced for fourth-year students who weretraining to become teachers.' One of my basic planning principles wasthat I wanted the seminar to rely on students' individual professionalexperiences and then attach theoretical knowledge to these. Weanalyze the contents and forms of several fields of education andpedagogy from agender studies stand point, and we also examinepedagogical discourses. This includes the treatment of certain fieldsof knowledge, e.g. the evaluation of syIlabuses, the functions ofeducation in creating values, the structure of public education, itsspaces of communication, teaching as a profession, as weIl as theprocess of personal professional development and empowerment.t

Despite the institutional changes, more and more students havebeen coming to these courses (approximately 250 people haveattend ed them since the beginningr.é It seems that students feel a needfor this course, which offers to teach them to think in a less traditionalway, or rather, to learn to think and be able to critically reflect up onvarious social issues.

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There are pedagogical techniques that should be consideredincreasingly important, such as the capabilities to reflect on swift socialchanges and to relate to diversity, differences in va lues andstandpoints. Other pedagogical values include parallelisms insteadof linearity, variety instead of uniformity and the ability to solve theconflicts arising from this. If these pedagogical skills become part ofone' s knowledge and expertise, the abilities of women students to usetheir skills in a cooperative way, to solve problems and conflicts in aholistic way may contribute a great deal to our knowledge aboutpedagogy and its development.

In order to have a real impact, a seminar which is embedded in aneducational and institutional system needs to have accessiblescientificmaterials, the necessary infra structure and public forums in whichthe newly obtained knowledge can be applied and practiced, outsidethe framework of the seminar and the educational institution.

AlI these efforts took shape between 1996 and 2002. AGenderCollection was founded at the locallibrary of the Faculty of TeacherTraining at Eötvös Loránd University, a new resource called HÍR-NŐK(News-Women) was published on the Internet and GESTH-L, aHungarian gender studies e-mailing list was also started in this period.

The curriculum of the course started in 1995/1996and was officiallyaccredited for the educational program of college-level teachertraining in 1998. However, during the structural reform of theUniversity (and partly because of the transition to the new, three-tiereducational system), when the departments of the Faculty of TeacherTraining were regrouped within the university system, the symbolicspace necessary for the course had to be started again. Bureaucraticprinciples played a more significant role than professional innovationand maintenance of good practices while the new BA and MAprograms were formed. In the previous system, the Faculty of TeacherTraining integrated professional training with the Department ofEnglish Studies and included a methodological training focusing onpedagogy and gender, but it is much more difficult to argue that thecourse should be a part of the Faculty of Humanities within the newstructuralframework.

If our higher educational system and teacher training were builton a professional development program, both professors and students

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would be able to teach or study in more than one faculty. However,right now the course is tied to one person, so it can only survivewherever the instructor has a status. While this situation prevents"ghettoization," which is so often mentioned as a problem in theinternationalliterature, contingency, as well as lack of communicationbetween faculties and universities may also lead to the same problem.

Another factor that hinders "interfaculty" work and greaterprofessional and scientific choice is the homogenization of our highereducation, regarding both its contents and quality-despite the factthat one aim of the Bologna Process is to make higher education moreaccessible to everyone and more diverse. Ildikó Hrubos (2000)definesone reason for this homogenization when she writes that the work ofthe Hungarian Accreditation Committee "is based on a purelyacademic standpoint. This leads to disturbances, especially regardingmore practicaIly oriented programs.?"

Professional Discourse in the Field of Pedagogy

Another important basis and support for course development isthat the given professional discourse should continuously providenew results and make these accessible to serve as both a source ofknowledge and legitimation of the given subject.

In our case, this means that gender studies at least should (shouldbe aIlowed to) appear in the pedagogical discourses and the discoursesrelated to education politics, and that pedagogy should begin adialogue with gender theories as they evolve and as internationalcomparative analyses develop in relation to them.

