In the past couple of years “gender” has been in the very centre of Hungarian politics and media attention in various connotations.
The word itself irritates the government, often reduced to representing atypical sexual behaviour. Gender studies have officially been removed from higher education curricula.
The proportion of women in decision-making positions in cultural life is below 20 percent (the last exact figure is from 2018, but it has not increased since then). Women ministers are very rare in the Hungarian government, and at the time of writing there are none. The Prime Minister suggests that politics is too hard for women. In the cultural government, women can reach the level of state secretary, the state secretary for culture is currently a woman. This lack of representation in decision making do not affect the status that women have over the past century achieved in culture and related fields in our society. The outstanding performance of Hungarian women is acknowledged within and without the borders in filmmaking, fine arts, literature, theatre, and other cultural areas, including science and sports.
Despite frequent divorces and scandals linked to prominent members of the governing elite, the conventional family pattern is proactively promoted: the 9th amendment of the constitution establishes that “the mother is a woman, the father is a man”. At the beginning of 2025, the government plans to write into the constitution that “people are either male or female.” A change of sex is legally forbidden and same sex marriages are not allowed in Hungary. In 2025, the Pride parade, which has been held every year for 30 years, is also planned to be banned, following the Russian example.
Under the 2024 amendment of the Child Protection Act, minors must be protected from “propaganda of homosexuality” and “self-serving depictions of sexuality.” This legislation piece has direct bearing on culture. All children’s books with LGBTQ themes should be sold in bookstores only within a plastic cover, and not at all within 200 metres of churches and schools. Bookshops have been fined tens of thousands of euros for breaking this law. The law is deliberately vague, it is not clear what constitutes a self-serving depiction of sexuality or the propaganda of homosexuality. The aim is to keep cultural actors in the dark and impose discretionary penalties.
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