Mothers' social rights and neoliberalism in Poland

Public philosophy of neoliberalism relies on women providing social reproduction services at little cost to the state as the latter withdraws from many areas of social welfare provision. Neoliberal economic policies imposed on the post-communist European countries by the World Bank and The IMF in the 1990s as well as budget cutbacks made by Polish government in the early 2000s to meet the requirements of the accession to the EU have drastically affected single mothers' families and increased the feminization of poverty.

The grassroots mobilization started in the fall 2002 after the government announced that due to austerity measures stemming from joining the EU the Alimony Fund would be eradicated.  It ceased to exist on 1^st of May 2004 leaving single mothers with no support.

The Single Mothers For the Alimentary Fund Movement has been so far the most spectacular response on the part of civil society to the character and dynamics of social and economic transformation in Poland. Unlike the situation in Latin America where the power of “motherist groups” arises from the ability to draw upon the feminine imagery of Catholicism against the state by evoking the image of the suffering mother and her sacrifice, Polish Single Mothers called on the civil rights and the constitutional principle of the protection of family. They have been attempting at changing the discriminatory law as mothers-citizens fighting for social rights; neither using the essentialist notions of womanhood nor calling themselves feminists.

Based on the results of a research conducted in 2005-2011 the paper analyzes collective political mobilization of single, poor and marginalized mothers. The activities and strategies pursued by Single Mothers reflect the ongoing processes of re-conceptualizing of the "nuclear family," mothering practice and more broadly reconfiguration of public/private dichotomy and their consequences for women’s citizenship in a post socialist context.