This Open Access book explains a new type of political order that emerged in Hungary in 2010: a form of authoritarian capitalism with an anti-liberal political and social agenda. Eva Fodor analyzes ...an important part of this agenda that directly targets gender relations through a set of policies, political practice and discourse—what she calls “carefare.” The book reveals how this is the anti-liberal response to the crisis-of-care problem and establishes how a state carefare regime disciplines women into doing an increasing amount of paid and unpaid work without fair remuneration. Fodor analyzes elements of this regime in depth and contrasts it to other social policy ideal-types, demonstrating how carefare is not only a set of policies targeting women, but an integral element of anti-liberal rule that can be seen emerging globally.
As most other EU countries, Hungary implemented severe lockdown measures during the pandemic, including the closure of the schools and childcare facilities. This meant that for several months a ...vastly increased volume of childcare had to be supplied by individual households without much institutional help. In the end of May 2020, we conducted a representative survey in Hungary to find out how the pandemic affected the gendered division of these childcare duties. We found that on average, in relative terms, men have increased their contributions at roughly the same rate (by 35 percent) as women. But given that women had been doing a lot more childcare work before the pandemic, in absolute terms, women's contributions grew significantly more than men's and the gap between men and women has increased in absolute work hour terms. This was particularly so among a specific group of women: middle class, highly educated city-dwellers. Our data suggest that in Hungary the pandemic increased gender inequality the most among the highest educated.
Abstract
New pronatalist regimes rely on market incentives to increase childbearing and encourage full employment. Few countries have instituted a more extreme version of new pronatalism than ...Hungary. The current study analyzes how professional women navigate uncertainty and risk under Hungary’s pronatalist regime. Our analysis of twenty-one in-depth interviews with middle-class professional women reveals inherent tensions and contradictions. Respondents perceived two competing imperatives: seek financial security in a highly unstable labor market and privately absorb care burdens associated with larger families. Respondents weighed the potential rewards of accessing various pronatalist benefits against the costs of reproduction in a policy context characterized by risk and uncertainty. Respondents were highly selective regarding which benefits they accessed and which they avoided. Our analysis contributes to research and theory on the substantive impact of formal welfare and work policies, including the ways actors interpret and engage policies in order to limit risk and uncertainty.
Twenty-five years after the fall of the communist regimes, the gender gap in employment varies widely across Central and Eastern Europe. This study examines the societal-level reasons for this ...variation and assesses the impact of different dimensions of neoliberally minded “economic development” strategies on gender inequality. We focus on Central and Eastern Europe, a segment of the world not typically addressed in the literature on gender and development. We rely on the 2008 and 2012 waves of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions survey as well as multiple macro-level data sources to analyze the association between development indicators, labor market context, social policy arrangements, and the gender employment gap. We find that typical growth indicators, global market integration, and social policy arrangements are not at all or only weakly associated with the gender employment gap in this region. Instead, the labor market context, specifically the degree of segregation and the size of the public and service sectors, are more important for shaping women’s labor market opportunities relative to men’s at both time points. Our findings contribute to the literature on the trade-offs between job segregation and aspects of gender inequality as well as to ongoing debates within the field of “gender and development” by pointing out important variations across regions.
There is a great deal of literature on the patterns and consequences of parental leave policies and on how and why certain countries adopted specific family policy clusters. Much less is known about ...the employment context that shapes workers' use of these policies. The current study focuses on the negotiation process that workers must undergo with employers regarding the length of leave and workers' ability to return to their jobs following leave. Given workers' increasing vulnerability in a global neoliberal labour market and the lack of efficient state protection, companies are able to reinforce the ideal of the unencumbered worker norm and thus shape workplace gender inequality regimes. Drawing on qualitative data gained from 33 highly skilled professional women in Hungary, we find that parental leave provisions have become conditional on company needs, and as a result have become increasingly informal, individualized and subject to negotiation. Despite broad leave entitlements and job protections in Hungary, many of our respondents were required to scale back on their career aspirations, drop out or change jobs following leave. By exploring the ways in which highly skilled professional mothers negotiate their rights at work, this study identifies employers as critical gatekeepers who translate public entitlements into the lived experience of workplace gender inequality.
Business feminism is a brand of feminism that privileges women's advancement in the corporate hierarchy and centres corporations as the ultimate purveyors of gender equity. While scholars have ...critiqued this formulation, little empirical research has analysed the processes that guide the dissemination and translation of business feminism in organizational settings within global corporate networks. This article advances scholarship on the global processes that drive the export of business feminism logics. We analyse the process of dissemination of business feminism from the headquarters of multinational corporations to corporate hubs located in Hungary. This process relies on women executives who are charged with translating policies and practices originating in the headquarters of western corporations. In‐depth interviews with women executives charged with implementing corporate policies reveal the ways in which business feminism is interpreted, modified and/or resisted by actors within organizational settings.
