Christine Bergmann
Opening of the International Conference “Gender in Transition in Eastern
and Central Europe” 21
Theoretical Approaches
Birgit Sauer
“Normalized Masculinities”: Constructing Gender in Theories of Political
Transition and Democratic Consolidation 26
Peggy Watson
Gender and Politics in Postcommunism 37
JiÍina Òmejkalová
Gender as an Analytical Category of Post-Communist Studies 49
Irene Dölling
Ten Years After: Gender Relations in a Changed World – New Challenges
for Women’s and Gender Studies 57
Hildegard Maria Nickel
ZiF – the Centre for Interdisciplinary Women’s Studies. A paradigm
for the Institutionalisation of Women’s and Gender studies 66
Christine Kulke
Impacts of Globalization on Gender Politics and Gender Arrangements
75
Joanna Regulska
Gendered Integration of Europe: New Boundaries of Exclusion 84
Barbara Einhorn
Gender and Citizenship in the Context of Democratisation and Economic
Transformation in East Central Europe 97
Feminist Theory and the Publi-Private-Debate
Libora Oates-Indruchová
Discourses of Gender in the post-1989 Czech Republic: A Textual Perspective
118
Zuzana Kiczkova
Why Do We Need Feminist Theories or One More Time about Publicity and
Privacy 124
Martina Ritter
Russia – A Patriarchal Mama-Society. The Dynamics of the Private and
the Public in Soviet and Post–Soviet Russia 133
Irina Zherebkina
“Who is Afraid of Feminism” in Ukraine? How Feminism is Possible as
a Post-Soviet Political Project? 142
Bocena Choluj
Anti-feminist Attitudes, Animosities between Women, and the Public
Life 148
Vlasta Jalucic
Connecting Citizenship and Gender: the Possibilities of Arendtian Persepctive
153
Marilyn Rueschemeyer
Women in the Political Life of Eastern Europe: Ten Years After the
End of Communism 167
Malgorzata Fuszara
The Participation of Women in Polish Authorities 176
Anca Gheaus
Feminism and the Public – Private Distinction in Romanian Society 182
Mária Adamik
“The Greatest Promise – the Greatest Humiliation” 190
The Changing Labor-Market: Structures and Prospects
Silke Steinhilber
Gender Relations and Labour Market Transformation: Status Quo and Policy
Responses in Central and Eastern Europe 201
Sabine Schenk
Re-Construction of Gender Stratification. About Men, Women, and Families
in Changing Employment Structures – the Case of East Germany 214
Iris Peinl
Beyond the Gender-Hierarchical Monotony? Ambilvalent Gender Relations
in East German Branches of Deutsche Bahn AG (German Railways PLC) 231
Constructions of Identities – Images of Women
Katarzyna Wieckowska
Universal Woman – Questions of Identity, Representation and Difference
241
Krassimira Daskalova
Manipulated Emancipation: Representations of Women in Post-Communist
Bulgaria 246
Mihaly Riszovannij
Media Discourses on Homosexuality in Hungary 254
Zorica Mrsevic
In Search for the Lost (Taken Away) Identity 261
Madalina Nicolaescu
Generating New Definitions of Feminine Identity 268
Christine Eifler
The Armed Forces as a Place of Social Construction of Gender: Women
in the Russian Military 274
Ioulia Gradskova
“The Soviet Woman’s” Identity or Does the History Matter? 278
Vesna Nikolic-Ristanovic
The Construction of Identities in Media Images of Violence against
Women 284
Caroline Antonia Wilcke
Standing at the Crossroad? Women’s and Gender Images in Present Day’s
Uzbekistan 295
Feminist Perspectives and National Identities
Ellen Krause
The State is a Man who Protects the Nation – Gender Relations and the
Concept of State and Nation in Eastern and Central Europe 303
Rada Ivekovic
Where Gender and “National/Ethnic” Difference Meet 312
Natassja Smiljanic
Women’s Human Rights in War: Outside the Law? 319
Institutionalization of Women’s and Gender Studies
Irina Novikova
East European Feminisms – in Rooms of Our Own? On the Problems of Feminist
Theorising and Integrating Women’s / Gender Studies in the Baltics / Latvia
325
Katrin Schäfgen
Gender Studies at Humboldt-University. The Process of Institutionalization
in Germany 330
Malgorzata Fuszara
Gender Studies at Warsaw University 335
Eva VÓRnová-Kalivodová, JiÍina Òiklová
The Status of Women’s and Gender Studies at Universities in Post-Communist
Countries: the Example of the Czech Republic. Experiences from the First
Ten Years After the Change 339
Zoya A. Khotkina
Ten Years of Gender Studies in Russia: We Have Been Able to Accomplish
a Lot and Look Forward with Optimism 345
Olga Lipovskaya
Institutionalization of Gender / Women’s Studies in Russia/St. Petersburg
350
Biljana Kacic
Women’s Studies: Ideological Images, Common Problems and Dilemmas 356
Katerina Kolozova
Dilemmas of Institutionalization and their Context/s 361
Margrit Eichler
Experiences in Institutionalizing Women’s Studies at a Canadian University
365
Contributors 370
Conference Programme 379
Auszug
Jana Gohrisch / Daphne Hahn / Gabriele Jähnert / Hildegard Maria Nickel / Iris Peinl / Katrin Schäfgen
2 Discussion during the Sessions
2.1 Feminist Theory and the Public-Private Debate
Discussion of the transformation processes has been extremely ambivalent
in women’s and gender research. After all, these processes display at least
two crucial, contradictory factors.
