ABSTRACT
Under communism media images of ‘superwomen’ were commonly printed in Eastern Europe (Gal and Kligman 2000). Such women masterfully handled the triple burden of running a household, working full-time and rearing children. During this period women in Romania were valued for their productive-and indeed their reproductive-capacities, admired and praised for their strength and resilience in the face of severe economic and social hardship (Gal and Kligman 2000). In postcommunist Romania, however, the superwoman image no longer holds the same importance it once did. Women, however, continue to work full-time while maintaining their primary role in childcare and housework, all the while seeking ways to improve their life that “continues to be seen primarily in terms of ‘survival,’ in terms of social fragmentation, and stress-based existences” (Michelson 2001, 57). Persistence of the survival mentality is due in part to the diminishing number of industrial jobs for women and an enduring legacy of male management in the transitional economy (Shelley 2002); the feminization of poverty (Roman 2001; Shelley 2002); privatization of firms resulting in the loss of full-time jobs; and disappearance of the second economy in which women played a significant role (Chelcea 2002; Verdery 1996). Whatever status women had achieved during socialism was, thus, quickly forgotten as socialist policies were given over to efforts toward building a functional democracy and market-based economy. In this instance, women were freed from the explicit control socialist state regulations had placed over their bodies, but were subsequently faced with new forms of body control and regulation in the postcommunist context.