Looking at the discourses of educational sciences and pedagogy,Mariann Buda (1997)found that what we can see are only "confused,incoherent concepts":

"A number of epistemological, linguistic and sociological researchprojects have shown that the use of scientific concepts, the methodsapplied, and indeed the very results of any empirical research are atleast as much about the researchers who create them, as well as thecontexts, the frameworks of analysis, and the results that are shapedby these, as about 'objective reality.' This, however, has not become

119

obvious in the field of theoretical and practical research related to~ducati~n (. ..): It is probably also a backlash against the manifestldeolol?les.dunng the era of state socialism that many think any kind~f subjectíve ele.me~t.is harmf~l and unscholarly, mixing up themescapable subjectivity of the mterpretative framework and thenecessary impartiality of any scientific researcher." 7

In~tead of clarifying things, the latest postmodern topics (IikemU~hcuItur~1education, alternative pedagogies, etc.)flare up and givethe írnpressron that reforms are going on. If we examine the theoreticalbackground of teacher training, we can see that it does not relate muchto research-based theories; it is grounded in a traditional historicainarrative, which hardly even mentions women's education whentalking. a~out the history of education. Thus it reproduces thetransm~sslOnof universalizing, uniform views on people as an idealeducatlOnal method. Although this idealaf the educated man iscriticize~ in the in.ternationalliterature, this cannot yet be seen in theHunganan educational sciences.Feminist interpretations ofpedagogyor pe~agogical feminism, or the concepts and practices of feminis;(applied) pedagogy cannot ga in ground due to the unclarifiedrelation~hip between theoretical and applied pedagogíes.s

Qu~l:ty ass~ran~e sh?,~ld ?uarantee professional accountability.As.M~halyOtto wntes, If this means that quality is defined by theobJect~veval~es ~f any spec~fic,real or virtual community (...), this ismer: mdo~tnnah~n. Pluralism means ensuring that no community(~e It real, ~deologlcal or virtual) or its representatives can have thenght to defme this quality."?

The number of publications on the topic also indicates the existenceor ~he l~ck of a professional discourss. We can only find a fewsociologica] studies based on quantitative research on the issue ofwo~~n' s p!~c~in our h~gherand public education in Hungary. ro Thefe~mlst errticism of this approach (which represents women as theobjects and not the subjects of research) is usualIy not published bythose -:ho ~ake decisions in the editorial boards of the very fewprofessional journals. Their selection,based on routines and traditions,keeps gender studies away from the public discourse, questioning itsscholarly legitimacy.

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As gender studies does not have an institutional background (thosewho research and teach gender-related subjects have not reallydemanded to legitimize it, for various reasons), the "accusation" thatit is not serious and not institutionalized is even grounded to a certainextent."

The Lobbying Power of a Woman Professor in our Culture of HigherEducation

When elabarating on an academic topic and its professional standards,it seems important to consider what chances its professars have tomake their project accepted, especialIy if it is about to criticize theavailable knowledge base and the circumstances of its production.Thus it is necessary to examine the lobbying power of a womanprofessor and one who teaches about gender in the "no consensus"culture of the higher educational system.F

The international discourse on gender studies includes relativelydetailed analyses related to this question. We might assume that thesituation in British or Scandinavian societies is more or less similar towhat is going on in our institutions of higher education.

These studies show that if woman professars want to shed light onthe lack of social sensitivity, on the fact that knowledge depends onsubjective circumstances, or on the fact that science is always"situated," their position is dísadvantageous.P One reason for this isthat one of the most important criteria of schalarly legitimacy (allbased on traditional agreements or common grounds) is the carefullyguarded right to issue degrees based on "academicj scientificcapital."14

In the Hungarian higher education and academic circles pro-fessional recognition and fame is not quantified and most oftenperformative, as opposed to the international academic circles, inwhich the number of publications and registered academic activitiesfunction as professional measures. Thus the professional evaluationof women who participate in the higher education and researchprojects is not only not based on professional standards, but the lack

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of these professional standards put their results and activities at themercy of the purely "malestream" power relations."

As f?r the equal opportunities of women and men, our highereducah.onal syst~m wo~üd like to place itself outside the category ofthe social, refernng to its autonomy and its independence from thestate an~ its decision-~aking sphere. (At the very most, it may comeup.as a~ lssue. concernmg students, as an administrative expectation.)This attittide ISals o legitimized by the fact that more than 50% of thestudents earning diplomas are women.

