Jiřina Šiklová

In 1968, Šiklová was forced to leave her position at Charles University and worked as a janitor until 1971, when she was employed as a researcher and social worker at a Prague hospital. Her involvement with Czech dissent led her to be jailed in 1981, and she was hounded by the StB, the Communist Czechoslovak secret police, and frequently brought in for interrogation. Despite persecution by the regime, she continued to write articles and books on sociology that were published abroad. Like many of the women who were part of Czech dissident circles, she acted as a letter carrier between the mostly male dissidents, helping copy letters on carbon paper and deliver them. In her writings on the experience, she noted that while women were literally involved in the "dirty work" of copying and distributing samizdat texts, they were rarely written about or acknowledged for their contribution to Czech dissent.

One of Šiklová's focuses in her writing was what she termed the "Gray Zone" – the clandestine collaboration between the dissidents and reform-minded Communists who remained in the Party. Unlike the majority of Czech citizens who did not fully support the regime but did nothing to actively protest against it, Šiklová identified those in the "gray zone" as educated citizens who were not high-level Party members, and who helped the dissidents without officially being a part of their cause.