2024-04-17 00:33:40
What does it mean to be a woman in politics, how to behave and to what extent to show emotions? Czech professor of political sociology Anna Pospěch Durnová from the University of Vienna decided to explore these questions in an unconventional way. She exchanged the academic world for the theater and wrote a play. The production The Woman’s Hour is directed by Jiří Honzírek by the Feste Theater in Brno.
The year is 2060 and the world is once again facing a devastating pandemic. Two leading European politicians are to speak to the citizens and reassure them. But they don’t know much, so they think of going to someone more experienced for advice. They are leaving to visit Angela Merkel, who has long since retired from politics. The former chancellor, played by Kateřina Jebava, lives in a cobweb-covered cottage, where she walks with a hunchback in satin pajamas and remembers her political career. For example, how, as a grown woman, some male colleagues called her a little girl.
The situation is made all the more complicated by the fact that the new virus seems to spread through laughter, so loud laughter in public is more than reckless. Each of the two young politicians who go to consult the former “Queen of Europe” professes a different strategy in a challenging period. For Alexa, played by Sabina Šlachtová, the starting point is the so-called “emotional fasting”. He takes Merkel’s moderation and moderation as a role model. In contrast, her colleague Jandula, played by Terezá Havránková, bets on open vulnerability and sensitivity. “How do you get to the negotiating table as a woman, but at the same time not lose your natural face? It’s a very subtle boundary,” thinks the author of the play.
He observes that Angela Merkel’s poker face is not so much in vogue today and the demand is for greater authenticity. “We see it in politicians such as Sanna Marin, Jacinda Ardern, and finally even Markéta Pekarová Adamová. The basic social narrative has changed: instead of a person who is strong by not revealing anything, we are building one whose strength lies precisely in that he will show his divisiveness,” Durnová describes the transformation.
“I would like men to go to the show as well,” says sociologist Anna Pospěch Durnová. | Photo: Tomáš Škoda
However, in the Woman’s Hour, he also plays with the question of what kind of response to this trend may follow. She is personified by the “emotionally desolate” Alexa. “Therapy is one of the most important inventions of the 20th century. But I wonder what the unintended consequences of open vulnerability might be. For example, it might happen that society gets tired of constantly talking about our feelings. That we realize that we don’t have to talk about everything and sharing everything is also convenient,” challenges the political scientist.
“Doesn’t the idea creep into us in therapy that all our relationships have to be happy, productive and positive? That we have to solve everything? Can’t this lead to the fact that it will be incredibly limiting and annoying and we will want to hide in imperfection? That we will to find beauty in discipline again because it will give us security? I’m not mocking it, I’m just asking a question and I don’t have an answer,” he continues.
It also deals with the possible side effects of female emancipation. Her production features women who have already achieved almost everything and hold top political positions. Nevertheless, some of their female colleagues willingly throw themselves into the arms of conservatives who offer them “traditional femininity”. “Some research on the values of youth shows that young men are increasingly conservative and are afraid of feminism. At a time when the planet is overpopulated, moreover, the issue of abortion is returning as a central patriarchal tool at the legislative level,” Anna Pospěch Durnová gives examples a return to conservative ideas about the role of women.
According to her, there can be two reasons. “Men feel threatened because, until recently, we considered feminism only as a women’s issue and did not talk about masculinity. Although there are already researches on masculinity, they are still in their infancy,” he says. “The second reason may be that we start to live the emancipation story and discover that it is not always easy. That feminism will not solve all our problems. I dare to say that I have managed to fulfill the emancipation story in private and public life and I am satisfied with it, but it’s not always a walk in the park,” he admits.
A solid woman with a human face
Anna Pospěch Durnová initially did not want to deal with the former German chancellor at all – she found her uninteresting from a feminist point of view. It was director Honzírek’s wish, which she resisted at first. “Merkel belongs to a typical generation of women who got to the top because they denied all their individuality and femininity, stood up and wore boring jackets. It’s no coincidence that they are conservative, not progressive, politicians like that,” she explains her initial dislike.
But when she started working on the play and composing it from her hitherto unused literary fragments, the former chancellor was just leaving office. Biographical accounts of her beginnings began to appear in abundance. At the same time, the Czech media highlighted how Merkel was “reasonably emotional” from her point of view. This became interesting for Durnová, whose research deals with, among other things, the topic of emotions. He considers the moment when Merkel, until then known as a sharp conservative politician, showed compassion for migrants fleeing mainly from Syria in 2015 to be crucial.
“At that moment, it was a very unexpected, but terribly strong step in her lined path as a conservative politician, because it was based on ordinary humanity. She showed a human face more than once, for example when she sharply defined herself against right-wing populism and expressions of hatred. In some moments, she showed her firm, but a human hand. However, it was towards the end of his career,” says Durnová.
She often explains that emotions have “gender, body, and ethnicity,” as she puts it. “We perceive the tears of former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who says she can no longer handle this job, or Zuzana Čaputová, who explains that she will not run for a second term, differently than the tears of Barack Obama,” he compares. According to her, this is also the reason why Angela Merkel could afford to show much more humanity as the most powerful woman in Germany than as a politician who has just become the leader of the party. “We have to accept this in the progressive discourse, whether we like it or not,” he points out.
“The Ornaments of Politics”
The Woman’s Hour was created before the Czech Presidency of the European Union in 2022, and now the topic is relevant again before the elections to the European Parliament. Currently, only a third of the Czech Republic is represented by women. According to Durnová, it is important to think about what we are actually calling for when we want more women in politics. “Are we more eager for humanity in politics, or for everyone to be democratically represented? Various ideas and symbols are creeping into it, for example conservative bon mots about women ‘beautifying’ politics,” he says.
Alexa advocates emotional moderation, Jandula sharing. How will they finally agree to speak to Europe together? | Photo: Jiří Štěpánek
But she considers such ideas to be wrong, because “women in politics” is not a unified category. Even with their higher representation, the contradiction between being more like Angela Merkel or like Jacinda Ardern will remain. “To me, it’s the epitome of a broader political dispute that you might call conservatism versus liberalism,” he says.
The Woman’s Hour was also played in the Chamber of Deputies, where Divadlo Feste invited three MPs – Marie Jílková elected for the KDU-ČSL, Lucie Potůčková as mayor and Martina Ochodnická from TOP 09. The president of the lower chamber Markéta Pekarová Adamová also from TOP 09 took over the patronage of the event. However, more female MPs than male MPs arrived. “Some colleagues asked the female legislators how they feel when they are in the minority,” Durnová recalls. “I would like men to come to the show as well. The play is not only about the future of women in politics. Against a dystopian background, the topic of emotional being in the world, which is relevant for any gender, is also addressed,” she explains.
Science at play
Durnová has been fascinated by theater for a long time, and she already had several text fragments in her “drawer”. He sees this artistic achievement as an extension of his scientific work. “I discovered that I can work with a scientific text in different ways. I already experimented by stepping outside the scientific audience and started writing journalistic comments. Theater is also a form of experiment for me – instead of writing a research report, a technical article or an essay, I wrote a play,” she says.
She is not the only scientist who tries to communicate with the public through artistic means. Alice Koubová, a philosopher from Charles University, is also devoted to this discipline, and the themes she deals with in her scientific work are treated theatrically with the director and choreographer Miřenka Čechová. “The theater is a space that fascinates me. You speak in it with a text that also contains space. My path is interdisciplinary,” concludes Durnová.
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