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), Pracovní dráhy žen v České republice (Work Trajectories of Czech Women, 2011, SLON), The Development of Czech Childcare Policies (2012, SLON), Péče o nejmenší: boření mýtů (Childcare: Deconstruction of myths, 2012, SLON), and Vlastní cestou? Životní dráhy v pozdně moderní společnosti (One´s own way? Life courses in a late modern society, 2014, SLON).

Research projects coordinated since 2002

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 and coordinated the research team in 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.

In 2010-2013, she was the principal investigator and coordinated the research team in the research project Changes in Partnership and Family Forms and Arrangements from the Life Course Perspective (Czech Science Foundation). The research team conducted an extensive representative survey of the Czech population that contains event history data, and they also conducted 92 in-depth interviews with singles, men and women ‘living apart together’, mothers of dependent children after divorce or after the break-up of unmarried cohabitation or another individualized form of partnership, parents of dependent children who are living in poverty (unemployed, economically inactive, parents with large families), people caring for elderly family members, and female economic migrants from states of the former USSR to the Czech Republic. Instead of emphasizing either a qualitative or a quantitative perspective, as is often the practice, the research team applied both of them, and then linked and combined findings from the qualitative and the quantitative analyses in order to explore and explain the changes in partnership and family forms and the problems of work-life balance in the Czech Republic. The research team studied the life course from a quantitative perspective, using statistical life history data, to reveal changing patterns in the timing and sequencing of life course transitions, and to explore their causal links and their consequences for the subsequent course of a person’s life. Moreover, the research team examined the life course also from a qualitative perspective, through life stories – biographical narratives representing how people experience and what meanings they attach to transitions and phases in life. The research team showed that there are several important processes that have contributed to the current changes in the organisation of private life and how private and work life is combined. They identified individualisation, gender-conventional refamilialisation, and globalisation (including the socially stratified effects of the economic crisis) to be critical. These processes contribute to the growing pluralisation of life courses in the region. Alongside the end of the ‘universalism’ of the occurrence of certain life events in the life course and a weakening of the interconnectedness of some life events, this research project also reveals the increasing social stratification of life courses and helps to explain them. Changes to private life arrangements often tend to be explained from two basic perspectives – cultural and structural. Measuring the influence of explanatory factors, however, can distract attention from the identities and experiences of the men and women whose actions contribute to these changes, and away from the dynamics of the complex processes that lead to these changes. This research shows that using the life course method to study social reality helps to avoid some of these problems. At the same time, it reveals the potential that a mixed-method life course research has for observing long-term social changes and illustrates one possible way of doing this. Focusing on the interplay of the historical dynamics of institutional changes and life transitions during the life of individuals made it possible to analyse relations between action and social structures and thus help to explain contemporary changes in private life and the relations between private life and work. 

Co-organization of (inter)national conferences, workshops and PhD. courses (selection)

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 special issues of (inter)national peer-reviewed journals (selection)

In 2005, she was the guest editor of a special 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 (vol. 12, no. 2) devoted to the topic of changes of life trajectories. In 2015, she edited a special issue on Gender Aspects of the Life Course of the English-language impacted peer-reviewed journal Czech Sociological Review (vol. 51, no. 6).

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