ABSTRACT
In this portrait, Gabriella Kiss draws attention to how being a single mother of two young children in a post-socialist country has made her academic career feel like a sack-race. Several times in her career, she has felt at disadvantage, as if she is not on a good racetrack, or as if she is racing with her legs tied. She presents some of the issues and challenges inherent to being a female academic in the context of the social welfare system in Central and Eastern Europe, with a focus on Hungary. She draws attention to the role expectations of mothers and women in post-socialist countries, with an emphasis on gender differences, the challenges of single parenthood, and the pitfalls of a universalist approach to performance measurement. The notion of “trade-off” is used to understand how those challenges can be navigated: trade-offs between family and career, between university public service and research/education, and in the context of studying transdisciplinary issues, between having social impact and working on mainstream topics.
