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.