PhDr. Hana Hašková, Ph.D.

Hana Hašková, a sociologist, is a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and teaches at Charles University. In 2010 she received the Otto Wichterle Prize for young scientists. She is one of the cofounders of the interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal Gender, rovné příležitosti, výzkum, which contributes to the development of gender studies in Czech society. She studies current socio-demographic changes, focuses on sociology of gender, family, reproduction and intimate lives, and analyses policies, discourses and practices of care applying qualitative and quantitative research methods. She has been a fellow at the University of Groningen (the Netherlands), Rutgers University (USA), McGill University (Canada) and the Vienna Institute for Demography (Austria). She has headed research projects on childbirth practices, childlessness and changes in family and partnership forms. She has been also the coordinator of two Czech research teams in international EU-funded research projects. She is the author, editor and co-editor of several books, such as Práce a péče (Work and Care, 2008, SLON), Women and Social Citizenship in Czech Society (2009, IS ASCR), Fenomén bezdětnosti (Phenomenon of Childlessness, 2009, SLON) and Pracovní dráhy žen v České republice (Work Trajectories of Czech Women, 2011, SLON).

Research projects coordinated in the past 6 years

In 2002-2006, she coordinated the Czech research team in the international interdisciplinary research project Enlargement, Gender and Governance (5th FP European Commission), which explained the specific features of the development of the women’s NGO sector in Central and Eastern European countries and evaluated the impacts of the accession of these countries to the European Union on their implementation of equal opportunities policies.

In 2004-2006, she was the principal investigator of the research project The Phenomenon of Childlessness in the Context of Social Changes in the Czech Society (Czech Science Foundation), which focused on the sociological and demographic analysis of childlessness and the postponement of childbearing in the Czech Republic in the context of sociodemographic developments in other European countries. In this project she identified the factors that are having a growing influence on the prolongation of the period of childlessness today and demonstrated the relevance of the theory of gender equity for explaining the increasing share of childless people in the states of Central and Eastern Europe. Based on a qualitative study of childless men and women she created a new conceptualization of childlessness and the prolongation of the period of childlessness, which can be used in international studies of reproductive behavior.

In 2007-2011, she coordinated the Czech research team in the international interdisciplinary research project Gendered Citizenship in Multicultural Europe (6th FP European Commission). In the project she focused on redefining social citizenship from the perspectives of its exclusion/inclusion of care, nationality and ethnic groups and gendered impacts. Based on a historical, sociological and discoursive-institutionalist analysis she introduced an alternative explanation of the differences and similarities of contemporary policies, discourses, and practices relating to early childcare in selected countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and she demonstrated the institutional and cultural embeddedness of current care policies, discourses and practices in the historical development of these countries.

Since 2010 she has been the principal investigator of the project Changes in Partnership and Family Forms and Arrangements from the Life Course Perspective (Czech Science Foundation). In it she conducted an extensive representative survey of the Czech population aimed at explaining the diversification of partnership and family arrangements and the needs and risks associated with them.

Co-organization of (inter)national conferences, workshops and PhD. courses in the past 6 years

In addition to co-organizing several national conferences and workshops, in 2005 she also co-organized a Pan-European Conference Gendering Democracy in an Enlarged Europe in Prague; in 2006 an international workshop titled Genre et politique dans l’Europe élargie in Prague; in 2008 an international intensive Ph.D. course on Gendered Citizenship in Multicultural Europe: The Impact of Contemporary Women’s Movements in Prague; and in 2010 an international conference stream on Historical Institutionalism and Gendering Social Policy at the ESPAnet conference in Budapest. In 2011, she co-organized the Second Conference of Czech and Slovak Feminist Studies in Brno, and organized a conference on the Life Course from a Quantitative and Qualitative Research Perspective in Prague.

Editing of thematic issues of (inter)national peer-reviewed journals in the past 6 years

In 2005, she was the guest editor of a thematic issue of the English-language impacted peer-reviewed journal Czech Sociological Review (vol. 41, no. 6) which focused on the topic of women’s civic and political organizing in Central and Eastern Europe. In 2011, she was the guest editor of the thematic issue of the Czech interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal Gender, rovné příležitosti, výzkum devoted to the topic of changes of life trajectories.

Research focus

• sociology, gender studies and population studies
• sociology of family and intimate life
• fertility and childlessness
• life-course perspective
• motherhood and mothering
• childbirth discourses and practices
• family policies in historical and international perspective
• gender inequalities on the labor market
• work-care relations and social citizenship
• women´s civic participation in Central and Eastern Europe