Despite the measures passed after the 1989 ‘velvet revolution’, which should have secured a democratic civil society, the state policy of Slovakia has sanctioned the dominance of Catholicism, supporting it financially, institutionally, and with propaganda.

The continuous animosity of the Catholic Church against women is necessarily linked with this transformation of Slovakia into a Catholic state. The interior minister V. Palko claimed at the Republican Congress of the Christian Democratic Party in 2003: “In western civilization a cultural war is under way, at which the leftist liberals want to wipe out Christian civilization. They want to enforce on us a perverse view of the pillars of society, which are the family and marriage. They doubt the right to preserve human life at its beginning equally as at its end.”

A dangerous row between governmental coalition partners arose when parliament rejected the abortion law proposed by Christian Democrats and instead passed another, more liberal law proposed by Alliance of the New Citizens (ANO) and its chairman P. Rusko. The Christian Democratic Party appealed immediately to the Constitutional Court. The church threatened the president of the Republic and parliamentarians with excommunication.

The chairman of the Bishops Conference, Bishop Frantisek Tondra, proclaimed that passing of the amendment had been a treachery committed on the electorate. “In my opinion they have been excommunicated,” he said, adding that the excommunication can be reversed by penitence. It is clear that the Catholic Church aspires to an unchallenged right to dictate to the parliamentarians of Slovakia. The president, Rudolf Schuster, was himself intimidated to the extent that he finally did not sign the new law, despite his alleged agreement with its content.

This episode illustrates just one aspect of the hostile policy of Slovakia against women and their rights. Many others remain unnoticed, including demands to deprive women of their equal status in society by claiming that the duty of women is limited to maintaining the household. Such tendencies show themselves in the lack of equal opportunities for women in terms of employment and salary.

According to the most recent investigation by the statistical bureau, in 1996 women’s salaries reached 74.9% of men’s salaries; in 2001 it was 74.1%; and in 2002 it had dropped to 71.7%. Substantial differences between men’s and women’s salaries were noticeable especially in banking and communications professions. The situation for women in employment is clearly deteriorating.

The picture in political participation, one of the most important aspects of citizenship, is no better. Compared to other European countries, women in Slovakia were granted the right to vote relatively early, immediately after the formation of the Czechoslovak Republic in October 1918. Yet the right of women to be elected and to participate in the formulation of government policy has yet to be satisfactorily secured or implemented. Before 1989 quotas were in place requiring a 30% proportion of women on lists of election candidates. As a result, more than 20% of parliamentarians were women. After 1990, the figure was 12%. After intense public debate on equal opportunities and pressure from non- governmental organizations, the figure rose after the 2002 elections, but only to 19.3%. And women’s participation in the executive branch has declined after these elections. The new cabinet does not have a single female minister. By comparison, in most EU member states the ratio of women in the cabinet exceeds one third, and in many it is approaching parity. The situation is the same or even worse at the regional level of the state administration and in regional and municipality administration.

Slovakia is just one example illustrating how the establishment of ‘Christian values’ in state policy poses a serious danger to women’s rights. European NGOs seeking the implementation of real democracy should unite and oppose these tendencies, especially potent in candidate states to the EU. These states should be pressurized to bring their legislature and state policy in line with the requirements to safeguard equal rights for all citizens, regardless of gender and other distinguishing characteristics, before they are admitted to the EU. Stop discrimination!

Viera Faragulová is a member of the Prometheus Society of

Slovakia.