Life Like a Swing: Women’s Perspectives of Everyday Life in Czechoslovak Seafarers’ Families under State Socialism

Denying free travel abroad and back to one’s homeland represented an integral part of the communist regime’s authoritarian control in socialist Czechoslovakia. In this context, people who were allowed to travel abroad were in a privileged position. Paper concentrates on the experiences of people who “stayed at home”: the partners and children of workers who were able to travel and work abroad. The analysis of interviews with seafarers’ wives show a strong reproduction of gender stereotypes in these families. This fact is questioned very little by both men and women, because in the seafarer’s profession provided these families with a specific sort of luxury and uniqueness, bringing them considerable benefits that distinguished these people from the majority of the population.