1975
It is my great honour and personal pleasure to welcome all the participants in the World Conference of the International Year of Women. Permit me to use this opportunity to once again salute the fact that the initiative to convene this Conference came from the United Nations, and that it is being held in friendly Mexico, a peace-loving, non-aligned country which has already repeatedly, and in various ways, demonstrated its readiness to resolve world problems through broad-based international cooperation and understanding. On behalf of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and in my own name, I wish the Conference full success in its work.
I consider it to be extremely important that special attention is at this time being devoted, both within the world community and within the United Nations, to the status of women. I see this as reflecting the growth of the United Nations, the strengthening forces of peace and progress in the world and the success of the struggle they are waging to resolve the burning issues of international and especially economic relations so that humankind, every country and every individual can take still more resolute strides towards a world of peace, freedom, the equality of nations and social justice. I am deeply convinced that the social role and status of women is highly indicative of the general development of every society and that every action aimed at resolving the status of women marks a contribution to the general flourishing of society as a whole, and thus to the advancement of the entire world community, and vice versa. The struggle for social progress and the struggle for human rights – of which the equality of women is part – are indivisible.
Our people’s deep awareness of this fact was reflected during the liberation struggle against the fascist occupying forces which was also a struggle for new social relationships in Yugoslavia and in the world at large. During World War II and throughout the post-war period this was a struggle against the roots of fascism which to this day give rise to and support various forms of subjugation among nations and oppression among people, including the discrimination of women. In taking wide-scale active part in our liberation struggle, the women of Yugoslavia earned themselves the right to be, in peacetime as in war, one of the decisive factors in creating and developing new socialist, self-management-based relations in society, which include the equitable position of women. They became protagonists in laying the socio-economic groundwork that enabled them to participate equitably, as citizens, workers and managers, in all spheres of the country’s modern-day social, political and economic life, and in the struggle waged in the world by socialist, non-aligned Yugoslavia for peace, based on the equality of all nations and their right to decide on their own fate.
Translated by: Kristina Pribićević
Ksenija Atanasijević
1924
Today there is no longer any need to show that women are working in the arts and literature with immense creative élan, that they are working in the sciences with sure success, and that they are laying ever-firmer ground for their own advancement. The fine results diligently and perseveringly achieved by women in various organizations, their scientific discoveries and artistic output which can hold their own against even the most outstanding products of human endeavour – suffice it to mention the remarkable discoveries of Sonya Kovalevsky or Madame Curie, the deeply ethical novels of George Eliot and the northern insights of Selma Lagerlöf, the spiritual sensitivity of Elizabeth Browning and the vivid writing of Christina Rossetti, or the vividly written The Meeting by the supremely talented Marie Bashkirtseff – these are all crucial facts showing that one must count on the creative power of women.
There have been women whose powerful talents and breadth of erudition make them utterly equal to men not only in our modern age, when women have largely secured the possibility of engaging in serious work without hindrance – albeit even now they often come up against suspiciousness, mistrust and disparagement from men – but also since the very dawn of history, when no such possibilities existed. And it is this that is the ultimate argument against all stories about the alleged inferiority of women, it is this that shows they have always been sufficiently inspired to express their feelings and always been sufficiently interested to satisfy the yearnings of their spirit, even when their need for an intellectual life met with far harsher and more relentless blows than those felt by the modern-day woman, and when the circumstances for a woman’s advancement were in every respect wretched.
We shall dwell on some of the women who played an important role in ancient Greek poetry and philosophy.
The social system of the times virtually ruled out the intellectual development of women. The ancient Greeks, though very progressive in all other respects, viewed women as members of a lower order and gave them only limited responsibilities. Still, we find no small number of women who made an irrefutable contribution to the Olympic circle of Greek poets and philosophers. It is worth noting that Greek women were great artists in music and dance as well, but here their fame was ephemeral.
We find the first Greek poetess as far back as the days when poetic and moral reflection was still linked to myth and religion, times which were based more on mythology than on history. She was the daughter of Cleobulus, one of the Seven Sages who laid the seeds of Greek philosophical speculation, and was called Cleobulina after her father (her real name was Eumetis). In “The Feast of the Seven Sages”, Plutarch of Chaeronea describes her as a wise girl, celebrated for composing witty riddles in verse whose fame reached as far away as Egypt. Only the following riddle of hers has been preserved: A father has twelve sons; each of these thirty daughters, on one side white and on the other side black, and though immortal, they all die.” (The year, month, days and nights).
These early beginnings were immediately followed by the flourishing of Doric-Aeolic women’s poetry, the most prominent exponent of which, indeed one of the greatest of poetesses of all time, was Sappho, the younger contemporary of the lyric poet Alcaeus. Her life is shrouded in so many romantic legends that, strictly speaking, we have to admit we know hardly anything reliable about her. She hails from the island of Lesbos but it is not know whether she was born in Eressos or Mytilene (she probably later moved from her native Eressos to the bigger town of Mytilene). She was born into a noble family, whose descendents held high positions in Alexander’s army.
Comic writers of the Attic Middle comedy (404-340 BC) parodied Sappho two hundred years after her death, painting an ugly picture of her. Six comedies survive under the title “Sappho”, written by Ameipsias, Amphis, Antiphanes, Diphilus , Ephippus and Timocles, and two by Antiphanes and Plato under the name Phaon. Every one of them ruthlessly makes fun of Sappho. The first Christian writers accepted everything that the comic writers had to say about Sappho. An entire body of work grew up around Sappho, with prominent ancient and modern scholars using their authority to defend or accuse Sappho once and for all.
It would be a most enjoyable undertaking to rescue the reputation of a great woman, but we shall not dwell on her any further here. Suffice it to say that the hostility shown by comic writers towards Sappho may have stemmed from the prejudices of Athenians regarding women. Even in the days of Pericles, the status of women among Ionians, and especially among Athenians, was dire. While Athenian men produced the best in all areas of intellectual and spiritual endeavour, Athenian women, shut away in an inaccessible part of the house, did not emerge from the darkness of the home. Gradually, rules were developed about the education that women should have. A woman had to learn how to keep house, manage the servants and raise the children while they were little. According to Thucydides (II, 45), even Pericles said that the best woman is one whose good sides or bad elicit the least talk. The women of Athens did not even have the freedom of Homer’s heroines, for instance of a Nausicaa. Only the hetaerae were permitted to cultivate their minds and take part in public affairs. And that is why Athens produced only one great woman, Aspasia, who was highly influential in Athenian politics, and famous for having been the first to start a kind of literary circle in her home.
