Mężczyzna w oczach kobiety nowoczesnej – w świetle ankiety „Bluszczu” (1932)

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of a survey entitled “O nowy typ mężczyzny”, conducted in 1932 by “Bluszcz”, the longest running, and the most popular women’s magazine in Poland (issued between 1865–1939). As the title of the survey implies, according to the magazine’s editorial board, and its emancipated female readers, the patriarchal model of masculinity, after the First World War, has been exhausted. The survey was carried out among Polish female writers, publicists, female social activists, literary men, and female readers, who, in the pages of the magazine, answered the questions concerning, inter alia, the issue of the nature of masculinity, a model of postwar manhood, men’s attitude to emancipation, men’s view on a family, or the issue of double morality. The survey did not present any conclusions; it did not offer any new model of manhood, or a model of a man in general. It rather indicated the permanence of the achievements of both: the emancipation movement, and the process of implementation to attain gender equality by Polish women after 1918, when Poland regained its independence, and Polish women had been granted political rights.

Keywords

• double morality
• men’s hell
• emancipation of men
• magazine “Bluszcz”
• a questionnaire