Challenge In the East

By Johanna McGeary

Even where it has long been entrenched, democracy has not proved invariably hospitable to women. Despite the growing number of women entering politics in the U.S., the country is just beginning the journey toward full equality. In the West, women like British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Brundtland have had to struggle against the traditional demands of gender in order to impress their visions on national policies. For decades the Communist states of Europe boasted of political egalitarianism, making a show of filling token government posts with women. But revolution has torn down the facades, revealing just how cosmetic was the "power" shared by the East's women. Now the emergence of a new order is challenging women to show themselves both willing and able to take on real responsibilities.

In the few months since the upheavals that reordered the regimes in Central ) and Eastern Europe, a handful of extraordinary women have seized this moment in history to join in the challenge and begin the work of catching up with their sisters in the West. One is an economist turned Prime Minister, another a sociologist who presides over a parliament, a third a onetime model who speaks for her government. Then there is the former law clerk who has taken over a Prime Minister's office and influences government policy from within.

In the rarefied levels of real political power, three women in particular have emerged who may set the pattern for others to follow: Marju Lauristin, the deputy speaker of the Estonian parliament; Lithuanian Prime Minister Kazimiera Prunskiene; and Sabine Bergmann-Pohl, parliamentary president of East Germany until the recent union of the two Germanys. Between them, Lauristin and Prunskiene have managed to place the Baltic struggle for independence high on the world's political agenda.

The no-nonsense Lauristin has parlayed her academic background in sociology into a sharp appreciation for the role of public opinion in postcommunist Estonia. She first dipped into politics in 1987 and learned her new craft chiefly by championing environmental issues, which have become a pivot for political rebellion, providing an entree into politics for a surprising number of East bloc women. In the spring of 1988 she became one of the founders of the rebellious Popular Front of Estonia, and her expertise in using the mass media helped propel the movement into a formidable force that convinced Estonians they could break with Moscow.

Intellectually, Lauristin had long ago left doctrinaire communist ideas behind. In the late 1960s she attended the university at Tartu, where Western thinkers were widely studied. At the same time she set out to shed the unhappy legacy of her father, who in 1939 signed away Estonia's freedom to the Soviet Union. A statue of him honoring that deed still stands beside the newly constituted independent parliament in Tallinn. Now Lauristin is asking parliament to remove it.

In her parliamentary post, Lauristin operates from the inside. Rather than lead the debates, she more often wields her influence in drafting the new laws that will govern the country. "My work is to put our ideas into legislation," she says, "and it is often more important than leading the debate." Aided by a natural, direct manner and an air of honesty that works well on television, she is responsible for communicating the government's programs and ideas to the Estonian people.

For Lithuania's Prunskiene, the challenge is far greater. Working alongside a President she outspokenly disagrees with, she has been the leader in seeking a negotiated agreement with Moscow to give Lithuania its independence. An economist for much of her 47 years, Prunskiene has become Lithuania's voice of reason. She made the short leap from economics to politics two years ago when she helped found Sajudis, the independence movement. "I was very unhappy seeing what should be done but was not done," she says. From the beginning she has reached out for Western expertise and advice.

But her innate skill at negotiation and compromise is what has made Prunskiene such a forceful leader. She always expresses herself firmly and directly, she says, but "in such a way that when the conversation is over, it can end without conflict and leave open the possibility of continuing later." Her private discussions with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, she says, have been marked by this ability to disagree without insulting or demeaning the Soviet leader. Yet if her tactics are nonconfrontational, she is unwilling to compromise her goals. "The most important thing," she says, "is to reach our independence."

Her methods have earned her a working relationship with Gorbachev, but not with Vytautas Landsbergis, Lithuania's fiery President. While he represents the mystic Lithuanian dreams, she concentrates on practicalities. The two have disagreed strongly about how to deal with Moscow, and many emotional Lithuanians share with Landsbergis his dismay at her conciliatory moves. Prunskiene dismisses the criticism as irrelevant: "As a leader I do not have to follow what I believe is the wrong way just to show unity."

Germany's Bergmann-Pohl has the poise of a practiced politician, despite her background as a physician. She has been a member of the Christian Democratic Union since 1981 because it was the only way, she says, to have an impact on her country's social problems. But she rose to prominence chiefly because of the swiftness of the East German revolution and its need for new people without Communist ties to take over government jobs. The CDU urged her to run for parliament last March, and when her faction won the most seats, she was named president.

