• DOI:10.1177/1350506815571264
• Corpus ID: 146896549

Untangling the knot: A response to Nanette Funk

@article{Ghodsee2015UntanglingTK,
  title={Untangling the knot: A response to Nanette Funk},
  author={Kristen Ghodsee},
  journal={European Journal of Women's Studies},
  year={2015},
  volume={22},
  pages={248 - 252}
}

• Kristen Ghodsee
• Published 1 May 2015
• Sociology
• European Journal of Women's Studies

I am delighted that the editors of the Open Forum of the European Journal of Women’s Studies have allowed me the opportunity to respond to Nanette Funk’s provocative and incisive article: ‘A very tangled knot: Official state socialist women’s organizations, women’s agency and feminism in Eastern European state socialism.’ As one of the nine ‘Revisionist Feminist Scholars’ named in Funk’s article, I feel compelled to address the ‘conceptual-philosophical analysis’ presented in the article on its own conceptualphilosophical terms. I do not purport to speak for all of the ‘Revisionist Feminist Scholars,’ and I know that many of them have specific disagreements with Funk’s reading of their research. But here I want to home in on the key claim that state socialist women’s organizations did not have agency, or at least did not have the right kind of agency. At the very outset of her article, Funk claims that she will offer a ‘conceptualphilosophical analysis of the concept of “women’s agency” and a concomitant reinterpretation of the historical evidence on official state socialist women’s organizations’ agency and feminism.’ She argues that, ‘Feminist Revisionist Scholars have overlooked important distinctions in the concept of “women’s agency” that cast doubt on the extent of women’s agency in official women’s organizations.’ It is clear from her opening remarks that Funk intends to provide a specific definition of ‘women’s agency’ that will undermine claims that state socialist women’s organizations were effective agents of positive change for women in their countries. Funk, however, does not define ‘women’s agency’ in her introduction. Instead, the first section of the article deals with how the establishment of state socialist women’s organizations after the Second World War denied some women ‘chances to act.’ Funk cites a variety of secondary sources to establish that East European communist governments disbanded pre-war women’s organizations and replaced them with official state women’s organizations. Based on this evidence, she states: ‘Thus, because of official women’s organizations, many women throughout the region from 1945 to 1989 who