ABSTRACT
Women’s dual roles as workers and mothers have been the subject of a good deal of debate in the Soviet Union and many of the East European countries in recent years. Occasioned in large part by concern over declining birth rates, this debate has focused on the conflicting policy implications of viewing women as primarily economic or primarily reproductive resources. Early analysis of the causes of the falling birth rate was hampered by the state of demography in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s, and by the widely accepted notion that socialism should be accompanied by spontaneous population growth. The original stimulus for a more realistic assessment of women’s position under socialism in Czechoslovakia came about as the result of the decline in the birth rate, which began in the mid-1950s. The reopening of discussion concerning women’s issues was given added impetus by the revival of the women’s organisation.