On the one hand, they are always founded on a national, historical
context and the concomitant “national gender order”, into which the structures
of state socialism were also embedded. By comparison with western countries,
gender relations in some respects produced an ambivalent “head start on
equality” (Geissler 1996), notably in terms of female employment. In most
socialist countries, social policies encouraged the reconciliation of paid
employment with motherhood.
On the other hand, transformation today is linked to a western “path
dependency”; in other words, it is under pressure to adapt to patterns
of market economy which are themselves undergoing drastic alteration. As
production, labour and labour markets in “post-industrial” countries are
buffeted by change, the prototype of the male breadwinner and the female
homemaker has been falling apart, along with the polarised domains of “public”
and “private” ascribed to men and women. It is not clear what this means
when it comes to structuring the “public” and the “private” in post-socialist
countries. Perhaps the old concepts do not apply any more, and the viability
of (western) feminist theories is already challenged. Discussion showed
that this position did not attract equal support from western and eastern
feminists. According to Mária Adamik, one cognitive explanation
offered for this is that, even in the western countries, the social transformation
taking place is reflected in differentiated form. Furthermore, interpretations
of the current erosion of conventional gender relations which have recourse
to the traditional categories of “public” and “private”, and to an a priori
assumption of an existing gender hierarchy which disfavours women, are
evidently skirting around social realities, which are fanning out more
broadly, as Anca Gheaus made clear: if the agenda is social equality between
the two gender groups, the aim is surely to achieve an equitable division
of labour within both domains of human activity.
This is also singled out as a key condition for democratisation in
the post-socialist countries, still obstructed by the gender hierarchy
which governs the relationship between the public and the private. As one
expression of this, Zuzana Kiczkova (for Czech/Slovak women) cited the
fact that society does not accept “woman’s double burden”, i.e. the need
to juggle paid employment and “private” reproductive labour. Another aspect
of this unequal social relationship was elaborated with regard to Russia,
where women do not function within either “private” or “public” gender
relations as fully-fledged subjects, but indirectly through the influence
of men, be it as wives or in a reductive role as mothers, as Martina Ritter
has shown. This not only makes it harder for them to articulate and assert
their interests in the “private” sphere, but also (and above all) in the
public and political sphere.
Studies have shown (Einhorn 1993; Kraatz 1995; de Nève 1997;
Koncz 1994) that the collapse of socialism in Central and Eastern Europe
has, in the majority of cases, limited women’s opportunities to participate
in the political process. In most of these countries, “proportional” quotas
had ensured that women accounted for about one-third of parliamentary assemblies
(ibid.). The “competitive principle” (Kraatz 1995: 249), however, meant
that female representation in parliaments has shrunk to barely visible
levels. Nevertheless, the fact that women were proportionately well represented
in the parliaments of the former socialist countries did not signify automatic
sensitivity to women’s interests or gender issues.
