GENDER AND WELL-BEING IN THE CZECH-REPUBLIC

American women are stressed by network events and men by economic even ts outside the home, with women internalizing distress symptoms and me n externalizing them. This gender pattern of stress-distress in the Un ited States was tested in the 1990-1991 Czech Republic with a two-wave panel based on 294 households, 90% of which are Czech. This analysis is restricted to the 192 respondents who completed questionnaires in t he second wave, 1991. The country was in the shock phase of its transi tion from state socialism to democracy and a market economy, and peopl e were experiencing economic hardship and uncertainty. Czech women and men reported similar exposure to economic and network stress and were similar in their vulnerability to stress (mastery and social support) as well. Women reported higher levels of internalized distress sympto ms (depression, anxiety, and somatization) than men, but there were no significant gender differences in externalized symptoms (hostility). The effects of economic and network stress on the distress symptoms we re the same for women and men. Mastery buffered the relationship betwe en economic stress and somatization and hostility, but social support was not a buffer between the stressors and distress, and these were tr ue for both men and women. Interpretations of the results rest on the convergence of gender roles in the Czech Republic since 1948, which ex posed Czech women and men equally to the shock phase of the post-commu nist transformation.