Includes bibliographical references (pages 355-358) and index
Introduction : national secret -- Women at the gates : Anna Walentynowicz and the August 1980 strikes -- Solidarity's "blank spot" : the legal period and martial law -- Dark circles : building the Solidarity underground -- Floating offices : publishing the underground newspaper -- Wild card: the female stereotype as camouflage -- A third space : mutual dependencies and cooperation -- Patient revolution : women and leadership -- "Our romantic model" : myth, literature, and women's place -- In the end, the beginning : adjustments and new problems for women after 1989 -- Filling in the "blank spot" : the public discourse on women
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Drawing on a decade of interviews, Penn (Union Theological Center in Berkeley, California) pieces together the huge, largely unstudied contributions of the Polish women whose pro-democracy work was obscured by the more public successes of their male counterparts. While prominent men like Lech Walesa were underground or in jail during the 1980s martial law years, it was women who worked behind the scenes to keep Walesa's face visible and Solidarity's name alive; they ran Solidarity and the main opposition newspaper, and they organized Poles at the grass roots--an area of civic activity that the Western press considered only marginally newsworthy. Penn's history uncovers what one of the women called Poland's "national secret." Annotation : 2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Solidarity's secret.
NSZZ "Solidarność" (Labor organization)-- Political activity