Taking on such a post without any training, says Bergmann-Pohl, "was like a person who can't swim jumping into a river." But she clearly felt comfortable with her position several months later, despite criticism that she is disorganized and dwells unnecessarily on details. When she meets a reporter, she is all careful calculation. "We have got to show that women have competence in politics," she says. She will be a member of the united Bundestag until national elections are held in December. Upon unification she was named a Minister Without Portfolio.

Among the other women who walk the corridors of power in Eastern Europe, Malgorzata Niezabitowska, the official spokeswoman of the Polish government, was attracted by the prospect of fundamental change. A free-lance writer in Warsaw, she was electrified in 1980 by the rise of Solidarity. "Freedom was suddenly possible, and you had to help fight for it," she recalls. Like many previously quiescent East European women, she flung herself into active opposition to the Communist regime. The political education she received as the trade union rose and fell, and the relationship she developed with Tadeusz Mazowiecki, later to become the Prime Minister of Poland, propelled her to her present prominence.

Some in Warsaw say Niezabitowska owes her position to her stunning looks and the new government's shrewd sense of public relations, but she shrugs off both the criticism and her lack of experience. "I think I'm one of the Prime Minister's closest advisers," she says. "I discuss all the issues with him, try to convince him of my ideas, keep him informed about what is happening in the country. That is influence."

Influence, but not necessarily power. Like Niezabitowska, 40, East Germany's Sylvia Schultz is, at 34, a woman who chose to wield her influence through the man she served. In her case it was East Germany's last Prime Minister, Lothar de Maiziere. She was his chief of staff, the aide who ran the P.M.'s office, advised him on every issue and traveled at his side wherever he went.

Also like Niezabitowska, Schultz came by her position through propinquity: her husband, older by 12 years, used to play music with De Maiziere and afterward chat about politics. Unable to complete her studies in history or get a job because of her antigovernment political views, Schultz eventually went to work in De Maiziere's law office. In that free-thinking environment, she developed her own liberal ideas, "thinking about what the future could be." But when East Germans who shared her secret dreams took to the streets Schultz "made a decision to stay in the back row."

( Oddly, considering the activism of millions of women during the heady days before the Wall came down, few have since made their voices strongly heard. "We had no political experience, no training," explains Schultz. "I think most women are not competent enough" for the job of transforming a revolutionary movement into practical governance. Schultz herself does not seek an executive post in the united Germany, but she does plan to stand for parliament in December. "In the second row, you can still be very powerful."

Women like these remain exceptions in the East. The number of women in the Hungarian and Polish parliaments is minuscule. In East Germany only 20.5% of the Volkskammer were women. Eventually, some striving female politicians, like Hungarian Klara Ungarn, 32, a cheerful and dynamic leader of the small Federation of Young Democrats, may rise higher, but for now their activism is their greatest claim to power. Ungarn's party holds only 21 seats in the parliament, but she is confident its influence is growing. "We will control the government in 10 years," she says, "but not before." With rare wisdom, she acknowledges that the women of the East "need time to learn the profession of politics. Being in the opposition is very different from running the government."

Yet activists like Ungarn face parlous times ahead. In conservative, Catholic countries like Hungary and Poland, there is a strong reassertion of traditional values, and that puts political careers for women at risk. Ungarn hid from her constituency the fact that she was divorced, and is careful to keep her personal life spotless. "Any smear on the purity of your image can totally spoil your chances," she says. "Here women are still judged differently from men."

Until times are better in the old East bloc, few women will be able to muster the energy or time to compete with men. The economic realities of Eastern Europe's revolution are sobering for all, but especially for women: faster than anyone, they are losing their jobs, their social services, their economic independence. As conservative values are revived, the rights to abortion and divorce, for example, are coming under increasing fire. Yet women themselves often share that conservatism: communism never really erased traditional family values from their countries.

One result is a curious reversal of Western feminism's emphasis on careers for women. The new female leaders want to use at least some of their power to reverse the communist diktat that all women have to work. All over Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, women have dreamed, says Poland's Minister of Culture and Arts, Izabella Cywinska, "of reaching the point where we have the choice to stay home." That, more than a place in the power structures -- more than anything else -- is what communism deprived them of, and what they want to retrieve.