Solidarity's Heroines
PR dla Zagranicy
Nick Hodge
04.07.2014 15:00
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The women who defeated communism in Poland.
25 years after the fall of communism, American author Shana Penn argues that stereotypes about a male-dominated Solidarity victory still need to be challenged.
Shana Penn speaking at the 24th Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow. Photo: Wojciech Karlinski
Penn, who spoke at the 24th Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow this week, has won acclaim for her book Solidarity's Secret: The Women who Defeated Communism in Poland.
She was working for a human rights organisation in Berkeley, California, when Solidarity triumphed in the free elections of June 1989.
University of Michigan Press
“I was avidly, hungrily reading all of the newspapers, and I realised there were only men being interviewed, and I wondered where are the women," she told Polish Radio reporter Nick Hodge.
“And if I thought about Solidarity it was a mass-based movement, it had 10 million members, 50 percent of those members were women. Well where were they?”
Penn says that not only did women fill “a leadership vacuum” when the the top rung of Solidarity was arrested after the declaration of martial law in 1981, but they also played a crucial role in areas that received less limelight in the aftermath of 1989, such as the underground press.
Shana Penn is Executive Director of Taube Philanthropies, which includes the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture. The 24th Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow runs until 6 June.