Bulgaria

Mothers in Society

Prior to World War II, Bulgarian society was mainly patriarchal, and Bulgaria was a largely rural country [Page 149]with women mainly filling the roles of homemaker or farm worker. In fact, in the agricultural sector, women did most of the manual labor involved with crops, while men tended to work with animals. However, there were a few women, especially in Sofia, the capital, who did have careers. These were generally from the aristocracy, or the small middle class. In the countryside, the 1934 census showed that in one representative village, more than 15 percent of the population lived in family groups of 11 or more, and very few people over the age of 25 were unmarried.

During the period of Communist rule after World War II, there was an increase in female participation in the formal workforce, with more women having full-time or part-time manual or nonmanual work. Many women found work as nurses, teachers, pharmacists, and sales clerks. Health care in the country improved under Communist rule, and continued to improve after the end of Communism. This has resulted in a significant decline in infant mortality rates. An increase in female education has contributed to a progressive decline in the birth rate in the country, although the birth rates for ethnic Turks and Gypsies has continued to be much higher than that of ethnic Bulgarians. In an attempt to partly redress this situation, the Communist government instituted maternity leave with full pay and pension benefits, and also instituted a system of legal rights for women in the workforce. There were also income supplements to help mothers from poor families, although these were eroded by inflation in the 1990s. The fertility rate, 2.22 in 1975, fell to 1.23 by 1999, but the percentage of extramarital births during that time increased from 9.3 percent to 35.1 percent.

Famous women in modern Bulgarian history include the revolutionary Mara Buneva (1902–28); Nora Annanieva, who became the leader of the parliamentary group of the Bulgarian Socialist Party; and Reneta Ivanova Indzhova, who was Prime Minister of Bulgaria from October 1994 until January 1995, the only women to hold that position.

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