Dr. Szabó Lajos: Nők a magyar sportban (A Sportmúzeum Kincsei 3. Budapest, 2003)

WOMEN AND SPORTS" IN SOCIALIST VALUES (1948-1989) After World War II, Hungary ended up in the Soviet sphere of interests and thus was forced to introduce a Soviet-style political structure. The issue of women's rights became a political matter and female participation, with all of its positive and negative aspects, was regarded as nothing but a statistical element. Women were extremely rarely in decision making positions, and there were simply no female leaders in sports. The slogan that Hungary is a „great power in sports" was supposed to evidence the superiority of socialism, like in any other Soviet-block countries. The Olympics of the I950's, Helsinki in 1952 and Malbourne in 1956 were the most successful games of Hungary's women athletes. With eleven medals (5 gold, 3 silver, 3 bronze), gymnast Agnes Keleti is Hungary's most successful female Olympic champion to date. The gymnast team (Margit Korondi, Olga Tass, Erzsébet Köteles, Aliz Kertész) achieved great results, too. The performance of our ladies' swimming team at the time was similarly outstanding (Katalin Szőke, Eva Novak, Ilona Novak, Valéria Gyenge, Judit Ternes, Éva Székely). In not-Olympic sports, the table tennis players delivered the best results. During the I960's, the employment of women was practically 100% in Hungary, yet wages remained different for men and women. What is more, the dictatorial methods of the government completely minimized the possibility of women's self-organization. It was mainly the underpaid jobs and professions that became „female dominated". Mandatory mass sports, an initiative imposed from „higher levels" did not really make leisure sporting attractive. In competitive sports, results were the one and only consideration and state sports management surrendered everything to it. If women seemed to have better prospects for international success in a certain sport (as it was the case with kayaking, fencing, basketball, handball and volleyball), then they got the support. Official political propaganda declared the „equality" of women in technical sports, too, yet reality was different. In scientific research, biological topics were the one and only supported field. By the I970's, the two-working-parent family model became typical in Hungary. Working women had less and less time for sporting (due to inappropriate infrastructure, poor selection of possibilities; the appearance of household machines made life easier but did not shorten work hours). Still, sports were increasingly popular among university students. Once they had their own families, however, they did not have much time for exercising any longer.