Under what conditions do motherhood penalties emerge in countries undergoing transition from state socialism to capitalism? This analysis identifies the ways managers in global financial firms employ ...gendered assumptions in constructing and implementing labor practices among highly skilled professional workers in Hungary. Relying on 33 in-depth interviews with employers as well as interviews with headhunting firms, labor and employment lawyers, and analysis of antidiscrimination cases brought before Hungary's Equal Treatment Authority between 2004 and 2008, we identify several strategies global employers use to shed, demote, and marginalize professional mothers. By demonstrating the salience of motherhood as a status characteristic in the postsocialist labor market, our work contributes to existing scholarship on motherhood penalties. Our work also extends this scholarship by showing how the salience of motherhood is strongly conditioned by state-level arrangements that shape the opportunity context in which employers design and carry out employment practices.
Melanoma patients stop responding to targeted therapies mainly due to mitogen activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway re-activation, phosphoinositide 3 kinase/the mechanistic target of rapamycin ...(PI3K/mTOR) pathway activation or stromal cell influence. The future of melanoma treatment lies in combinational approaches. To address this, our in vitro study evaluated if lower concentrations of Celecoxib (IC
in nM range) could still preserve the chemopreventive effect on melanoma cells treated with trametinib.
All experiments were conducted on SK-MEL-28 human melanoma cells and BJ human fibroblasts, used as co-culture. Co-culture cells were subjected to a celecoxib and trametinib drug combination for 72 h. We focused on the evaluation of cell death mechanisms, melanogenesis, angiogenesis, inflammation and resistance pathways.
Low-dose celecoxib significantly enhanced the melanoma response to trametinib. The therapeutic combination reduced nuclear transcription factor (NF)-kB (
< 0.0001) and caspase-8/caspase-3 activation (
< 0.0001), inhibited microphthalmia transcription factor (MITF) and tyrosinase (
< 0.05) expression and strongly down-regulated the phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase/protein kinase B (PI3K/AKT) signaling pathway more significantly than the control or trametinib group (
< 0.0001).
Low concentrations of celecoxib (IC
in nM range) sufficed to exert antineoplastic capabilities and enhanced the therapeutic response of metastatic melanoma treated with trametinib.
Oxidative stress and inflammation are interlinked processes. The aim of the study was to perform a phytochemical analysis and to evaluate the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities of ethanolic ...Mahonia aquifolium flower (MF), green fruit (MGF), and ripe fruit (MRF) extracts. Plant extract chemical composition was evaluated by HLPC. A DPPH test was used for the in vitro antioxidant activity. The in vivo antioxidant effects and the anti-inflammatory potential were tested on a rat turpentine oil-induced inflammation, by measuring serum nitric oxide (NOx) and TNF-alpha, total oxidative status (TOS), total antioxidant reactivity (TAR), oxidative stress index (OSI), 3-nitrothyrosine (3NT), malondialdehyde (MDA), and total thiols (SH). Extracts were administrated orally in three dilutions (100%, 50%, and 25%) for seven days prior to inflammation. The effects were compared to diclofenac. The HPLC polyphenol and alkaloid analysis revealed chlorogenic acid as the most abundant compound. All extracts had a good in vitro antioxidant activity, decreased NOx, TOS, and 3NT, and increased SH. TNF-alpha was reduced, and TAR increased only by MF and MGF. MDA was not influenced. Our findings suggest that M. aquifolium has anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects that support the use in primary prevention of the inflammatory processes.
A series of alkenyl‐substituted titanocene compounds have been supported on the mesoporous silica‐based material KIT‐6. The corresponding functionalised materials were completely characterised by ...different techniques (solid‐state multinuclear NMR spectroscopy, IR spectroscopy, N2 adsorption–desorption isotherms, X‐ray fluorescence and diffraction, SEM and TEM) to observe the incorporation of the titanocene derivatives on the external surface of the material KIT‐6. Both the titanocene compounds and the materials were tested in vitro against a wide variety of human cancer and normal cell lines. A very high cytotoxicity of the synthesised titanocene derivatives (IC50 values in the range of those described in the literature for the most active cytotoxic titanocene compounds), with selectivity towards cancer cell lines was observed. The cytotoxic activity of the materials is the highest reported to date for titanocene‐functionalised materials. In addition, higher Ti uptake (from 4 to 23 % of the initial amount of Ti) of the cells treated with materials was observed with respect to those treated with “free” titanocene derivatives (which gave Ti uptake values from 0.4 to 4.6 % of the initial amount of Ti). Additional experiments with the titanocene derivatives and the functionalised materials revealed that changes to the morphological and functional dynamics of apoptosis occurred when the active titanocene species were incorporated into mesoporous materials. In addition, the materials could induce programmed cell death in tumour cell populations by impairing the damaged DNA repair mechanisms and by upregulation of intrinsic and extrinsic apoptotic signalling pathways.
Concealed activity: A series of titanocene‐functionalized silica‐based materials have been synthesized, characterized, and studied in vitro against human cell lines (see figure). They act as Trojan horses for the incorporation of the titanium active species into cells, leading to much higher quantities of titanium uptake in cells, changing the dynamics of apoptotic morphological and functional changes, and inducing programmed cell death in tumor cell populations.
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