However, the Aeolians and Dorians were more generous to women. They preserved the ancient Greek tradition, described in mythology and epic poetry, of women taking part in society and in public entertainment, Aeolian and Dorian women were allow to express their opinions and feelings freely and as a result many of them achieved literary renown. The men of Athens, convinced that women should be kept within the four walls of the home, must have found women who, like men, wrote poems and in them publicly voiced their feelings, as far too free. Therefore, one must be most circumspect about the claims of conservative comedy writers, though it must be said that their humour spared none of the greats. It is certainly to Sappho’s credit that her contemporaries, who knew her best, expressed very flattering views about their poetess.
Sparta had women’s associations, headed by the most talented and most educated women, where young women engaged in learning and were taught to sing and recite. Similarly, on the island of Lesbos, women established a cult of the arts, but with a greater scope and intensity, because the Aeolians had a passionate temperament before which the Dorians’ and Ionians’ feelings paled. In the name of that cult, clubs were formed to cultivate poetry and music. Sappho appears to have been at the centre of the biggest such club, intended to serve the Muses. Girls from different parts of Greece gathered around her to learn poetry and music, just as later, disciples gathered around the philosophers of Athens. The names of fourteen of Sappho’s women companions (έταιραι) and pupils (μαϑητριαι) have been preserved. Associations of Aeolian women are compared with monasteries and boarding establishments, conservatories for music and rhetoric, and finally with literary circles.
However, one cannot rule out the possibility that Sappho may have been the priestess of Aphrodite, who on the island of Lesbos was not only the essence of beauty but also an omnipotent goddess, and that her pupils gathered flowers for the goddess, danced and sang around her sculpture. Sappho calls her house “a home where muses are cultivated” (μουσοπόλω οιϰίαν), and from which sorrow must be kept far away. Like all women from Lesbos, she holds art above all else, takes pride in her talent as a poet and believes that all material advantages pale in the face of those of the spirit and mind. In one fragment she proudly says: “I say that we shall be remembered in times to come”, and of the Muses she says: “They bore me gifts and made me famous”.
Sappho wrote in diverse lyrical forms; we know that she wrote hymns, love poems and epithalamia (wedding songs). Her verse shows a wealth of forms, is suggestive yet direct, with a wide range of themes ranging from burlesque-like ridicule of the big feet of a brother-in-law and the playful emotions of a young girl, to heavy, serious eroticism and the tragedy of rejection and loneliness. She was peerless in depicting the stillness of a moonlit night and the siesta of a southern summer’s day. Her inspiration can only be compared to some of the passages in Plato’s dialogues.
There were nine volumes of Sappho’s poems, all of which have been lost. The poems were divided by meter. The first volume contained poems in Sapphic verse – a meter discovered by Sappho herself. Each volume contained poems with the most diverse range of ideas and feelings.
One can get a true sense of the appeal, passion and value of Sappho’s erotic poems only by reading the admittedly numerous but mostly short preserved fragments of her poems (there are 170). Happily, two complete poems have also been preserved .
The first is the famous and superb Hymn to Aphrodite.
In this poem, Sappho plays down excessive desire, which might be distasteful, by means of the goddess Aphrodite. Sappho’s eroticism is not disharmonious or immoderate as it is with the Persians or Arabs; rather is preserves the purely Greek qualities of measure, harmony and rhythm.
The fragments are sufficient in themselves to justify the ancient Greeks’ enthusiasm for this unusual woman and to show exactly what a sense of beauty, love and nature she had. Her verse is imbued with the fragrance, hues, tones and light of the South. Audiences in ancient times were transported by the beauty of her verse. In “Greek Anthology”, writers call her the tenth Muse, the child of Aphrodite and Eros, a disciple of the Graces, the pride of Greece, the companion of Apollo, and they prophesize her immortality. Just as Homer alone was called a poet (ό ποιητής), so Sappho alone was called a poetess (ό ποιήτρια). Upon hearing his nephew recite One of Sappho’s poems, Solon said: “I would not want to die before having learned these verses”. In his “Geography”, Strabon says: “Sappho was a strange character (ϑαύμαστόν τι χρημα): never in human memory has there been a woman whose poetic talent could in the slightest way be compared with hers”.
The people of Mytilene were so proud of Sappho that they minted a coin with her image “…even though she was a woman”, as Aristotle noted. Sappho was one of the very few celebrated people to be depicted on ancient vases.
Down through the centuries, Sappho’s poems have elicited keen interest and admiration. Byron wrote enthusiastically about the Greek islands: “Where burning Sappho loved and sang”. Addison’s tirade about the immortal Greek poetess may not be that exaggerated: “Her soul”, he says, “seems to have been made up of love and poetry. She felt the passion in all its warmth, and described it in all its symptoms. I do not know, by the character that is given of her works, whether it is not for the benefit of mankind that they are lost. They were filled with such bewitching tenderness and rapture, that it might have been dangerous to have given them a reading.”
In any case, even those of her works that have been preserved suffice to rank her amongst the greatest lyric poets of all times.
As we move on to Greek women philosophers, the first thing to be said is that they are not on a par with Greek poetesses. Not one created an original philosophical system, a system whose importance would match those of their Greek male counterparts. But there were a number of women in ancient Greece who, steeped in philosophy, made real contributions to it. The most prominent among them were the Cynic philosopher Hipparchia, with her profound belief in the practical application of the moral doctrine, and the neo-Platonist Hypatia, with her great erudition in the sciences and philosophy, her dignified character and terrible, undeserved manner of death.
It is interesting to note that the first woman to play an important role in Greek philosophy became an adherent of a doctrine whose difficult ethical demands were diametrically opposed to everything it was believed pleased women, and whose stern and cruel rules repelled men, i.e. she was an adherent of Cynicism. Let us briefly dwell on this school of philosophy.
Antisthenes, the founding father of cynicism, taught in the garden of the Cynosarges, and it is from this, or from the noun κύων πυνòς – dog (Cynics were called “dog-men” because of their crude way of life), that the school acquired its name. The focal point of Cynicism is ethics. Cynics are Socratists, meaning that their starting point is Socrates’ belief that virtue is knowledge. Except, they hold that virtue requires Socrates’ strength of character (Σωϰρατιϰης ισχίος) as much as it does knowledge and eloquence. The purpose of virtue is happiness, and happiness consists of total freedom from need (Socrates’ Δηδανòς δαισϑαι). Therefore, one must dispense with any form of subjugation and relationship, and be without family, home, state or master. A wise man rises above all material things, above authority, property, wealth, honour and life, and is sufficient unto himself. Cynics put into literal practice the concept of freedom from need, from what they saw as the illusion of life. This led to many an odd anecdote about the more prominent Cynics. All of them looked like wild men, sporting long hair and beards, a beggar’s bag and cloak. They were often the subject of respect, but even more frequently of ridicule.
