ABSTRACT
It is often considered that the transition to capitalism in East-Central Europe (ECE) has been accompanied by an employment crisis (Smith 2000). It has been estimated that there were 26 million fewer jobs in the 27 countries of East-Central Europe, and the former Soviet Union in 1997 relative to 1989 (UNICEF 1999). Of these about 14 million were jobs lost by women. In Hungary a country of ten million people, one-third of women’s jobs have gone since 1989 (UNICEF 1999). Despite this, Hungary is one of the very few countries in the region where women’s officially recorded unemployment rate has consistently been less than that of men. A recent World Bank report suggests that two factors may explain this unusual feature of the Hungarian labour market: first the higher proportion of women in the government sector, which provides greater job security; and second, the higher proportion of women with college and university education relative to men in the labour market (World Bank 1999: 232). Self-employment was seen as a solution to unemployment but the particular nature of post-communist entrepreneurship and its gender aspects have rarely been considered.
