Városanyák

Up to the present, there have not been published any scientific works which focused on the representatives of the female sex in Pécs. However, the statistics connected to the blog titled Following the Steps of Forgotten Women in Pécs... and to the Facebook site titled Women's History in Pécs have clearly indicated that there exists a certain kind of public, a relatively large group of people, who are curious about the different sources and who intend to gain more information about this subject-matter. These two fundamental reasons lead to the birth of this present book. As a result of this factor, the primary aim of this work is to draw the attention of the public opinion to the significance of these women, who have been forgotten unrighteously, and to place them back to the historical memory of the city. The chapters of the book cover the period between the 1860s and the Second World War. However, the interpretation of these years represent a certain kind of disproportionateness, due to the fact that the distribution of the source material proves to be unequal i.e. the majority of the sources reflect the lives of the female members of the upper-class and that of the middle layer of the society. Within the thematic chapters, it is also rather variable whether they contain more pieces of information either for the dualistic era or for the decades between the First and the Second World War. From the historiographical overview, which is at the very beginning of the book, it becomes clear that only Katalin Kéri and Mária Schadt dealt in greater details with the sources connected to the history of the women in Pécs. The remaining theoretical literature I employed during the composition of this volume served as additional material to the elaboration of certain segments. Nevertheless, the sources, which have been preserved by the public collections of the city, along with numerous contemporary periodicals have made the elaboration and the composition of the different topics possible. In the introductory chapter of the book, I relied on the statistics and the census data so that I would be able to outline the alternations concerning the demographical trends illustrating the female society of Pécs from the middle of the 19th century until the 1940s. Corresponding to the national phenomena, female surplus became meaningful especially as a result of the war-losses and the emigration. For this reason, getting married became impossible for several women. The generally estimated life expectancy increased as well, and females tended to get married and have children some years later than before as well. These factors, along with the economic conditions and the continuously changing atmosphere of the period lead to the break up of the traditional family models.