The Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET) at the University of Vienna and the Research Platform "Transformations and Eastern Europe" invite to their regular Transformative Salon on 4 December 2025 at 7 PM, this time with Kristen Ghodsee (University of Pennsylvania), commented by Magdalena Baran-Szołtys (RECET). 

Venue: Café Merkur, Florianigasse 18, 1080 Vienna.

How far did state-socialist regimes in Eastern Europe succeed in realizing their promises of women’s emancipation? And how did women’s experiences compare with those in Western capitalist societies?

This salon will offer a critical overview of women’s lives under socialism before 1989, examining the paradoxes of authoritarian systems that, despite their limitations, pursued ambitious social policies. These top-down initiatives often fell short of full equality, yet they fostered significant cultural and institutional changes. In many cases, they allowed women to reconcile professional and personal lives in ways that invite comparison—and sometimes contrast—with developments in the West.

By situating these historical experiences in a broader global context, the talk will ask what lessons, if any, might be drawn for contemporary debates on gender equity and social policy.

Kristen R. Ghodsee is the author of twelve books and professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Her articles and essays have been translated into over twenty-five languages and have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Jacobin, The New Republic, Le Monde Diplomatique, and Die Tageszeitung. Her critically acclaimed 2018 book, Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence, has appeared in 15 languages (including German with Suhrkamp Verlag, 2019). Her latest book is Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Bold Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life, with Simon & Schuster (also in German as Utopien für den Alltag: Eine kurze Geschichte radikaler Alternativen zum Patriarchat Suhrkamp Verlag, 2023). Ghodsee is currently a senior honorary fellow at the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, Germany. 

Magdalena Baran-Szołtys is a scholar of literature and culture with a background in German and Slavic Studies working as a postdoctoral researcher (Hertha-Firnberg-fellow, FWF) within the Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET) and at the Department of Contemporary History at the University of Vienna. Her research interests include German, Polish, and Ukrainian literature; narratives of inequality and transformation; travels; memory cultures; postsocialism; Austrian Galicia; and the social and cultural history of East Central Europe. She has been a Visiting Scholar at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, taught German and literature at the University of Sydney, and has worked at the Institute of 20th and 21st Century Literature at the University of Warsaw. Baran-Szołtys was a board member of the Frauen*Volksbegehren (Austrian Women Referendum) and is chairwoman of the Foundation Advisory Board of the Common Good Foundation COMÚN. She is co-editor of the book “ÜberForderungen: Wie feministscher Aktivismus gelingt” (“About Demands: How feminist activism succeeds”, Kremayr&Scheriau, 2020).

FREE ENTRY! No registration required.