Women’s large-scale political exclusion after democratic elections
in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe has acquired these states
the fitting label of “male democracies” in feminist research (Einhorn 1993:
55). This draws attention to a contradiction at play in transformation
societies: on the one hand, the transition to a multi-party democracy establishes
civil rights for women (too) (Lemke 1996), but on the other their interests,
demands and specific problems are extensively ignored due to their marginalisation
in democratic institutions (Zherebkina 1997). Indicators include not only
women’s declining political participation according to “conventional” criteria
(such as the percentage of women in legislative and executive bodies),
but also a distorted and/or tentative representation of women’s interests
on the part of existing political parties as Ma»gorzata Fuszara has
demonstrated for Poland. Nevertheless, Marilyn Rueschemeyer interprets
this current marginalisation as an historically open process, induced primarily
by the constitution of a political system embedded in the market economy
with its integrated “structure of obstruction” to political activity by
women, rather than by an essentially decreasing female interest in political
representation. However, these very conditions may one day provide women
in post-socialist countries with an opportunity for (re)vitalisation, in
that their persistently strong orientation towards paid employment and
their integration into the market economy, along with the resources they
possess in terms of qualifications and emancipatory skills, could forge
(structural) bridges for future political commitment. Within this political
context, Vlasta JaluÓi… raised a more general question about whether
feminist depictions of women’s political identity and representation to
date have been a little too narrow to reflect the variety of ways in which
(female) interests are articulated and asserted. In this respect, Ahrendt’s
distinction between “social” and “political” practice could stimulate the
conceptualisation of a politically pluralistic feminism.
Another perspective from which to analyse the political participation
of Eastern women is provided by the ideologically contested turmoil to
which the cultural and symbolic gender system of “real socialism” has been
subjected in this field. According to Irina Zherebkina, there are
paradoxes at work here. In Ukraine, for example, allegedly neutral,
hegemonic government discourse is generating a broad “league of fear” against
feminism by positing the development of democracy as a direct alternative
to feminist practice. The fatal consequence is that women’s projects are
located above all in the third sector, which places them definitively outside
those processes of political power and decision-making which are crucial
to the way in which social relations are being reconstructed. Following
Libora Oates-Indruchová, another effect of these paradoxes is expressed
in the potential and limitations of discursive gender analysis within a
fuzzy, complicated ideological terrain. On the one hand, today’s hegemonic
ideology can be used to “decipher” gender hierarchies and stereotypes in
the “real socialist” countries, but on the other, the inherent, relatively
“covert” patriarchy which has evolved historically is an obstacle to discursive
practice. As Boóena Cho»uj has shown for Poland, this patriarchy
is also manifested in the dominance of male patterns of evaluation and
action in the public sphere, with their undertones of “brotherhood”. Female
“counter-meanings” are needed to counter this, and also to facilitate solidarity
between women.
2.2 The Changing Labour Market – Structures and Prospects
Discussion focussed on structures which constitute the gender relationship
as one of social inequality: segregation, hierarchy, asymmetry and exclusion
(Frerichs 1997: 49), particularly with regard to economic activity and
the labour market.
The states in transition were characterised at the outset by high levels
of vocational skills for women and – before socialism collapsed – unquestioned
female involvement in economic activity, albeit with gender asymmetries
in access to power and resources (cf. among others Khotkina 1994; Koncz
1996; Nickel 1993; Siemienska 1996). Participants discussed specific constellations
of inclusion and exclusion in the various post-socialist countries and
the effects which “marketisation” has had on the gender relationship.
One key question was whether women have confronted not only risks,
but also opportunities, and what this might signify for future relations
and arrangements between the sexes. Let us take as our point of departure
a recognition that ultimately women were responsible for the “private”
business of reproduction in “real socialism”, too, in most cases alongside
and in addition to their paid employment. Apart from this, participants
reviewed the specific diversity of gender relations in the former socialist
countries – with reference to the concept of “gender regime” (cf. Sauer
1996) – and considered how this has affected the concrete experience of
transformation.
Are generalisations at all possible given this background? If so, what
are they founded on? Current debate about changing gender relations tends
to be polarised, at least in Germany. On the one hand we hear assumptions
that the reproduction of bipolar, hierarchical gender dualism is taking
place on a “higher plane”, while on the other hand there is a thesis that
fundamental restructuring in the gendered division of labour also has implications
which erode hierarchies and enhance democratisation (Nickel/Schenk 1994).
