Work, family and education in post-communist Romania : gender issues andtransformations accompanying the globalization process

Abstract: The thesis identifies past and present mechanisms that contributed to the change in the roles and statuses of the Romanian women as workers, mothers and students actively involved in educational programs. Sweden was chosen as term for comparison, because both Romanian and Sweden have social democratic welfare state regimes, but still promote different social policies, generally speaking, and, in particular, different policies regarding women. This approach allows me to emphasize the similarities, the differences and the effects of these policies, as well as to describe in a suggestive manner women's roles and statuses, taking also into consideration societal characteristics, the present context and former events and policies that have significantly influenced women's image and place in the society. In the first part of the thesis I considered a broader approach from the theoretical point of view, while in the second part I have restricted the discussion to those dimensions I considered of a greater importance for a relevant description and analysis of the contexts and the particularities specific for the two countries. All these comparisons, discussions and analyses are related to the globalization and transformation process in recent years, in an attempt to understand the social process of change and its implications for women. While in Sweden the dominance of economic globalization allowed social democracy to play an important part, having as consequence women's release from the male breadwinner model, in Romania the situation is different. Especially because of the communist legacy and supranational financial bodies' influence, a new mixed breadwinner model appeared and women have been forced towards decisions that weakened their position in the society. Secondary analysis was used as method for research; the greatest difficulty encountered was that of harmonizing the data when comparing the same dimension/variable for the two countries taken into consideration. Key words: social policy, globalization, transformation, gender differentials, male breadwinner model, double burden, labour market, people's mentality, the IMF, the WB.