Cynics were the first philosophers of the proletariat in ancient times. They worked systematically on freeing the Greek mind of all prejudice. Their ideal state was cosmopolitan, where differences between the Greeks and barbarians were eradicated, where there were no slaves, no Gods, where there was a community of women and children and where men and women had equal rights.
Perhaps it was this latter point of Cynicism, i.e. equality between men and women, that so enthralled Hipparchia that for its sake she reconciled herself to all its other views; perhaps she sacrificed herself to it because she realized the profound truth of the Cynic idea that spiritual balance can be preserved only when a person has no contact at all with life’s material goods.
Hipparchia was born in Maroneia, Thrace and hailed from one of its best known noble families. She was married to Crates the Cynic.
In the days when Crates was travelling through Greece, Hipparchia was a beautiful and rich girl, with many men vying for her hand, One day, the ugly, lame, unkempt Crates burst into the house of her father and start to speak. What he said so enthralled Hipparchia that she immediately declared her desire to marry him. Crates laid down at her feet his cloak, staff and bag, and said: “It is this that you follow.” She replied that it was his personality that she was following, and thus won the day. Resolute and independent, Hipparchia became a famous woman of ancient times. She donned the cloak, picked up the staff and bag, and duly followed Crates on all his peregrinations. Although the delicate child of an affluent family, she withstood all the travails of her journeys with steely determination.
A number of works have been ascribed to Hipparchia, none of which have been preserved. In memory of their philosopher Hipparchia, the Cynics established a holiday, called “Cynogamy” – the relationship between Cynics – which was celebrated in Phocis. In fact, the relationship between Crates and Hipparchia, based on mutual understanding and affection, refuted the Cynics’ idea that one should be free of any relationship or feeling.
The other Greek woman of ancient times to dedicate herself to philosophy was an advocate of the Cyrenian doctrine. The Cyrenians taught that the goal towards which one should spend one’s whole life striving is the goal of pleasure, ήδονή, because pleasure is the only real good, and pain the only real bad. They held, therefore, that virtue consists simply of the art of achieving the greatest possible, longest lasting pleasure. The woman philosopher Arete was the daughter of the founder of the Cyreniac school, Aristippus the Elder, and the mother of Aristippus the Younger. Arete is considered among Cyrenians to be a follower of her father, but she did not distinguish herself with any original thought.
Another two women who took unusual interest in philosophy were Lasthenea of Mantineia and Axiothea of Philesia, both students at Plato’s Academy. Sporting men’s clothing, and the cloaks worn by philosophers, they came to listen to Plato and later taught what they themselves had learned.
All other Greek women who worked in the field of philosophy were advocates of neo-Platonism. What follows is a brief outline of the doctrine that attracted these women.
With the advent of a major decline in Stoicism in the second century A.D., philosophers emerged who were called Neo-Platonists. They imbued Platonism with new forms in the desire to reconstruct the old Platonic system in all its purity and thus to demonstrate the oneness of the universe. They imperceptibly brought many religious elements into their thought, in the spirit of the times. They did not have great respect for pure knowledge, and their ultimate goal was uniting with the Divine through the ecstatic approach. They considered material goods to be evil and turned Plato’s ideas into a strength. The founder of Neo-Platonism was Ammonius Saccus, and his greatest disciple was Plotinus, a philosopher who felt comfortable only in the realm of pure ideas, and who, more intensely than anyone else, felt the bliss of uniting with the eternal being.
The further the Roman Empire declined and the barbarians advanced, the more Neo-Platonism and Christianity spread, because both doctrines promised happiness in another existence. Neo-Platonism was Christianity’s serious competitor because it won over educated people.
It is not difficult to explain why Neo-Platonism, which after Plotinus acquired an evermore mystical character and poetic form, had quite a number of women adherents.
The first woman Neo-Platonist was Asclepigenia, daughter of the Neo-Platonist Plutarch of Athens. Utterly immersed in all the mysteries of this teaching, she enthusiastically passed on her knowledge only to select pupils of her father’s, the so-called “family of philosophers”. When Proclus, the great systematizer of Neo-Platonism, came to Athens, she taught him Chaldean mysticism and theurgy (prophecies with the assistance of benevolent spirits).
The second, Arria, is noteworthy for having persuaded Diogenes Laertius to write his biography of Greek philosophers, a work of immeasurable value for the history of philosophy because it contains information about Greek philosophers whose writings are lost to us. Although it was she who gave him the idea of writing his book, nowhere does Diogenes Laertius thank her.
The last and greatest of the Greek women philosophers was Hypatia of Alexandria, daughter of Theon, the first mathematician and astronomer of that day and age. She reached the height of her powers between 395 and 408 A.D. Her father gave her lessons in mathematics and astronomy, because even as a child she had demonstrated a keen interest in these two abstract sciences, and also steered her towards the philosophy of Aristotle. Dissatisfied with her father’s lessons, Hypatia went to Athens where she started to study philosophy more broadly. Although an adherent of Aristotle’s as a child, and though well-versed in the positive sciences, Hypatia became a Neo-Platonist. She remained for quite a while in Athens, where other women philosophers were being educated at the time.
As soon as she returned to Alexandria, Hypatia became the object of universal admiration, especially as the city no longer had any prominent philosophers. Soon, her success and fame were such that she was given a department for Plato’s philosophy in her home town. A large circle of men and women attended the famous teacher’s classes, enthralled by her knowledge, her eloquence and her beauty. Synesius, the Neo-Platonic philosopher and later Christian bishop, immortalized Hypatia in his letters. He felt deep piety for her and saw her as his mother, his sister and his teacher.
If the Christian bishop was so taken with Hypatia it is not difficult to imagine how enthused pagans were with her. Though she wore the simple cloak of a philosopher, like men, she was so lovely that many of her students fell in love with her. She was also held in such high regard because of her irreproachable morals. They called her the philosopher, ή φιλόσοφος, and from her father’s name coined the word ϑεοτέκνη (father of a divine child).
The highest circles in Alexandria paid homage to this intelligent, eloquent and beautiful woman. Politicians and statesmen often visited to ask for her advice. Hypatia, therefore, was also a person of great influence. Because of her wisdom and purity of mind, people often addressed her with awe. She never married and until the end of her life was called “the daughter of Theon” (η ϑέωνος ϑυγάτηρ).
