Feminism in Romania after World War II
After 1945, the feminist movement in Romania was subordinated to the policies of the communist regime.
Steliu Lambru, 20.04.2026, 14:00
After 1945, the feminist movement in Romania was subordinated to the policies of the communist regime and ideology dictated what should be done. While the regime’s actions to help women in need and suffering were presented as propaganda and had a reduced scope in reality, other women suffered the most terrible persecution in prisons, as political prisoners, and their families were persecuted and marginalized.
In communist Romania, there was an institution that dealt with women’s issues. Tania Lovinescu worked there and, in 2003, she presented to the Oral History Center of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation what successes she had scored: “This institution, which was called the Union of Democratic Women of Romania, which perhaps had its sins, was involved in carrying out a literacy campaign, in delousing the population, fought against scabies, brought soap to the countryside. I mean, there was a group of people that I don’t know, who, in 1944-1945, made it possible for all those in the party and state leadership to adopt children to save them from the drought of 1946-47. So, instead of starving in the fields in Moldavia, these kids became Livezeanu’s daughter, I don’t know whose daughter, Bodnăraş’s son and so on.”
Those who had committed themselves to addressing women’s issues in Romania did so out of conviction. Tania Lovinescu has more details: “The National Women’s Council was formed a little later, before it was called the Democratic Women’s Committee, something like that. We were about 10-12 in total in that council. And since all over the world, in socialist countries and capitalist countries, there were women’s councils, women’s organizations, in America and everywhere, there had to be a correspondent organization in Romania too. All the letters about the troubles and tragedies that people had were sent, for example, to Gheorghiu-Dej. Everything related to women reached the Women’s Council. And each of us would set off on a journey, at certain times, to see why an old woman from the village of Găvoşdea in Maramures said that her son was innocent, but was imprisoned. So we felt, in a way, like archangels of justice!”
But the realities turned out to be, most of the time, more complicated than what we found out in the offices: “The chance of my life was that I always looked for and found a very high emotional motivation in work. That’s how I perceived things, maybe it wasn’t like that, but it seemed to me that I was going to do something, to help with something. I was trying to find out for instance why a certain woman wasn’t allowed to be mayor? What had happened? And what I found out was that, in fact, she had argued with the wife of the local police chief and that a committee had been convened to take action. I’m not saying that we succeeded in all our actions, but at least we tried. And if today there are women chiefs in the villages of Romania, or women that had been Agricultural Production Cooperative chiefs, brigade chiefs, leaders of the zootechnical sector before, this is also thanks to the work we did.”
In 1977, the leader Nicolae Ceauşescu dissolved all the organizations that were headed by people from the team of his predecessor, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. Tania Lovinescu is back at the microphone with details: “He dissolved ARLUS, the Fight for Peace, the National Council of Women, which had a fairly serious and difficult job. We were all mothers. We left for the field work in January and returned home in March. We had no change of clothes, and we had small children at home. We were all around thirty, forty years old. We had angry husbands, many of the women were divorced because the husbands were bored of their absence. There were 32 active women in total and a few women in the leadership, the organization was not a burden for the state. The dissolution of the organization was absolutely inexplicable.”
Mia Groza was the daughter of Petru Groza, the prime minister under whose regime Romania was turned into a communist country starting in 1945. As a diplomat at the UN, she was also forced to take into account the issues raised by the feminist movement: “I also dealt with international relations at the National Council of Women, I dealt with the international women’s movement. I never liked feminist activity. When they tried to persuade me to accept this job, I set conditions. I accepted, only on the condition that I deal with international relations. Otherwise, I would not have accepted. They respected my wish and I think they made a good decision because I understood these issues more than others in the leadership of the National Council of Women. I had difficult moments, sometimes embarrassing because I had to support people who had little to do with international relations issues. I was very active in the organization and then I was the president of the Third Commission at the UN and I had very good relations with U Thant. He was an interesting person. He used a lot this phrase ‘my favorite president’. We had weekly meetings and working lunches, and he would say, ‘And now, I give the floor to my favorite president.’ That was me. He was nice, he was an interesting man.”
The feminist movement in Romania between 1945 and 1989 had little impact on solving women’s real problems. It was more of an instrument of exercising power than a carrier of a message of grievances. (LS)
