Women in former communist countries are the victims of high levels of violence, have very limited political influence and are paid less at work than men, according to a new report by UNICEF, the UN Children's Fund.
Ten years after the fall of communism, any genuine advances which had been made for women in 27 former communist states are threatened by rising poverty, mass unemployment and cutbacks in social services, it says.
The Women in Transition report, published on the 20th anniversary of a UN convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, calls for leadership and action at every level of society to counteract these trends.
The study is the first comprehensive assessment of the situation of 200 million girls and women in central and eastern Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Baltics since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It aims to stimulate the development of national policies and agendas for gender equality.
Violence against women, including domestic violence, which the report says was more prevalent under communism than generally assumed, is on the increase throughout the 27 states. There is a high level of domestic violence in every country where information was available, it says.
More than one-third of divorced women in Moscow reported having been beaten by their former husbands in a 1996 survey. In Azerbaijan, one in five have experienced violence at the hands of their partner, with one in four of these reporting regular beatings.
Domestic violence is not illegal in Armenia, Bulgaria or Georgia. Marital rape is not recognised as a crime in Albania, Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Romania, Tajikistan, Ukraine, or the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In Slovenia, domestic violence is not considered criminal in cases of "light" injury; a definition which includes fractured nose, light contusions and punched-out teeth. Shelters for victims are rare and are so overstretched that they often turn women away.
The report says government reforms of social institutions such as justice, education and health care systems are needed, as well as grassroots action and public discussion.
In the workplace, women's wages are 24 per cent lower than men's in Russia, after educational and occupational differences have been removed. They are 29 per cent lower in Kazakhstan, 16 per cent lower in Poland and 15 per cent in Hungary.
In Hungary, a country of 10 million people, every third job for women has vanished since 1989. In Russia, women lost seven million jobs between 1990 and 1995, while men lost one to two million.
The report found women to be more prevalent in the developing smaller-business sector. About one-quarter of all entrepreneurs in nine countries in the region are women. "The revitalisation of economies in the transition region could be accelerated if support is offered to the new small enterprise sector in general and to women in particular," the study says.
With the removal of political quotas in many countries, the share of women in political office has dropped dramatically. Women have had more success in local government and as leaders of non-governmental organisations which have sprung up in all the states.
While communist regimes imposed many policies which were beneficial to women, including near-universal access to education, "they failed to impose true and lasting gender equality," the study notes.
While conditions for women under communism were not as good as they appeared, the report also says, those genuine advances made under the state-controlled system are now being undermined.