We know nothing precise about the philosophical views Hypatia advocated in her lectures. She probably taught Iamblichus’s Neo-Platonism, except that while he tended to involve Neo-Platonic metaphysics in the Greek national religion as a way of imbuing it with life and resilience in the battle against the onsurge of Christianity, Hypatia leaned towards Alexandrian Neo-Platonism, whose main traits were: a certain independence of metaphysical speculation and hand in hand with it, a more sober interpretation of Plato; not such a strong connection between metaphysics and Greek and Oriental polytheism; and greater interest in science. For, two affinities developed in Hypatia: one for the exact sciences and the other for mystical-metaphysical speculation.
Hypatia’s important political role was certainly the cause of her tragic death, though testimonies on the subject contradict each other. The person most responsible for her death was St. Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria. According to a probable theory, the real reason for the bishop’s decision to kill Hypatia was her close friendship with Orestes, the governor of Alexandria and his bitter enemy. The immense power of Alexandria’s bishops constantly brought them into conflict with its governors, even when the latter were Christians. In order to win support in their struggle against the bishops, the governors gave backing to paganism and Neo-Platonism. Hypatia’s friendship with Orestes made the Christians suspect that Hypatia was impeding reconciliation between the governor and the bishop. The astronomer Hypatia may even have been accused of astronomic superstition and magic. Christians felt a deep repugnance for philosophy and science, the exclusive domain of heathens, and especially for astronomy, because Neo-Platonists and Christians held diametrically opposed views on the essence of the stars.
One day, during the season of Lent in 415 A.D., an angry mob of Christians, led by the anagnost Peter, set off to carry out this terrible act of murder, waylaying Hypatia on her way home. They dragged her from her chariot into a church and stoned her to death. When they finished, the Christians tore Hypatia’s body to pieces and dragged their bloodied trophy through the streets of Alexandria. Her remaining parts were burned in Caesareum.
Hypatia was murdered at the relatively young age of about 45.
She is known to have written two commentaries: one on Ptolemy’s The Astronomical Canon (κανων βασιλειων), and the other on Apollonius of Perga’s Conic Sections. None of her works have yet been discovered. Perhaps they exist under a pseudonym or in altered form.
A letter to St. Cyril ascribed to her says that she would adopt Christianity were it not for its absurd dogma that God had died for man. This apocryphal letter demonstrates that Christians, too, held to the memory of this great Neo-Platonic philosopher.
The torturous death of this pagan woman philosopher, with her brilliant mind, learning and erudition, shows that Alexandrian Christianity systemically destroyed and eradicated learning.
Long after the great Neo-Platonist’s death, any woman of remarkable learning was called “another Hypatia”. Even during the Byzantine Middle Ages, Psellos spoke of Hypatia as a type of learned woman.
Thus ends our detailed portrait of the last celebrated woman of ancient Greece.
(Misao/Thought, Belgrade, January 1924, pp. 29-39; February 1924, pp. 109-116)
Translated by: Kristina Pribićević
Ksenija Atanasijević
1927
The formation of harmonious Greek culture, almost equally developed in all its branches, saw, apart from many other rare results, the emergence of unusual phenomenon: the woman philosopher. Quite a number of women in ancient times engaged in philosophy. The Greeks’ exceptional predisposition to philosophize was inherent not only to men, but to women as well. Hence, the history of Greek philosophy has recorded the strange figure of the Cynic, Hypparchia, who applied the principles of her school quite literally, and the highly learned work of the Alexandrian philosopher Hypatia who, living in unsettled transitional times, was tragically stoned to death by a mob of frenzied Christians. In addition, there were enthusiastic followers of Platonism, and especially neo-Platonism, whose inclination towards miracles and magic was very attractive to women.
There were women philosophers when the wisdom of the ancient Greeks was taking root, but there were also women who belonged chronologically to another school of philosophy in Greece: Pythagorism. As soon as Pythagoras founded his school, it attracted teachers and pupils, both male and female, from all parts of ancient Greece. The female Pythagorean was a striking figure, and was later used by comic poets in developing their ideas.
The most famous of the women Pythagoreans was Theano. Only vague, shrouded reports about her have come down to us. In his book on the life of Pythagoras, Porphyrius says that of all the women Pythagoreans, only Theano gained fame. A book about Greek philosophers, preserved under the name of Diogenes Laertes, includes three of her letters – enough to shed light on her intelligence and the certainty of her views about the practical matters of life.
Her first letter, written to the Greek woman Eubula, dwells on the raising of children. Generally, she recommends that children be taught endurance, that they get accustomed to hunger and thirst, cold and winter. Theano’s ideas about how to raise children are identical to those of the Spartans, because, like them, she believes that an easy childhood can boomerang fatally in adulthood.
The second letter was written to comfort a jealous woman, Nicostrata, who is devastated because her husband is supporting another woman. Adopting a very conservative approach, Theano tries to calm her down, saying: “You, my dear, should desist, because a wife’s virtue lies not in monitoring her husband, but in tolerating him”. Theano optimistically tells the jealous woman that her husband will get tired of his mistress, because what binds him to her is passion, and passion is short-lived. He will soon recognize his mistake and turn back to his wife. And the hallmarks of a wife must be pleasantness towards her husband, good house-keeping, kindness towards friends and sincere love for the children. “Because good ethical behaviour brings honour, and even the favour of one’s enemies”. Theano stands by her methods of utter conciliation, which seems so problematic to us today. She, therefore, tells her friend not to separate from her husband and not to take revenge on his mistress.
In her third letter, Theano explains to the Greek woman Palisto how servants should be treated. She observes that slaves are human beings and therefore should not be treated roughly or be overburdened with work; rather their needs should be met, they should be fed well and punished lightly. Theano is particularly opposed to the cruel treatment of slaves. However, “if the badness in slaves cannot be vanquished, then they should be sold, and in that way bidden goodbye. Because, what is to us useless should be given to another master”. She emphasizes that the punishment should be proportionate to the magnitude of the slave’s offense. And she says that a cruel mistress can one day easily find herself all alone.
The reflections of the Pythagorean Theano are unquestionably progressive if one abstracts her attitude to the position of women in marriage, which is no longer tenable and which proves that even the most advanced Greek women of the times could not break with tradition. That said, her stands are certainly enhanced by the vivid and profound analogies that only a woman steeped in practical wisdom can make. Theano’s advice on how to bring up children and treat slaves reflects a striving to strengthen the body and the mind, and to practice leniency. One might say that as narrow as her views are about the rights of married women, she takes a much broader and philosophically assured view of child-raising and the rights of slaves.
