Gender Politics in the Western Balkans: Women and Society in Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav Successor States 027101802X, 9780271018027

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GENDER PQJ,ITICS IN THE WESTERN BALICANS

Past-Communist; Cultural Studies Thomas Cushman, General Editor

The Culture of Lies Antipolitical Essays Dubravka Ugresic

Burden of Dreams History and Identity in Post-Soviet Ukraine Catherine Wanner

Gender Politics in the Western Balkans Women and Society in Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav Successor States Sabrina P. Ramet

WOMEN AND SOCIETY IN YUGOSLAVIA AND THE YUGOSLAV SUCCESSOR STATES EDITED BY

SABRINA P. RAMET AFTERWORD BY

BRANICA MAGAS

THE WESTERN BALKANS

TBE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS UNIVERSITY PARIC, PENNSYLVANIA

I

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gender politics in the Western Balkans: women and society in Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav successor states I edited by Sabrina P. Ramet. p. cm.-(Post-Communist cultural studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-271-01801-1 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 0-271-01802-X (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Women-Yugoslavia-History. 2. Women-Former Yugoslav republics-History. 3. Feminism-Yugoslavia-History. 4. FeminismFormer Yugoslav republics-History. I. Ramet, Sabrina P., 1949- . II. Series. HQl 715.5.G46 1999 305.4'09497-dc21 98-20732

CIP

Copyright @ 1999 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802-1003

It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper for the first printing of all clothbound books. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI 239.48-1992.

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CONTENTS Preface and Acknowledgments

••

vu

PAaT ORE

Overview

t· 1 Introduction

1 3

SABRINA P. RAM ET

2 Machismo and Cryptomatriarchy:

Power, Affect, and Authority in the Traditional Yugoslav Family

11

ANDREI SIMIC

PAaT TWO

The lnterwu Er~ World Wu II, and the Sodalist Era

31

3 Zenski Pokret: The Feminist Movement

in Serbia in the 1920s

33

THOMAS A. EMMERT

4 Women in Interwar Slovenia VLASTA JAL US It

51

5 Women in the Yugoslav National

Liberation Movement

67

BARBARA JANCAR-WEBSTER

6 In Tito's Time

89

SABRINA P. RA MET

PART THREE

Post-Socialist Republics 7 Women in Post-Socialist Slovenia: Socially Adapted, Politically Marginalized

107 109

VLASTA JAL US It

-t

8 Women in Croatia: Feminists, Nationalists, and Homosexuals TATJANA PAVLOVIC

131

9 Women in Serbia: Post-Communism, War,

and Nationalist Mutations t ARANA PAPIC 10 Women in Kosovo: Contested Terrains The Role of National Identity in Shaping and Challenging Gender Identity

153

171

JULIE MERTUS

11 Women and Gender Imagery in Bosnia: Amazons, Sluts, Victims, Witches, and Wombs

187

OBRAD KESIC

12 Rape in War: The Case of Bosnia

203

DOROTHY Q. THOMAS AND REGAN E. RALPH

PART FOUR

-f

Literature and Religion

219

13 Women Writers in Croatian and Serbian Literatures

221

GORDAN A P. CRNKOVIC

)/-

14 Gender Construction in Literature: A Historical Survey

243

GORDANA P. CRNKOVIC

15 Ruza's Problems: Gender Relations and Violence Control in a Bosnian Rural Community

259

MART BAX

Afterword

•

275

BRANKA MAGAS

Notes List of Contributors Index

291 321 325

PREFACE AND ACICNQWLEDGMENTS

As always happens with edited projects, the final product corresponds only in part to the original scheme. One of the original contributors disappeared without a trace during work on this book, while another contributor, who had been contracted to compose a chapter on women in interwar Croatia, offered a product which diverged by a wide margin from the contracted topic. Because this occurred late in the life of this project, it proved to be impossible to obtain a replacement chapter on this subject within an acceptable time frame. I am deeply grateful to Tom Cushman and to the anonymous reader contracted by Penn State Press for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. I also wish to thank Ethos for permission to reprint Andrei Simic's chapter; War Report for permission to publish an expanded and updated version of Zarana Papic's essay, which originally appeared in its pages; The Johns Hopkins University Press for permission to reprint the chapter by Dorothy Thomas and Regan Ralph, originally published in The SAIS Review under the title, ''Rape in War: Challenging the Tradition of Impunity"; and Ute Gerhard for permission to print Vlasta Jalusic's chapter on women in interwar Slovenia. I am also deeply grateful to my spouse, Christine Hassenstab, for preparing the index for this book, and to Patty Mitchell for her hard work throughout the production process. V

SABRINA P. RA MET

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

To Jere Bacharach, friend

OVERVIE W

PART ONE

1

INTRODUCTION

Sabrina P. Ramet

Feminism is born with the realization that the structure of social reality is not neutral, is not opaque, but assumes the form of patriarchy. 1 One well-established definition holds: Patriarchy is the power of the fathers: a familial-social, ideological, political system in which men-by force, direct pressure, or through ritual, tradition, law and language, customs, etiquette, education and the division of labor-determine what part women shall or shall not play, and in which the female is everywhere subsumed under the male.2 The mere realization that society is patriarchal does not, however, in and of itself constitute a feminist conversion or even a sufficient impetus to action. An intervening variable, namely, political ideology or tradition, is necessary to translate the apprehension of the reality of patriarchy into a disposition with regard to that patriarchy; in particular, the assessment

4

Sabrina P. Ram et

that patriarchy is unjust requires political presuppositions derived from an overarching ideological orientation. In the twentieth century, there have been five ideologies which have been developed to a highly articulate degree, all of them having roots earlier in history. These five are liberalism (in the sense of the tradition beginning with Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, and J. S. Mill, but also including Herbert Spencer, among others), socialism (above all, in its Marxist variant), fascism (under which we may subsume also Naziism), anarchism (which had its heyday in the doomed Spanish Republic of the interwar era and which has all but expired in the meantime), and clericajism (by whi~h.J _..!1!19.~1:"~tand the effort to legislate or otherwise compel mass confu.n nity with a ~ste·m center.e d·ori "the ·supremacy·of Church arid family;ili,·~ ·su.6.servieiice··~ r·womeii·to· tli'e1r·husb~nd~,. ~~d ·the equation of womanhood with motherhood). That there are also hybrid formations should'"be need only think, for example, of social democracy (a hybrid of liberalism and Marxist socialism) or of the American Christian Right in the 1980s and 1990s (a hybrid of fascism and clericalism). To identify these traditions is also to realize that neither fascism nor cl~r.icalism