Discussion on Péter Konok's book. The author, Eszter Bartha and Gábor Székely took part in the debate organised by the Friends of Eszmélet.

This study explores the history of women's and gender studies in higher education in Central Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet space since the early 1990s. It describes the interests – rooted in academic and non-academic contexts – of a whole variety of transnational and political actors and academics on the ground and relates them to the process of transforming higher education. The study highlights why and how varying transnational and local hegemonic constellations were conducive to the institutional development of women's and gender studies, while at the same time severely restricting the unfolding of their critical political potential.

Hungarian family law and the struggle for "gender order", 1848-1913The study contains three main theses: the idea that there was a need for ‘legal stability' in Hungary was a construction of positivist legal science, bound up with the idea of the (legally) unified nation state; legal and religious pluralism in Hungary posed a huge problem for legal science, especially when it came to developing a state-regulated family law; the process of "clarifying" and "stabilising" family law was at the same time a process of "clarifying" and "stabilising" gendered power relations within the family. The study argues that the inability of the state to complete this project was in fact symptomatic of deep uncertainties over the social roles of men and women, and multiple/competing definitions of both law and patriarchal power.