Empirical findings sharpened our vision of a more differentiated development.
Silke Steinhilber recorded ambivalences in the gendered segregation of
the labour market both from a comparative perspective based on an analysis
of national labour market statistics. Iris Peinl located these ambivalences
through the finer grid of organisational sociology applied to the German
rail operator Deutsche Bahn as a service company. These authors attributed
the ambivalences to a tertiarisation of production and paid employment.
Although this does not compensate in statistical terms for the enormous
loss of jobs also suffered by women in the process of deindustrialisation,
it evidently implies a reorganisation of the labour market which moves
a little beyond the traditional bounds of industrial gender hierarchies.
As “private” reproductive tasks are currently shifted back from their socialised
forms, (young) skilled women in particular are being discovered as an efficiently
profit-serving source of service labour, sometimes accompanied by the insinuation
that their skills reflect conventional gender attributes. This degendered
trend in labour market demand is evidently (still?) being superimposed
on different gender arrangements in East and West (Sabine Schenk considers
the case of Germany after 1990), with eastern women, moulded by their now
historical orientation towards paid employment and relatively regardless
of their private lifestyle, insisting on a standard working week. This
appears to be compatible with the requirements of an increasingly market-oriented
process of individualisation.
2.3 Construction of Identities – Images of Women
In the West, women’s and gender studies have been drawing increasingly
in recent years on concepts from discursive analysis and constructivist
theory. This affinity with post-modernist forms of discourse is rooted
in a critique of the cultural patterns which define the “female” and the
“male”. Post-modernist criticism of the theoretical postulates of modernism
has challenged those dichotomous patterns of thinking which seek to include
and exclude, to attribute dominant and subsidiary significance.
One major premise of women’s and gender studies is that the cultural
constructions “male” and “female” not only assign attributes, character,
fields of activity, and so forth, but also constitute and reproduce power
relations (Dölling 1995). Discourse theory provides a basis for exploring
the linguistic, symbolic mechanisms which underlie the ontology and naturalisation
of gender difference, and at the same time questions those historical configurations
which determine practices of discipline, normalisation and subjectivisation
through which “gendering” occurs.
A number of empirical studies undertaken in the post-socialist countries
indicate the enduring impact of this discursive construction of gender.
In the battle (of the sexes) for scarce resources (paid employment, for
example), it seems that traditional role models are being reactivated,
with recourse to cultural patterns founded on the old male/female dichotomy.
In this context, women are referred to the reproductive domain. A “natural
female vocation” is cited to justify their confinement to domestic and
family labour (Schubert 1993; Hoffmann 1993; TÓth 1993). As we are
seeing, very different cultural traditions can apparently serve the purpose
(Mänicke-Gyöngyösi 1991).
A retraditionalisation of gender relations is reflected, for example,
in dominant discourse about masculinity, such as Ioulia Gradskova described
for Russian society. Christine Eifler took the Russian Army as her illustration
to show how appeals are now being made to traditional gender stereotypes
in spheres which had long been reserved for men, but where women’s presence
has been growing in recent years. The increase in the number of women in
the Army, a crucial arena for the production of masculinity, is by no means
an expression of women’s emancipation; in fact, biological differences
between the genders are underscored and reinforced along the old boundaries.
A revival of traditional images of women can also be observed in women’s
magazines, analysed by Katarzyna Wieckowska. These harp back to women’s
biological otherness, allocating women to pre-defined roles. They define
issues and propose solutions to problems which they regard as specifically
female. In so doing, they produce and reproduce certain views of femininity.
Examining public discourse of homosexuality in Hungary, Mihaly Riszovannij
demonstrated that the retraditionalisation of gender roles is not an isolated
phenomenon, but occurs alongside sexist, nationalist and xenophobic discourse.
The democratisation of Hungarian society has not stimulated tolerance of
other choices, but has generated new processes of exclusion rooted in traditional
gender stereotypes.
Nevertheless, there are a number of national characteristics at play
which distinguish views of femininity from one country to another, fed
by different cultural traditions. For Bulgaria, Krassimira Daskalova shows
that discourse on femininity is moving in two directions: one “traditional/conservative”
and one “emancipated/progressive”. “Traditional” views of femininity are
above all promoted by scientific channels, especially through medicine,
demography and sociology, as a form of legitimation, whereas “emancipated”
currents are oriented towards the socialist image of women and additionally
subjected to external factors.
