BUT WE ARE STILL MOTHERS - GENDER AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF NEED IN POST-SOCIALIST HUNGARY

This paper examines the gender regime of the welfare state transition underway in contemporary Hungary. I analyse this welfare restructuring within three state terrains and trace shifts in regime policies, inst itutional practices, and client strategies from late state socialism t o the present. I argue that these shifts denote fundamental alteration s in the social conception of need and in the nature of claims to stat e assistance. In the last two decades of state socialism, the Hungaria n welfare apparatus was organized around maternal guarantees that acco rded women benefits based on ther contributions as mothers. These soci al guarantees provided female clients with a sense of entitlement and practical resources for use in their domestic struggles. In post-socia list Hungary, this maternal discourse is being dislodged by a new lang uage of welfare designed to target and treat poverty. As the welfare s ystem is oriented toward poor relief, women's needs have been material ized and their maternal identities displaced by new class identities a nd stigmas. With these shifts, the practical and discursive space for women to maneuver has contracted-prompting female clients to resist an d reassert their previous status as entitled mothers. The data present ed in this paper are drawn from archival, interview, and ethnographic research conducted in Budapest, Hungary from October 1993 to April 199 5.