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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."