ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on offensive process of re-Austrification and the emergence of de-Austrification mark the beginning and the end of an epoch. Three selected cultural constructions of women's roles extending from the 1950s to the 1970s are highly significant. All three are connected with Westernization or Americanization, though in very different ways, and they are always tightly interwoven with Austria's conception of itself and with the transformation it was undergoing. It is actually almost impossible to make meaningful statements about Austrian women in general, in part because the research findings to do so are lacking. Moreover, for a systematic overview, the broad category "women" is simply too complex and influenced by too many extremely multifaceted variables. The strategies of cultural conservatism included an effort to conceptually underpin the modernization aspired to in the 1950s with a model of gender difference that was aligned in highly polarized fashion.
