Dealing with Change: Women's Politics and Postwar Reconstruction in Romania Placed in Transnational Perspective, 1944–1948

forthcoming

RECKON will analyze how women politicians and grassroots activists shaped the postwar remaking of the key political fields of public health, labor, foreign affairs and culture in post-World War II Central and Eastern Europe, with a focus on Romania between 1944 and 1948. In Romania and across Central and Eastern Europe, the period between the end of World War II and the start of the Cold War was one of extraordinary experimentation in women’s politics, with significant effects on postwar reconstruction. The four years between Romania’s 1944 armistice with the Allies and the 1948 establishment of the Popular Republic of Romania saw a first cohort of communist and left-leaning women politicians in office in the country (including, in 1946–1947, 17 MPs and two ministers). It saw tens of thousands of women mobilized for social work and political agitation. Most research on reconstruction stresses postwar state expansion in Western Europe and emphasizes postwar disarray in Eastern Europe. Women’s historians have focused on women in Eastern European politics in the less ideologically eclectic post-1948 period. RECKON aims to show that the postwar process of state reinvention in Eastern Europe resembled developments in Western Europe yet was region-specific through the importance women had as reconstruction planners and envisioned reconstruction beneficiaries, in a context marked by upheaval and flare-ups of violence. Merging approaches from gender history and transnational history, RECKON will advance understanding of the role of women and gender in the forging of new social contracts in Europe. It will enable the recruited researcher to enhance her expertise and professional capacities through career development and mentorship programs accessible through her host institution. RECKON’s deliverables are two articles, one edited volume proposal, two open access syllabi, one podcast script and regular blogposts.