Gender and Energy Security in Socialist Czechoslovakia

In the twentieth century, Czechoslovakia had one of the highest per capita coal production rates in the world. During the socialist period, this fossil bounty formed the base of the country’s economy, and coal fueled everything from motorcycles to steel mills. From the 1960s on, however, Czechoslovakia became increasingly entangled in the global petroleum trade, thanks to the construction of pipelines that delivered oil and gas from the Soviet Union. After the global energy crises of the 1970s, Czechoslovak planners tried to return to an energy independent, coal-only economy, but they found that their citizens’ consumer desires had become inextricably entwined with oil and gas. Zooming in to the level of the household reveals that these consumer desires had a distinct gendered dimension: many women favored gas stoves and heaters for their convenience, while their husbands, fathers, and brothers favored coal for the independence they felt it gave their family and their country. This talk uses conflicts over the gas stove (and water heater and furnace) to illuminate the affective, practical, and gendered elements of energy security.