Suchergebnisse

Das Thema Digitale Bildung ist auch in Tschechien ausgesprochen aktuell und erfährt nicht zuletzt in den politischen Diskursen große Beachtung. Im Herbst 2017 erklärte die neu gewählte Parlaments­partei der Tschechischen Piraten die Digitalisierung der Staatsverwaltung als Mastbaum ihrer Politik. Im Juli 2018 widmete ihr die neue Regierung in ihrer Antrittserklärung einen eigenen Abschnitt. In der Sektion Bildung und Schulwesen wurde ein Schwerpunkt auf Innovationen im Bereich der IT-Ausbildung gesetzt. Geplant ist zudem eine Koordinationsstelle, deren Leiter (Regierungsbeauftragter für IT und Digitalisierung) einem Minister gleichgestellt werden soll.

This article centres on the impact of heteronormativity on the ways in which parental desires, intentions and practices of lesbian, gay, or trans people in Czechia are subjected to barriers. It explores heteronormativity by analysing how access to assisted reproductive technologies (ART) for non-straight couples (including single women) has been negotiated. We discuss discrimination against, and the statistical marginalisation of, homoparental families; the fact that same-sex Czech couples are not yet allowed to marry and that instead a new legal institution, the civil union, was introduced exclusively for them, explicitly prohibiting them from forming parental couples; the political disregard of the step-child adoption amendment to the Act on Civil Unions; and the obligation of irreversible surgical elimination of one's reproductive function before the authorisation of administrative gender change for trans people. We argue that heteronormativity also structures the practices of assisted reproduction clinics that allow lesbian couples access to assisted reproduction procedures, but only as part of mock straight couples. Transgender persons are only allowed to be parents if the assisted reproduction clinic can define them, at any given moment, in line with the binary heterosexual framework. Drawing on changing Czech legislative frameworks we note several changes which aim at reducing discrimination against LGBTQ people: the lifting of the ban on adoption by a person in a civil union; a legislative proposal from 2018 on gender-neutral marriage that includes full parental rights; and a bill proposal that includes a package of amendments to several laws aiming to allowing administrative gender change without the requirement of the removal of reproductive organs. Nevertheless, when investigated with the help of framing analysis, debates on expanding access to assisted reproduction beyond straight couples show certain contradictions: the framings used allow for non-straight people's access to ART, but at the same time they reproduce gender stereotypes, in which femininity is primarily associated with motherhood and (women's) reproductive function is to serve the state's demographic goals. Although these framings question some existing injustices, they confirm rather than contest the basic presumptions of heteronormativity, and they leave queer and trans reproduction invisible.

This mixed‐methods article focuses on childlessness and barriers to parenthood among non‐heterosexual men in Czechia. On the quantitative sample of 419 men (165 gays, 125 bisexuals, and 129 heterosexuals with same‐sex romantic/sexual attraction), recruited on a representative online panel, we map the parenting desires, intentions, and perceived barriers to parenthood. Our analysis identifies a substantial group of gay men without parenting desires and intentions compared to heterosexuals and bisexuals, and the lack of legal recognition of same‐sex families as a crucial barrier to gay parenthood. The qualitative enquiry, based on semi‐structured interviews with 23 self‐identified gay men aged 25 to 47 years, explores how they reflect on (not) becoming parents and contextualises those reflections. The deployed concept of "parental consciousness" captures the variety of considered pathways to gay parenthood and proves itself useful in understanding the low parenting desires and a generational shift among Czech gay men. We argue that men able to come out in their early adulthood in the post‐socialist context tend to have more diversified perspectives on possible pathways to parenthood. Among gaymen without children, we identified three distinct perceptions of the state: given childlessness, chosen childfree life, and a life stage/indecision. The informants pursuing parenthood have seen identity‐specific barriers to parenthood as crucial, which is discussed in the context of state selective regulations of the relational lives of persons with non‐normative identities. Although Czech gay men's parental consciousness has increased, legal conditions remain crucial for increasing their real‐life options.

The paper focuses on organisations and the conditions for working parents in terms of combining work and care and how those conditions are set up and negotiated in organisations. The research draws on three case studies comparing pairs of companies active in the Czech Republic and in one of the following countries – Germany, France, and Sweden – in the field of engineering. The goal is to explore in depth the conditions that Czech working parents are faced with and that derive from the organisational processes and means and dynamics of negotiating conditions for working parents, and to compare them with the conditions in other countries and identify the sources of variability of these conditions. Important differences between a company's family-friendly practices in its home country and in its Czech branches are primarily determined by the differences in the way in which welfare regimes are set up in individual countries. In addition, the authors identify the following five main interlinked factors explaining the variability of family-friendly policies and practices in organisations: parental (maternity) ideologies, the organisational culture of non-discrimination and equal opportunities, the actors' activity in work relations, the role of trade unions in negotiations, and the given organisation's experience with employees-parents.