Creatin!S.a professional politics that deals wi th gender and equalo~portumtIes and making it work would shed light on aspects ofSCIences and education that would challenge their untouchablecul~ural power. It would formulate questions about how certainsubjects get power, what their cultural and political commitments arewho the.be.n.eficiar~e~of this culture are. These questions would mak~t~e partialities defmmg present networks visible. They would shedlight.o~ layers of the higher educational system that have been hidden,and it ISexactly their concealment that makes the maintenance of themy ths of ~eutrality and univers ali ty possible in the construction ofseholarship.

How to Interpret the Gender Discourse in Teacher Training

W~ile gender theories have innovated various disciplin es of socialSCIences and ch~llenged traditional theories and disciplines thatas.s~me~ the eXlste~ce of a universal culture and knowledge, the~nhcal discourse defm~d ?y gender theories has not made such a hugeImpact on te~c~er :ralz:mg-despite the fact that there are many~o~e~ partICl'patmg m teacher training, compared to otherinstitutions of higher education.. Ex~er~s ~ist ~ number of reasons explaining why this layer ofmter~lsclplmanty has not appeared in educational sciences and theprachce ~f ~eache.r tra.ir:ing. One of the soundest arguments states thatfully reahzmg this ~ntIcal and reflective approach and applying it inplace of the norn:atIve and traditional approaches, would have sweptthose who apphed gender theories into personal and professional

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conflicts that pedagogy would be unable to solve in its present state.That is, the identification, exploration and criticism of gender andpower in society, with the intention to alter that society in a spherewhere there are so many women (in education) would upset theinstitutionalized gender balance to such an extent that the educationalsystem's sustainability would be endangered.

16

The lack of agender discourse in pedagogy and the curricula ofteacher training results in the fact that the pedagogy of teacher trainingapplies mostly ''borrowed'' theories, and represents the category ofgender and applies the practices related to it only accidentally andsuperficially. But currently even this is nonexisten~ in Hungary; th.epractice of teacher training does not recognize this approach, or Itfalsely identifies it with theory borrowed from the psychology of

gender roles.Gender-focused criticism of educational sciences fac es many

challenges, due to the fact that educational sciences are just in theprocess of redefining themselves; they' are str,:ggling .with therecognition that they differ from the tradlhonal notion of SCIenceandthat their strength is located in their interdisciplinary nature.

From the gender studies stand point (its theoretical approaches andpractic es) it is worthwhile to examine whether after the p.hilosophi~aland psychologicai paradigms of the past, the ne",:,paradIgm of sO~lalsciences gives way to changes that can be considered progressl:,e,whether the new paradigm has sensitive answers to the emergmgsocial claims, and whether it reflects the understanding of theimportance of social consciousness and the responsibility of the

educational sciences.

NOTES

1 In the literature of educational sciences, the distinction between teacherand pedagogue refers to differences in status and professional identity.We might assume that the prevalent use of pedagogue is a means of hid-ing status and power relations. A pedagogue's activities include tasks thatare related to taking care of others, and based on a hidden system of expec-tations, which would reveal its characteristics tied to women's identities

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in case of the nuanced professionalization of the profession. See my lec-ture at the Language, Ideology, Media conference (Szeged,September 8-9,2005): "The Linguistic Representation of the Identity Constructions ofFemale Pedagogues in the Textbooks Used for Teacher Training."

2 About the analysis of education as a technological process, and the diffi-culties of realizing gen der equality cf. Bryson, Mary, and de Castell,Suzanne. "En/Gendering Equity: On Some Paradoxical Consequences ofInstitutionalized Progra ms of Emancipation." Educational Theory 43,no. 3.(Summer 1993): http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/EPS/Educational-Theory/Contents/ 43_3_Bryson.asp.

3 I wrote about this course in a study entitled '''Hagyományos' pedagógia,feminista pedagógia." ['Traditional' pedagogy, feminist pedagogy]Educatio no. 3 (Autumn 1996):404-16.

