Miners and Wives in Romania's Jiu Valley: Perspectives on Postsocialist Class, Gender, and Social Change

Theories of postsocialism posit great variability, uncertainty, and change in developing gender relationships. This article, using the case of Romania's Jiu Valley coal miners, suggests that gender change in postsocialism is somewhat more predictable than assumed as it is most typically dependent on changing class hierarchies and conditions. Due to large-scale economic restructuring in Romania's Jiu Valley coal-mining region and the denigration of the once-celebrated worker, gender relations between miners and their wives, highly differentiated, dependent, but distanced during socialism, have become much more closely intertwined, to mixed effect. In some instances, these relations disintegrate, leaving extreme social problems in their wake. In other instances spouses switch roles to enable income-producing activity but cause gender uncertainty and problematic behavior. Whatever the response, these changes both result from changing labor and class conditions and produce identity crises for both Valley men and women and, by implication, for other postsocialist workers.