Theano’s letters remain an interesting testimony to the views and beliefs of perhaps the oldest Greek woman philosopher and certainly the most educated woman of her day.
(Pravda/Justice, 6, 7 and 8 January, 1927, p. 9)
Translated by: Kristina Pribićević
Nadežda Čačinovič
The great times of prize competitions on theoretical issues were the times of Enlightenment; the assumptions of Enlightenment are present in every offshoot of that glorious tradition. Nowadays, the belief that it is possible to find, through appropriate exertion of the mind, an unambiguous and generally acceptable solution to a problem survives in our trust in science; scientific limitation of cognition to scientifically reliable claims in turn suppresses, reject or overlooks everything out of reach of these judgments. This is left to irrationality, regardless of the effect it has on our lives.
Today’s criteria are more complex than the correct and mature management of one’s mind characteristic for the Enlightenment. The views on emancipation have also moved away from the Enlightenment’s rationalist models. However, the phenomenon of the so-called “femininity” shows how, by using a reduced cognitive method – suppression, rejection or oversight, the central determination of female specificity is left to mystification.
Until recently, up to the emergence of contemporary feminism or 2nd wave feminism
, many thought that the issue of emancipation was successfully resolved. The original women’s movement acted as a civil movement fighting for equality. These formally equal rights, for which women have long struggled, did not change the power relations. In class societies, the possibility to assert one’s rights depends on the class status, and that is why the socialist view was that, in such a society, the struggle for emancipation means the struggle for the elimination of the class structure. The claim is elegantly expressed by Bloch in Principle of Hope: the women’s movement is old-fashioned or replaced or postponed. This “postponement” brought about a new element in the classical doctrine of the workers’ movement. According to Bloch, the women’s movement comes into its own after the revolution as a self-realization of femininity. He thinks that femininity is, by its content, completely open, that so far the richness of female types and predicates was false, and that the female is merely a possibility, which is proven by the easiness with which today’s existing female beings cross over from one role to the other. It should be noted that this “not yet” in post-revolutionary societies is still postponed; it even seems that femininity appears as the well-known measure that can explain why the position of men and women is still not completely equal and why differences are not leveled. It appears that the separation of biological and social facts inadvertently or accidentally blocks critical thinking. The ranges between Venuses and Marys, the witches and saints of history, are reduced to the recognized femininity of one half of all members of society and it is not surprising that we still live in families and that children are being reared; the effort to position all in the working process is considered as positive and advanced, and the effort to share responsibility for governance is regarded as extremely advanced. “The New Woman” does not show surprising characteristics, it is as a rule acknowledged as a human being and worker and can, in favorable conditions, reach top achievements, but it is presumed that she will, of course, still be able to give comfort, nurture and healing. The internal non-viability of this role is acknowledged only under the obvious entry of “overextension”, a euphemism that obscures the full exhaustion of women and no shifts in male roles.
Another Marxist theorist, Herbert Marcuse, wrote about the changes in femininity/masculinity. It reverses the relation between postponement and revolution. Unlike Bloch, what Marcuse has in mind is the new wave of feminism. Starting from the social and historical emergence of certain characteristics which are predominantly and in the long run experienced as “male” or “female” in the civilized world, he concludes that in a sense it is precisely the female characteristics or qualities that contain the revolutionary potential. These female qualities are receptiveness, sensitivity, non-violence, gentleness and represent an antithesis to male qualities that express rule and power, aggression, repression and the like.
We can address the question of what femininity is and what its fate is in a way that binds the context of development of male and female qualities within the division of labor and the contemporary analysis of formation of individual and psychological identity. This is the way in which Marcuse considers Freud’s relevance to Marxist views on society, or more precisely, to the determination of qualitative distinctiveness of socialist society. Every patriarchal determination of gender relations so far has been part of the relations of supremacy and subjection. Still dominant today is the type of family in which the father-breadwinner, even if his social status is unsatisfactory, represents the position of power, commands a relinquishment of instincts and acceptance of the principle of reality, enabling the practice of male and female roles.
The Freudian “anti-woman”, anti-emancipation views are sometimes justified by the fact that he developed his learning on a particular type of family in a specific culture. Regardless of what his views are, what interests us here is only how credible and persuasive is his translation of biological sexual determinedness in the nature of “other”. The Neoanalytical schools immediately introduce categories of society and culture, which perhaps obscures the core issue.
I will try to give a summary of the psychoanalytical explanation of female socialization. A psychic differentiation of sexes occurs in the Oedipal phase. Until then, both females and males share their sexual goal (to different degrees – oral, anal and phallic) and their sexual object, mother. After that, psychic appropriation of the anatomic pole occurs. The Oedipal phase is phallic for both sexes, because infantile genital organization focuses on only the male sexual organ playing a sexual role for both sexes. A girl becomes a woman by leaving her mother as an object of love in favor of the father (this also means identification with the mother) and giving up her clitoris as a sexual organ in favor of the vagina. Freud believes in the possibility of the so-called normal development or the “masculinity complex”. Normal development would mean acceptance of not having a penis, and, as an aberration, produces a desire to somehow acquire it. Not having a penis facilitates the separation from the mother, who is regarded as responsible for this and is otherwise necessarily a source of various frustrations (getting accustomed to cleanness and the like). In this context, female qualities or femininity develop. Here decisions are made between an active and passive attitude, wounded narcissism can lead to a feeling of inferiority and the like. Freud obviously insists on the relinquishment of the clitoris as a precondition for developing sexual polarity, which results in activity and having a penis as being male, and passivity and being an object as being female.
As we already mentioned, gentleness, non-violence and sensitivity surface as effects of this situation, and embellish it. They are actually masochistic instincts resulting from blocked instincts of activity and aggression that turn against the self. What the girl gets as a reward from the father are love and gentleness. This passivity is the cause of dependence on the love of others, and results in the development of female qualities and behaviors: the desire to be liked, jealousy, fear of losing love – according to Freud, the female superego is grounded in this fear, which supposedly explains a great degree of conformity and adaptability that women exhibit. However, some other qualities would be the result of a regression caused by disappointment in the new object of love: unsuccessful separation from the mother would lead to an infantile character, lack of independence, marginal frustration tolerance. So often praised female readiness to sacrifice would be the consequence of the construction of her superego.
