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Newsletter 31 News from National Committees

POLAND

The Polish Committee for Woman's History, established formally in 1997, is chaired by Prof. Anna Zarnowska. Thus far, it has published six volumes in our women's history series: Women and Education (ed. DiG, Warsaw 1992); Women and Society (ed. DiG Warsaw 1995): Women and the World of Politics (ed. DiG Warsaw 1996); Women and Culture (ed. DiG Warsaw 1996); Women and Lifestyle (ed. DiG Warsaw 1997); Women and Work (ed. DiG Warsaw 2000).

In spite of this series, we have just published the volume Woman in Inter-War Poland (ed. DiG Warsaw 2000). The leitmotif of the reflections presented in this third volume is a question concerning the degree to which the reconstruction of the Polish state after 1918, based on the principles of parliamentary democracy, favored social democratisation and the overcoming of patriarchalism. Our publication is the first in Polish historiography to embark upon an attempted balance sheet of such widely comprehended cultural transformation in the Second Republic.

The Polish Committee for Women's History had a meeting in May 2000 which was devoted to "Gender and Leisure Time." The next conference will be held in January 2001 at the Polish Academy of Sciences on the theme "Morality and the First World War."

-compiled by Magda Gawin