Looking at Uzbekistan, Caroline Antonia Wilcke shows how different
ideas about femininity manage to co-exist in post-socialist countries.
She observed a synthesis between traditional views of women and views born
during the socialist period, combining with each other and with quite disparate
elements of Uzbek culture and religion.
Discursive practices are also important in the constitution of identity.
Post-modernist theories teach that identities should not be perceived as
existing a priori, but as artefacts. Identities must be constructed and
reconstructed politically and culturally. A group or gender does not begin
to exist until it can be distinguished on the basis of a particular principle
from another group or from the other gender through a process of perception
and recognition (Bourdieu 1992).
The contributions from Ioulia Gradskova, Zorica Mrsevic, Madalina Nicolaescu
and Vesna Nicolic-Ristanovic describe influences which informed female
identities in the socialist countries and changes which have occurred since.
They show how heterogeneous conditions were, and that there was no all-pervasive
female identity in socialism. For Gradskova, the identity of Russian women
resulted from social contradictions in different historical phases of Soviet
ideological discourse and from particular features relating to ethnic groups,
social strata and religious beliefs, combined with political postulates
and everyday life. She describes how structural transformation and competition
for meagre resources have affected gender identities, and women in particular.
She summarises changes in the identity of Russian women as follows: Many
women are victims of violence, many are unemployed or impoverished, and
women’s political involvement has faded almost completely. Women feel that
they have lost out in the reforms and rate their chances of influencing
social processes as very slight. The dramatic changes, Gradskova argues,
are perceived by women as a threat to their “ontological stability”, and
they have responded by drawing on ancient survival strategies, unconsciously
assuming the role of victims.
Social transformation has opened up new identity models and triggered
a broader differentiation. Nicolaescu describes how, for example, in Romania
local discourse has been influenced by the country opening up to the outside,
thereby facilitating the emergence of new models. The restrictions so characteristic
of Romania during its pronounced isolation under socialism have been eroded.
This opened the way for a greater diversity of gender definitions and has
enabled Romanians to break out of the existing model. Mrsevic describes
this differentiation process for lesbian women; Nicolic-Ristanovic analyses
it in conjunction with how the media construct identity, drawing on Serbian,
Bulgarian, Macedonian and Hungarian newspapers and magazines as her sources.
One aim of the conference was to review the theoretical and methodological
tools to see whether they can be applied to this domain and what explanatory
force they possess. It may well prove that these conceptual approaches
are well suited to analysing changes in the post-socialist countries, because
focussing on language, cultural repertoires and forms of knowledge as the
place where significance is created also demonstrates the scope which exists
for shifts in significance, including those shifts in the gender relationship
which are happening in parallel to the structural changes in post-socialist
societies.
2.4 Feminist Perspectives and National Identities
The transformation process in Eastern, Central and South-East Europe
is embedded within a world-wide process of globalisation. In many countries
it is accompanied by a quest for national identity and the flourishing
of nationalist ideologies and politics. Another dimension addressed at
the conference was whether and how gender relations are caught up within
this field of tension and whether symbolic gender allocations are instruments
in the process.
The quest for identity seems to be a by-product and expression of political
and social insecurities and disorientation in the post-socialist countries.
The processes entailed draw frequently on traditional institutions in society,
such as family and nation. Membership of a national community and patriarchal
role models have become essential points of reference and even arenas for
thrashing out social problems of all kinds.
Participants were eager to discover, for example, how important gender
as a category actually is in the social construction of new national identities
in the post-socialist countries and how the symbolic gender order is modified
by nationalist political programmes.
There was a pronounced tendency for contributions to focus on the theoretical
function of gender and nation in constituting identity and to develop theoretical
foundations for empirical and concrete media and policy analysis. As Ellen
Krause’s and Rada Ivekovi…’s contributions demonstrated, there was unanimous
endorsement of the hypothesis that processes of creating national identity
are closely linked to gender order and that the inscription of national
difference within a social corpus is linked to the inscription of sex difference.