The Neoanalysts, particularly Karen Horney, stress that penis envy is not caused by anatomic difference, but by the fact that the social privilege of males is subsumed under the phallic symbol. This means that the future might bring us great changes in the character of femininity. We already mentioned that Marxist theorists in principle consider the social privilege of males within the context of general social privilege and lack of privilege. The Marxist problem lies precisely in the fact that revolutionary transformation does not occur through natural necessity, and successfully performed seizure of power with the intention of building a socialist society does not lead to the creation of a qualitatively new society by natural necessity.
It is also possible to claim that things work more or less fine with femininity, but masculinity is a bigger problem. In a society in which more and more women perform the same jobs as men, the man loses the breadwinner role in private life. (It may be added that a woman also loses the possibility of a carefree life in a state of dependence, but this was the privilege of a very small group of women, and even so, was not much fun.) In such a society, there may be difficulties in the process of growing up and accepting the principle of reality (it is not possible to satisfy all desires, at least not instantly). It seems that, for now, the changes consist in displacements, “delegations” of femininity and masculinity. The paradigms remain strong, although the lives of women and men have changed. A male in a couple may not be powerful, but there are other men who are; a woman who works at home and outside the home will not be able to be a miraculously seductive, unfathomable and mysterious comforter, but will still be able to delineate elements of these roles. This is where the media play an influential role. The question is, of course, how this displacement can be sustained in the next generations that will no longer be growing up in traditional families.
What about the possible use of the subversive potential of female qualities? It depends on a particular moment – while the bitterness of sexual injustice is still strong, and a new kind of oppression has still not devalued and destroyed already accepted patterns of non-aggressiveness. Communication and understanding between the sexes today is maintained through traditional ideological (cultural etc.) models, and women are still willing to accept the double burden. But, the situation is changing here as well. The so-called sexual revolution promises everyone a true liberation, true sexual satisfaction and happiness. The social pressure to suppress and overcome sexual passions suddenly turns into the pressure to let nature run its course. An orgasm becomes a moral imperative, as if the complex structure of desires and instincts has suddenly been reduced to a simple mechanical model. In the process, women are not being any less objectified. Feminist attempts of opting for a different sexuality, sexuality without penetration, are mere reversals of the system in which the penis symbolizes power.
Societies in which attempts at building a socialist regime have been made exhibit an ideological tendency to balance out female and male roles, but, in practice, keep their trust in the constancy of traditional female roles due to the inability to adequately substitute women’s household chores and child-rearing tasks (even in times of dogmatic development of the new man, not much intervention has been made into the family). What will happen to femininity in the private sphere if roles in the labor market are completely evened out?
In present circumstances, for most people work is, as Marx describes it, something outside of themselves, something that they don’t find confirmation in, that doesn’t satisfy any need and is not a means to satisfy needs outside of work. The greatest majority of female workers perceive work in this way, performing tiring and grueling jobs. Of course private possibilities of self-realization and happiness are of most importance to them.
Can we conclude something about femininity from the work of privileged or specially gifted women? What have women achieved since they gained at least some possibility to “compete” with men? Generally, they achieve more and more. In adequate circumstances, in natural sciences they can reach the top of the profession. The laws of scientific work are such that there is actually a similar division between the sphere of privacy and rationality at work as with manual labor. I assume that the biggest problem is wanting more and refusing to be exploited in a subordinate role. Female writers had always had the best possibilities, because of the nature of the job – writing can be done with the minimum of resources and maximum of privacy: but, of course, that influences the result. Women easily master professions that are an extension of their traditional roles, such as teachers and physicians, but the feminization of these professions sometimes diminishes their status, whereas some types of professions are still relatively inaccessible to women. There are very few great female players, but perhaps this says something about chess. There are few female composers: it takes a lot of creative courage and overcoming the burden of heritage. In rock music, women of a new kind are slowly coming into the spotlight.
There are female politicians and executives. Some attribute an almost non-existing contribution of women in philosophy to a masculine nature of this megalomanic work. But, if we try to interpret history and theory throughout history as a process of imposition of particular interests and particular truths as general and generally valid, the solution is not to impose particular interests that have so far been repressed as general. The theoretical value of Marcuse’s theses on feminist socialism lies in the fact that the introduction of the female perspective shows that rationality is only seemingly non-particular, and is actually permeated by power relations.
The scope and function of sexuality could be clearly grasped only in a society in which the needs of the way of production will not reflect the patterns of masculinity and femininity through individual and psychological mediation of the effects of a socially privileged status. A general, emphatic concept of a human being carries an ideological function of obscuring the concrete positioning in a society. Human beings are not materializations of a predetermined essence, materialized forms of humanity in general.
Anthropologists have described a number of ways in which male-female divisions developed in different cultures. In some, supposedly female and supposedly male qualities are completely opposite to those in our culture, but all cultures make a clear distinction between the male and female identity. Will numerous new “mixed” identities develop in time? The idea of the mixture of male and female is not in any way new; tales of separation and fusion have been told from Plato to Weininger. Our “not yet”, the qualitatively new should be created at the intersection of the natural and the social. This is the locus of ideological operations: who knows what disorganization of this obstacle can bring us?
(Peoples Republic of Croatia 1945-1953)
PART I
INTRODUCTION
“INVISIBLE” SUBJECT, PERSPECTIVIST METHOD AND “UNTRANSPARENT” SOURCES
How to explain why the story of the Anti-Fascist Front of Women, still now – 37 years after its extinguishment – has not been recorded? The problem, it seems, lies equally in the subject and in the method.
Subject – method – subject
What is the reason that the AFW, the most massive of all mass movements, is still an unwritten sheet of our postwar history? Though it has been active as a distinct organization only for the last ten years (1942-1953), it is not really unknown that it possesses a clearly distinct tradition, the continuity which can be traced back to the 1930ies, when also the Yugoslav communist movement accepted the Comintern’s directive for creating of the People’s Front of all democratic forces against the advancing fascism. But, at the same time, in the immediate post-war period AFW is the only (survived) inheritress of the tedious, century-long women’s breakthrough
into the public political sphere and their endeavors to take an equal role in all aspects of the social life, by employing the means appropriate to them. Why, in spite of this, have the women remained “invisible” in the collective memory and historical scholarship, and why has their place in history remained vacant?
Unless we want to be dogmatically strict in judging the science of history, it should be considered that historiography (like other humanities and social sciences) is merely a “form of thinking, caused by awareness of structures and processes in the society”. Thus, “every society has as much history as elements of the present, and various individuals can be aware of various pasts (…). Social awareness of the past is an issue of plurality, not singularity.”
