The sphere of early childhood education care (ECEC) in the Czech Republic has diversified enormously in the last decade. The article describes this diversification process and, drawing on focus group data, analyses parents’ choices within this diversified realm. Based on the parents’ selection criteria (significantly influenced by constraints and opportunities relating to social background or family status), it identifies four parental groups: pedagogical approach-centered, child-centered, facility-centered and (constrained) non-selective. The issues of ECEC diversification and parental choice are then discussed in light of Annette Lareau’s classed cultural logics of child rearing and the potential implications for the reproduction and reinforcement of social inequalities.

No abstract

This article compares the post-1989 development of work-family policies aimed at mothers of young children in two Visegrad countries, the Czech Republic and Hungary. The comparison draws on the conceptual framework of 'maternalism' and expands it by focusing on the similarities and differences between two welfare states which provide generous public support to the maternal care of young children; it also incorporates an analysis of policy and political documents. The paper argues that in the Czech Republic, public support is given exclusively to the maternal care of children under the age of three, while the Hungarian system offers basic public support to day care services as well. The discursive analysis has revealed the same pattern:Czech documents focus entirely on maternal care, though mothers are subsumed under the 'family', while Hungarian texts contain a wider range of discourses about childcare.

No abstract

This article deals with the political problematisation of gender inequalities in the context of the European Union's gender equality policies on a supranational level. Based on the concept of transnational advocacy networks (TAN), the fi rst part of the article presents the European Women's Lobby and units at the European Commission dealing with gender equality policies as two key actors in TAN that promote gender equality issues within the structures of the EU. The article then moves on to describe policy frame analysis as an approach to analysing the way in which the gender inequalities addressed by these actors are politically problematised in three policy documents connected to the European Commission's 'Roadmap for Equality between Women and Men 2006-2010'. The analysis focuses on the main frames in these documents that legitimise the existence of an independent policy fi eld concerned with gender equality at the EU level and discusses the ramifi cations of these frames for the promotion of gender equality; for example, how certain policy measures might lead to different outcomes when promoted within different frames.