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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.