In order to recognize the public/political activities of women (and certainly also of men as concrete historical beings), it will be necessary to dare a deflection from the dominant paradigm of the political history, which has been prevailing in our historiography. Even its ultimate scope
are the wide scenic frescoes: the history stage is illuminated by the Bengal light of revolution, and on it march – fall and rise – the “beings of class”, the forces of reaction and of progress… Dramatic plots are prompted by “objective necessity” or “lawfulness of social progress”…
It is history without man. “People”, even in such a history, do appear sometimes – great individuals, leaders, heroes, masters, revolutionaries and generals, or perhaps fallen angels of betrayal. Men. They seem to exist beyond the relationship between the sexes, to the same extent to which they have certainly dominated this same relationship.
The development of the social history, which deflected radically from the traditional historiography – with the political, military and diplomatic history as its pillars – has rendered both the continuous processes of different areas of social experience and relation and the so called “common people” a legitimate subject of scholarly interest. With the entrance of concrete, bodily historical beings a space has been created also for the history of women.
The methodology of social history is characterized by accepting of the methods of social sciences in the process of conceptualizing and testing of hypothesis, as well as the orientation towards analysis of a long lasting process. In addition, it is in a constant search for historical sources. Certainly, a major part of this new paradigm can be labeled as the “political history”. Yet, not even politics is any longer defined as formal or informal struggle for power. New questions emerge, like those which challenge the allocation of power and resources between the sexes, as well as the social relationship between them.
The establishment and the expansion of the history of women were prompted by a strong advancement of women’s movements (the so called neo-feminism) in the early 1970ies and their demands that collective memory be refreshed with “writing women into history”. Since its beginnings this new discipline, supplementing the social history’s tenets, has not limited itself to a mere filling up of the “vacancies” and writing the women into the existing historiographical categories and frames. In the premise of a discourse on women’s experiences in and with the history lies a claim for a change of the criteria of scientific relevance. Namely, the traditional historiography had not regarded their “experiences, activities and spaces as worthy of a substantial research”.
The marginalization and minorization of the experiences of women in history was just a reflection of their real and symbolic position in contemporary societies.
Unsustainable are the objections that the history of women is a violent singling out of an analytical category which is as non-homogenous as women are. The women’s history theoreticians have not neglected the double game of difference. “The differences based on the category of gender exist everywhere, but on the other hand, their concrete manifestations are not the same in every society: they are not universal.” The variations related to the status of women are as numerous as the variations in the status of men, and consequently the differentiations according to the criterion of gender must not be equated with the hierarchies derived from the same criterion. The point in question is the neglected relations among the human beings and the human groups. “Women ought to be comprehended in relation – to other women and to men – and not in categories of differentiation and separation” , warned Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo, an American anthropologist. The theory has paid special attention to a deconstruction of biological determinism, which implicitly presents man as historical being, and reduces the historical existence of women to the mute and constant returning of the same play of an exchange of natural rhythms. The sexes and the relationship between them are not something out of, above or before the history. To understand the meaning of the sexes in the past is one of the main goals of the research. The notion of “gender” has been introduced as a consequence of the efforts to highlight the essentially social quality of differences based on sex.
Joan W. Scott, an American historian, defines gender as a complex category. Gender is, primarily, a constitutive element of social relations that are based on perceived differences between the sexes, and precisely gender is a primary way of signifying relations of power. Being a constitutive element of the social relations gender comprises, according to J.W.Scott, four linked elements:
The first element includes the available symbols, which in certain culture evoke multiple (and often contradictory) representations – for instance Eve and Virgin Mary as symbols in the Judeo-Christian civilization. It is a task of the historians to establish which symbolic image is evoked, how and in which context. The second place is taken by normative concepts, which activate an interpretation of the symbols, which attempt to limit and include their metaphorical potentials. These normative concepts are enclosed in religious, educational, scientific and legal doctrines. The position, which sets the prevailing ton dominant in a given historical moment, they sanction as the only possible, as the universal norm. A consequence of this is that history is written as if these normative positions were a product of social consensus and not conflict. The most recent historical research works focus on disputing of the declared immutability, on revealing the nature of contentions or repression that leads to semblance of timeless permanence of the binary representations of gender, according to J.W.Scott. This type of analysis cannot eschew consideration of the politics of social institutions and organizations – the third aspect of gender relations. The last aspect of the gender category is gender identity. Historians must investigate specific ways of constructing this identity and put their findings into a relationship with a whole range of activities of social organizations and with the historically specific cultural images. As Joan Scott points out, “the concepts of gender, which are established as an objective set of references, structure the perception and the concrete and symbolic organization of all social life.” To the extent that these references establish distribution of power (differential control over or access to material and symbolic resources) gender becomes implicated in conception and construction of power itself.“ Regardless of different premises and traditions to which the theoretical elaborations of the history of women and the history of gender refer , a conclusion that sexes and their relationships must be considered as social, political and cultural entities has become a common place. “We must not and cannot reduce them to factors beyond history, and even less to a single, simple, uniform, primal or inherent cause of emergence.”
Examination of the relationship between the categories of class and gender is also one of the key preoccupations of the theoretical establishment of the history of women/gender. It is pointed out that neither gender nor class represent homogenous groups, and that as categories they do not necessary imply solidarity bonds. Moreover, gender is a reason for the inhomogeneity of the classes, and the classes are one of the reasons for the inhomogeneity of gender.
By placing the subject – AFW – within the scope of the mentioned theoretical discussions on the history of gender/women, I was able to address it with no feeling of shame and remorse. This was no insignificant advantage due to a prevailing impression that the authors writing about historical activities of women, being exposed to a massive burden of the reference framework of so called “general/political history”, have experienced their work as something marginal, almost frivolous. So, for instance, Jovanka Kecman, the author of the first (and only) detailed monograph about the women of the workers’ movement and the women’s organizations (meaning the so called “bourgeois” feminist movement) in Yugoslavia, finds it necessary to explain the dilemma (eventually rejected) “whether to research and analyze this issue as a special subject or within the general issues from the history of workers’ movement”.
It is precisely because of this that the feminist call “Let us write the women back into the history!” cannot represent just a search for some earlier neglected “subject”. Its realization is unthinkable without theoretically-methodological awareness, without new sensitivity
for the “invisible”, annihilated, marginal spheres of experience and relations in the past. The every day life, corporeality, sexuality; women, marginalized individuals of all colors, losers, the oppressed… will be able to emerge out of the gray cataract of a historical oblivion only after we have sharpened the method, the tools to recognize also their voices.
