This review article maps a specific area of divorce research, which is important, but almost uncited in Czech sociology of the family: the connection between divorce and gender. It shows that although the concept of gender is implicitly embedded in the social phenomenon of divorce, the majority of empirical research on divorce conceptualises gender only as differences in the behaviour of men and women. This approach can be useful for explaining the gender structure of the causes and consequences of divorce. Here more attention is given to studies that explicitly mention the concept of gender at the structural, institutional, and interactional levels. It reviews the literature on gender as part of the institutional environment, and in this context it introduces the perspectives on changing gender roles as a factor influencing divorce and the literature mapping the potential of divorce to change the gender order of society. These theoretical perspectives are relatively rare in the divorce literature; therefore, it is useful to provide Czech readers with a review of some inspiring conceptualisations and put them in the context of knowledge about divorce in the Czech Republic.
The article is based on comparative analysis of data from the international longitudinal survey ISSP 1994 and 2002 which were focused on gender roles and family. In the analysis European countries were divided on the basis of their inhabitants´ opinions on gender roles in the family and working mothers. Even though employment rate of women in Eastern Europe was higher during the state socialist regime than in Western Europe, countries of the former Eastern European block formed a group with traditional (conservative) attitudes towards gender roles as well as working mothers in 1994 and in 2002. Attitudes to mother's employment turned more gender liberal during the late 1990s. Such conservatism as well as opinion shifts and changes in family behavior in the second half of 1990s are explained by specific socio-political changes and changes on the labor market on the specific case of the Czech Republic.
Based on an analysis of the Zbraslav Chronicle, the study examines ideas about the status of queens in medieval society, namely, the forms, possibilities, and limits of the application of their influence as well as the interconnection between political power and gender-defined roles. The abstrakty 6 aim of the study is to highlight one of the forms of research on queens that has not been more widely applied in Czech medieval studies and, at the same time, to create a basic overview of the motifs which are thematised in connection with the office in the chronicle. Attention is focused on the complementarity of royal power (the reign is presented as a result of the synergy of the royal couple that reflects the ideal of marriage and parenthood) and, further, on the close connection of the “private” roles of the queen within the royal family vis-a-vis the public affairs of the kingdom. The maternal relationship to communitas regni and care for the common good thus in the imagination of the Zbraslav chroniclers come to the fore as some of the defining features of the ideal of a queen. and Věra Vejrychová.