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Efka's Birthday

In February of 2001 our girl eFKa turned 10 years old. She's in elementary school, a good student and doing well. Her brother is 10 years older. The family once had great hopes for himbut lately he's gone to the dogs. eFKa is sweet and humble. Last year she had her first communion and she's on the verge of puberty. Who knows what she'll become? She's just a kid! But one thing is for sure: she's incredibly stubborn! As an infant she wouldn't let go of her rattle. As she got older there was a trumpet, bells and a drum. When she wanted attention, she would make noise until everyone came around to see.

The history of eFKa goes back to the 1980's. In those days the questions "Are you a feminist?" or "Do you think women are discriminated against?" more often than not ended conversation on the topic or became the subject of ridicule and laughter. The idea of feminism sounded absurd. Absurd because it was considered to be an item imported from America that was incompatible with Polish reality. In turn, discrimination against women was thought to be a 19th century relic. It was claimed that, though women might have been discriminated against in the past, they were not now, not in this modern Polish society that glorified the female worker as well as Saint Mary.

The situation required dialogue, finding the proper language to describe our concerns and doing it in a way that would tear down the wall of ridicule. For a few years Women's Day was a good pretext to launch those discussions. By the end of the 80's Women's Day was met with silence. It was boycotted as a communist holiday and its commercial exploitation was yet to come. Just to spite the silence, the weekend following March 8th became the traditional date for Krakow feminists to gather together.

In 1987, the first such Feminist Session marked the begining of Efka's pre-natal period. The session was held at the Institute of Philosophy of Jagiellonian University by the Philosophy Club. There were less than 20 feminists participating, not an impressive number. The session was entitled "To be a Woman"? The presentations delievered concerned women and their place in cultural history, philosophy and medicine. In addition, there was a presentation on witches, based on the writings of Erika Jong. It was a big event for all of us. Most of the participants went on to do more in the feminist movement; many are still active. Maria Ciechomska wrote a book From Matriarchy to Feminism, I wrote Ladies , Knights and Feminists, Maciej Ulinski just recently finished his doctoral thesis on women in philosophy, Joanna Cvikova from Bratislava is editor-in-chief of Aspekt , the largest feminist magazine in post-communist countries, J. Plakwicz, A. Siwek, and B.Fiszer together run PSF Women's Center in Warsaw.

As we walked to the Institute of Philospohy that day before the first Session started we recited a line from a Milosz poem "(...)They dragged them down to Mariacki Square; to lash them hard and jeer at them", ready to face the worst possible scenario. It turned out to be even worse than our expectations. We met indifference. Few people turned up and there was little interest in our presentations. Though all of our college friends knew about the session, they completely ignored it. Convinced that there was something important to say, we organized the Session again a year later, with more people participating . This time the session was entitled "Women's Place in Patriarchal Culture".

There were still a few Sessions held afterwards but the one of 1989 was a real breakthrough. It was then that we got bored with the purely theoretical form. We still needed to speak out, but we also needed some meaningful words that could alter reality. Our aim was to change political reality in Poland. When the first attempts to introduce a legal ban on abortion were made we organized demonstrations, formed picket lines and wrote letters of protest. The topics appearing during our March sessions became more involved with current events. The 1990 Session's main theme was "Maternity as a Choice and as a Constraint" . A year later eFKa was registered as a foundation. Its name is a phonetically spelled acronym of the first letters of Fundacja Kobieca (Women's Foundation).

There were two and a half "Founding Mothers"of EFKa: Barbara Kaszur from the Polish Ecological Group, Beata Kozak-current editor-in-chief of "Zadra" magazine and myself. Beata Kozak was "half a founder" due to the fact that though she participated in the conceptual work, she was abroad and unavailable for the signing of legal documents starting the foundation. The foundation consists of the management and the board. The first four-person management team ran it smoothly for 4 years but then after considerable tension fell apart. During those 4 years (1991-1995) the March sessions organized by eFKa attracted more and more women. With time the Sessions moved from the University buildings to other locations.

In 1992 eFKa published a book entitled "Women Have the Floor" , the first collection of essays by Polish feminists. The advertising slogan for the book was: "Let him make the dinner while you read this book". A year later eFKa started publishing the first real feminist magazine called "In a Full Voice " (Pelnym glosem). It was high time someone did it. Numerous feminists had been writing good articles but popular press had no interest in printing them and they've laid in publishers' drawers for years. As the editor-in-chief of "In a Full Voice " I had the greatest time! Wonderful writers and excellent articles, I could feel a fresh breeze blowing. A new clear voice could be heard in Polish culture. This time it could not be ignored or held down. Working on the first issue I was assisted by Iza Kaluta and Monika Goralewska; subsiquent issues involved Beata Kozak more and more. Bozena Choluj helped with the third issue. "In A Full Voice" was supposed to be published quarterly but the editing process took so long that it eventually became an annual. It was published for 5 years until 1997. The first issue opened with an article well-known to Polish feminists, written by Barbara Limanowska. Its title, Why Is There No Feminism in Poland? provoked a desire among feminists to disprove it.