Nationality is a historico-political construct which has the function of
integrating and creating identity in drawing boundaries between “ourselves”
and “others”, and in Eastern and South-East Europe gender images and stereotypes
play a fundamental part in defining this nationality. Whereas the concept
of state has male connotations, nation has female undertones. As Ellen
Krause aptly put it: “Men act in the state, they defend the nation, women
symbolise the nation and stand for its fertility. The state offers women
protection in terms of their motherhood. State, nation, men and women are
combined in a liquid mass of danger and protection.” The nation manifests
as spatial, embodied femininity.
The abortion debate in post-socialist countries and the raping which
took place during the wars illustrate that control over women and their
fertility bears constituent significance for a nation defined ethnically
and that this has led to a repatrialisation of the public domain. Rada
Ivekovic rightly claimed that “women do not belong to the nation in the
same way men do: they are the nation in their bodies”.
Women’s and gender studies confront particular difficulties when analysing
the mass rape of the Yugoslavian wars. Discourse is functionalised on the
one hand by the belligerent parties, in particular through the media, in
pursuit of nationalist programmes. On the other hand, the issue of human
rights and feminist critique of women’s rights as human rights is dominated
by western political interests, above all western discourse and a strategy
for legal resolution as Natassja Smiljanic pointed out.
The contributions on the relationship between nation and gender served
two purposes: they formulated women’s position as victims of nationalist
programmes as an issue, and they fine-tuned theoretical assumptions about
the degree to which gendering plays a part in the construction of national
identity.
2.5 Institutionalisation of Women’s and Gender Studies
After 1989 various initiatives were taken in the countries of Eastern,
Central and South-East Europe to establish women’s and gender studies inside
and outside the universities. These efforts to set up a differentiated
programme of teaching and research as a counterweight to post-socialist
views on equality encountered major obstacles and resistance (and still
do). The lack of an independent development of theory in these countries,
which frequently made recourse to western feminism seem expedient, has
an inherent flaw: although teacher exchanges facilitated the rapid introduction
of gender or women’s studies, this same measure hindered the construction
of “rooms of our own” (as Irina Novikova discussed for Latvia and Eva VÓRnová-Kalivodová
and JiÍina Šiklová for the Czech Republic). As a result,
western feminism is not merely regarded as an “instrument of power of western
dominance” as Irina Novikova said. Following Biljana KaÓiƒ’s investigation,
western feminism prevents the analysis of inner-state differences and a
formulation of ethnicity because it has no differentiated approach for
dealing with the countries of Eastern, Central and South-East Europe.
Another problem repeatedly raised was the lack of financial security
for these attempts at institutionalisation. Although universities in many
countries (e.g. Latvia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Russia, Slovenia and
Macedonia) have now incorporated women’s or gender studies, the financial
support for this comes almost exclusively from western institutions (such
as the Network of East-West Women, FrauenAnstiftung, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung,
Soros Foundation).
The degree of institutionalisation also varies considerably. Whereas
complete degree courses have been introduced or are in the pipeline at
some universities (gender studies are an M.A. component at the Humboldt
University in Berlin, Warsaw offers a post-graduate qualification and the
Charles University in Prague plans a minor course), disputes continue at
others (Latvia, Russia, Slovenia, Macedonia) about how to integrate gender
studies into the canon of academic training.
Alongside the universities, or indeed as alternatives to them, centres
of women’s and gender studies have opened in Eastern, Central and South-East
Europe. These have links with the women’s movement (and in the republics
of former Yugoslavia with the anti-war movement) and they regard it as
part of their work to build networks (Latvia, Czech Republic), engage in
political activities (Russia, ex-Yugoslavia), collect biographies of women
under socialist conditions (herstory) and provide education (Czech Republic).
Compared with projects to implement women’s and gender studies as material
for academic training (whether as separate degree subjects or within “traditional”
disciplines), extra-mural activities in the field of gender studies are
extremely variegated and defy summary. However, that was not the primary
purpose of the session, which was designed, rather, to provide a forum
for articulating problems and experience with institutionalising women’s
and gender studies and for more networking. It was in this spirit that
Margrit Eichler (Canada) presented the case for defining one particular
institutional form to free the project from dependence on individuals.
Which form is of secondary importance, and will depend on the structure
and culture of the institution concerned.
The conference, which was characterized by a most productive and friendly
atmosphere, was concluded by a final discussion to sum up the results of
the meeting. All participants unanimously agreed that the conference was
successful in establishing a mutually beneficial “bridging discourse” between
East and West to be continued in the future.