4 The course is based on the following three sources: Wood, Julia T. GenderedLioes: Communication, Gender, and Culture. Belmont, CA.: WadsworthPublishing Company, 1994; Weiner, Gaby. Feminisms in Education. AnIniroduction. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1994; The EducationFeminist Reader. Edited by Stone, Lynda. New York-London: Routledge,1994.

5 Hungary's college-level education will cease to exist with the introduc-tion of the new progra ms (as defined by the Bologna system).

6 Hrubos, Ildikó. "Strukturális változások, nemzetközi trendek, hazaifolyamatok" [Structural changes, international trends, local processes]. InFelsőoktatás új pályán. Jelentés a felsőoktatásról, 2000 [Higher education on anew track: A report on Higher education, 2000].Edited by Péter Lukács.Budapest: Oktatáskutató Intézet, 2000.

7 Buda, Mariann. "A nevelési rendszerek elemzésének szükségességéről"[About the necessity of analyzing educational systems] Új Pedagógiai Szemleno. 11 (1997).

8 Zsolnai analyzes applied pedagogy and applied science. Zsolnai, József."Irodalomtanítás az ezredfordulón" [Teaching literature at the tum of themillennium]. Celldömölk: Pauz-Westermann, 1998,163.

9 Ottó, Mihály. "Értékpluralizmus és nevelés" [Thepluralism of values andeducation] Új Pedagógiai Szemle no. 2 (2000); "Iskola és pluralizmus"[Schooland pluralism]. Edited by Ottó, Mihály. Edukáció, Budapest, 1989.

10 E.g. Hrubos, Ildikó. "A férfiak és nők iskolai végzettsége és szakkép-zettsége" [The qualifications of women and men], In Férfiu ralom-Írásoknőkről, férfiakról, feminizmusról [Masculine domination: writings aboutwomen, men, and ferninism], edited by Miklós Hadas. Budapest: Replika

124

.. . H b Ild"kó" A nők esélyei a felsőoktatásban 1. és I!. AzKor" 19~4,. ru ?s, ké ~'sfeltevése" [Women' s opportunities in higherEurop~l BlzQottsag

t.er Ie and II of the European Committee] Magyar

educatlOn: ues lOns . .

11 ite~:~;t~:~~: ~~~~~\10W~olnaif's cO~~~~~~F:se~~::~~o~~~~~~b sed in the mterpretahon o gen ]

~Z:s~~A ;~agógia új rendszere cí~s~vakban [Thenew system of pedagogy .N ti Tankönyvklado, 1996,44.

Budap~t: . e;z~~rgaard wrote about the interpretation of con~ens~al12 Detre ane on ." nsensual and Disensual Umverslty

and non-consensual cultur~. COd . 11 NORA 9 no. 3 (2001):143-53.C 1 . G der and Power ín Aca errua. , . ]

u ~res. en ". lé . . kérdések" [EpistemologicalquestiOns.13 Hardmg, Sandra. Eplsztem

604o~al di Sandra Whose Science? Whose

AET AS no. 4 (1993): 154- ; ar ing. . ell UniversityKnowledge? Thinking From Women's Lives. Ithaca, NY: Com

Press, 1992. sions "academic capita!" and14 Dorte Marie Sondergaard uses the ex.pr~s ts "Consensual and

"scientific capital" based on Bourdleu s concep.. d ." NORADisensual University Cultures: Gender and Power in Aca errua.

9, no. 3 (2001):14~-153, esp. 1~5.. Education. Edited by Davies, Sue,15 Cnanging the Subvct: Women 111. Hlg~~stol PA Taylor and Francis, 1994;

Cathy Lubelska, and Jocey QduEmn:t. Hi'gher·Education." British JournalMorley, Louise. "Change an qUIYmof Education 18, no. 2 (.1~97l):R231.-42.f Gender and Teacher Education in

16 Weiner Gaby. "A Critica evrew oEurope:" Pedagogy, Culture and Society 8, no. 2 (2000):233-47.

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