In the meantime eFKa was doing really well. In 1993 the city found accomodation for our foundation in a basement of an old building, at Helclow Street, a short walk from the Main Market Square. Through a dark staircase, past a rubbish shed, into a yard where a small damp room on the ground floor served as the first headquarters for our group. We called it Mangle -as the place was formerly used for pressing laundry. We liked this idea; that we,the feminist women, would meet at this place and discuss feminism, just like women used to gossip in the mangle. eFKa after all has always been a traditionalist: when it comes to revolution she prefers a bloodless one; she supports creative transformation, keeping up the continuity and stable progress, without attacking what had been before.

Once a week, Wednesday at 7 pm., women would gather at Mangle. Sometimes nobody showed up, sometimes a group of lesbians stopped by, happy to be able to speak out loud about themselves in a public place. Some women told us how long they had been looking for us, others complained that we did not do anything to make it easier for people to find us. We enjoyed all those visits a lot. We were not hiding. To the contrary-we did all we could to be visible within the city landscape. Some of the women who "found" us back then have stayed with eFKa till now.

Until first half of 1995 eFKa was not a full-time effort, but the situation changed. There appeared an opportunity to turn our passion into a way of making a living. After a 2-year-long cooperation with the now disbanded Frauen Anstifung Foundation from Hamburg, we signed a contract for organizing a Women's Center in Krakow. We rented a place near Wawel Castle, we furnished it and had a great office, large library and a place to meet and party.

While still at Mangle, in 1995, eFKa started a telephone help-line for women. Back then we constantly had to answer questions as to why such service was needed. Why only for women?
Are they worse off ? Different? Can't they call the public help-line? Very soon it became clear to women callers how important it was to be speaking to another woman. Some of the slogans for this service were: "Friendly conversation; Relevant Information; Women helping women; We're on your side". Our prime commandment was to listen and not to give advice. Our job was not to solve our callers problems but to help them figure out what they were and guide them toward possible solutions. The choice was theirs. From what we learned in those telephone conversations we were able to offer other forms of support at the Women's Center such as: legal counseling, workshops for victims of domestic violence, for lesbians,and for those dealing with the trauma of divorce. We also organized assertiveness courses for both working and unemployed women, courses in how to set up and run a business and computer training for women. The last project evolved into a separate company, completely detached from EFKa.

At the Women's Center we also organized open discussion meetings concerned with practical issues like AIDS prevention and contraception. It soon turned out that both we and the women who came to visit the Center were interested in cultural and political topics. In our library we held discussions on newly published books about women and we invited feminist writers and journalists to come and speak. Once a year we organized a conference to bring together feminists from all over Poland. The most important of these was a conference on domestic violence organized by Roma Ciesla and Viola Cywicka in cooperation with Women's Program of the Batory Foundation in the Fall of 1995. "Domestic Violence, Violence Against Women" -brought together many of the women who are currently working at prevention of domestic violence.

Another important conference was "A Century of Women at Polish Universities " held in 1997. This anniversary would go unnoticed but for numerous posters around the city and the arrival of many eminent women from Warsaw, Szczecin, Poznan and Lviv (Ukraine) universities. Women from both Krakow and Lviv won the right to attend university roughly at the same time. "Pelnym glosem" published some of the presentations as well as the results of a survey on sexual harassment in colleges conducted among female students.

Yet another conference, held in 1999, attempted to define the goals common to ecologists and feminists. It was entitled "Feminism and Ecology:Progressing Towards a World Free of Violence and Exploitation". We ended the conference in the countryside around the campfire practising our philosophy by having a beautiful peaceful time.
The same year eFKa began in earnest its publishing activity by opening a publishing house of the same name. Two books, both nominated for the Nike Literary Award, brought immediate fame to the new publishing house. One of them, "The Flesh, Desire and Clothing" by Krystyna Klosinska became the contest finalist. In addition to that the first issue of "Zadra" was published in the Fall of 1999. At last one could go to a bookstore and buy a feminist magazine. And, what's more, they could do it every three months.

That's the history of eFKa in brief. It's a history that has been made by many wonderful, wise and corageous women and also by a few great guys. If one wanted to tell the story in more detail they would have to write a book.
In the meantime our girl eFKa grows like a weed, it's hard to stop and talk about her past. And the story continues.