The next few articles that I looked at were about feminism and women’s rights in the transitioning cultures of Eastern Europe/the Balkans. Part of this transition includes the creation of a national myth of heritage. In most of these myths women were to play a crucial role in the extreme nationalism that was helpful to the disintegration of both Eastern Europe and the Balkans. The build up of one nationality often focused on women ‘doing what nature intended and having babies’! Dasa Duhacek believes that the state uses gender or women in at least three different ways:
In socialist/communist times (Yugoslavia was a communist state, but not connected with the USSR. They had more political freedom than the USSR and access to western goods.) there was an official “equality paradigm,” where you were not to consider gender. Officially the people were genderless (except for when it came to maternity leave and women working less ‘safe’ jobs where they were given laxer treatment). The new ideology of the state (usually based in a western-conservative ideology of religion) was “crucially based on the strategy of retraditionalization of women’s identities, their social roles and symbolic representations” (Papic, 122). Yet it is not correct to expect the state to willingly give up these gendered roles that it helped to create when it serves the government well in their nationalist rhetoric as well as their own personal beliefs. Institutions were built upon these hierarchies and their inherent inequality (Ivekovic, 57). To change these views meant that institutions would have to be changed, and this would harm whoever was currently in power at the time, thus no one was willing to do so, and they remain unwilling.
Zarana Papic, “Women in Serbia: Post-Communism, War & Nationalist Mutations,” in Gender & identity: Theories from &/or on South East Europe, ed by Jelisaveta Blagojevic, Katerina Kolozova, Svetlana Slapsak. (Belgrade Women’s Studies & Gender Research/Athena, 2006).
Dasa Duhacek, “Gender Perspective on Political Identies in Yugoslavia,” in Gender & identity: Theories from &/or on South East Europe, ed by Jelisaveta Blagojevic, Katerina Kolozova, Svetlana Slapsa, 297-319. (Belgrade Women’s Studies & Gender Research/Athena, 2006).
- changing abortion laws as a way of nation building: In communist times there was a relaxed abortion policy allowing women to receive aborts with fewer questions. It was also not looked down upon or thought of as a serious problem. However, newer nations would often change their abortion policy so that it became harder for women to access these services. Some politicians even stated that it was to help bring up the birthrate of the population so that they could have more ethnic citizens. Some states, it has been accused, went a step further and made it more difficult in general and then made it easier for the “wrong” ethnicity to access abortion services.
- reproduction as a function of nation and motherhood: This idea is that if you do not have children and many of them you are trying to kill the state (and ethnicity). Thus women should not work so they can focus on creating new life and blood for the country. Women were seen as the caretakers of the young and thus the nation. They did this by influencing the young children’s thought towards the correct (state and party) line. When you had children you were helping to support the nation by giving it many more new citizens.
- rape as a way of politics:This is sadly the easiest to explain. Rape was used not only as a means of war and a weapon in the Balkan conflicts, but also after the war when they were setting up their societies. Rape was not fully decriminalized, but not punished as harshly as before. Women faced the same pressures in these areas as they did else where: if you dress like a slut, then obviously you were asking to get raped. (For a modern take on these comments see: Wikipedia on Slut Walk for the links and a quick summary)
In socialist/communist times (Yugoslavia was a communist state, but not connected with the USSR. They had more political freedom than the USSR and access to western goods.) there was an official “equality paradigm,” where you were not to consider gender. Officially the people were genderless (except for when it came to maternity leave and women working less ‘safe’ jobs where they were given laxer treatment). The new ideology of the state (usually based in a western-conservative ideology of religion) was “crucially based on the strategy of retraditionalization of women’s identities, their social roles and symbolic representations” (Papic, 122). Yet it is not correct to expect the state to willingly give up these gendered roles that it helped to create when it serves the government well in their nationalist rhetoric as well as their own personal beliefs. Institutions were built upon these hierarchies and their inherent inequality (Ivekovic, 57). To change these views meant that institutions would have to be changed, and this would harm whoever was currently in power at the time, thus no one was willing to do so, and they remain unwilling.
Zarana Papic, “Women in Serbia: Post-Communism, War & Nationalist Mutations,” in Gender & identity: Theories from &/or on South East Europe, ed by Jelisaveta Blagojevic, Katerina Kolozova, Svetlana Slapsak. (Belgrade Women’s Studies & Gender Research/Athena, 2006).
Dasa Duhacek, “Gender Perspective on Political Identies in Yugoslavia,” in Gender & identity: Theories from &/or on South East Europe, ed by Jelisaveta Blagojevic, Katerina Kolozova, Svetlana Slapsa, 297-319. (Belgrade Women’s Studies & Gender Research/Athena, 2006).
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