With the investigation of the women’s emancipation processes, which finds its initial impulses in the revolutionary slogan “Freedom, Equality, Fraternity” (without – sometimes brutally omitted- sisterhood ), an opportunity appears to investigate one of the neglected civilization-historical processes of long duration. Furthermore, the process of women’s liberation must be viewed as a major process. Charles Tilly, an American historical sociologist, critically analyzed the notion of a social change, arguing that the social change as such does not exist either at national or international scale. What exists, are major processes (like for instance the processes of state creations or capitalistic accumulation), which have reshaped the world over the last couple of centuries.
Women’s liberation is also a precondition for the realization of the most prominent ideal of the socialist revolution – equality of all people.
How can an investigation of a women’s organization shed some light on the quality of emancipatory processes in a society? Although one should by no means neglect the warnings by the leading theoreticians of the history of women that it is not exhausted in the history of their organized – public and political – activities (in the “exclusively” male social space), the consideration of a relationship between the organizational model and the goals of the women’s organization can provide relevant understandings of the quality and achievement of this process.
Thus, the first step in the discourse on AFW and its necessary prerequisite is a reconstruction of the organizational scheme and real functioning of the organization, as well as identification of its role in the totality of the post-revolutionary social changes process.
Do the frequent transformations of the AFW’s organizational model between 1945 and 1953 advance women’s liberation? To what extent was the manner in which the organization had been founded after the World War II instrumental in stimulating their emancipation and to what extent was it employed for the realization of other priorities of the social progress? Which organizational resources and options did women have at disposal for articulating a strategy of their own liberation from the specific sexual discrimination?
By reconstructing of the frequent changes of the AFW’s organizational model, which were the reactions to its organizational environment (primarily the Communist Party and the “people’s” rule”), I wish to determine the autonomy degree that AFW had at its disposal while formulating the goals, the strategy and the tactics in the social changes, which were unfeasible, declaratory, without a radical shift in the social position of women. Did the organizational structure of AFW insure the necessary space and adequate degree of social power for a realization of emancipation in a country ravaged by war; undeveloped and deeply imbued with patriarchal culture (whose constituent part is also the political culture).
I will investigate the micro-level – the women’s organization and the structure of its internal relations understood as a sub-system with its own culture and group dynamics – in relation to the macro-level – to the institutions of the global social/political system, which determine the position and the role of AFW in the given historical moment. In determining of the interrelation between these two levels I will employ experiences of historical sociology. This discipline has developed a wide enough theoretically-methodological frame for a new reading of classical sociological theories, by reintroducing socio-cultural diversities, time processes, concrete events and dialectics of meaningful actions and structural determinants into the macro-sociological explanations and investigations.
Certainly, a focus of my research is the life of the AFW organization. Organizations are, naturally, made up of people: their everyday life, their relationships, specific type of expression/creativity, certain manner of communication – mediation, influence… The interest for the “life of an organization”, expressed in this way, situates the research within the environment of another humanistic discipline: ethnology. In investigating complex societies the contemporary ethnology had to develop sensitivity for an “investigation of the relationship between the parts and the whole, global cultures and subcultures, ruling classes and the subordinated, culture as system and cultures as subsystems, i.e. the relationship between great ideas and small views of the world i.e. history (…)”, as pointed out by Dunja Rihtman-Auguštin. There is another type of sociological analysis that can be helpful in the AFW research at this level. It is a so called network analysis, which introduces a notion of social network, defining it as a “social dimension that mediates between the relationship and the social system of (or) societies, between the local and the national level.” This type of analysis makes it possible to think in a different way of the manner in which social positions are established or of the interplay between the social structure and the individual action. It is fruitful in particular in delving into political parties or groups close to them (interest groups, pressure groups); it does not reduce the phenomenon of social power to the political sphere “where the power is ‘represented’ (…). The network analysis reveals an infinite source of power in society (…)”. I have used the aforementioned theoretical approaches while constructing the subject of my research, departing from the fact that it is neither objectively “set” nor theoretically (consensually) pre-defined. The “Subject” will be shaped, will become “legible” only through a roster of a selected theoretically-methodological angle. We always analyze what we can see (Lacan’s regard which notices new dimensions but does not “discover” things), and this seeing is, in return, defined by analytical “ductility” of the material, in particular when it comes to such an elusive “subject” as (“invisible” – neglected) historical evidence. According to Theda Skocpol, exactly the practice of analytical historical sociology imposes a more intimate dialog with the historical evidence than the interpretative historical sociology or a model application on a certain historical case would be able to do. It may be easiest to describe this permanent dialectic tension between the subject and the method, the material and the construction with a metaphor by Arthur Stinchombe who thinks that an analytical historical sociologist “constructs like a carpenter, adjusting the measures during the progress of the job, while an architect draws first and only then builds.”
So far, the results of wide-scoped analysis of historical sociology have enabled new dimensions of understanding the manners in which the patterns from the past as well as the alternative trajectories can be relevant/irrelevant for the choices of the present. “Thus, good historical sociology of real preoccupations of the reality can speak in a more meaningful manner than a narrow-focus empirical studies that pride themselves with ‘political relevance’”.
Listening to the voices of women from the past can point out both to the wrong choices that should not be repeated and to the unused reserves of utopian energy. For an irretrievable picture of the past fades away with every present which does not recognize itself in it. (Walter Benjamin).
Blaženka Despot
Open Marxism as a scientific foundation for the practical agency of communists and the project of freedom of socialist self-government, which render the working class as a subject of economic and thus human emancipation, opens us a new possibility for extending the Marxist theory of society through a new positioning of “the women’s issue”. Rethinking “the women’s issue” as a sexual issue from a Marxist standpoint brings it into an inevitable relation with the class issue, the issue of the proletariat. However, since “Marxism is not a dogma, but a theory of social process”, it implies a possibility for an understanding of the relationship between “the women’s issue” and class that is different than in etatist socialism.
The dogmatic and Stalinist Marxism executed a vulgar reductionism of “the women’s issue” to the class issue. As a result, “the women’s issue” is not even raised, because the problem of equality of women is viewed from the position of “now” possible and “after”, that is, its complete solution in a classless society.
The line of temporality leads to the reductionism of “the women’s issue” as “particular” to “universal”, which is why it must be first liberated as this “universal”, the working class, while the emancipation of its parts can ensue only afterwards. In short: not only it is not the time to deal with “the women’s issue”, but in reality it does not even exist, since it is subsumed under the “universal” issue of proletarian liberation. That is why “the women’s issue” always stands in quotation marks, which means it is a quasi issue. However, the men’s issue has never been addressed within the framework of the class issue of proletariat and its liberation, because the difference of women’s inequality is evident in everyday experience. This difference is expressed by the quotation marks in “the women’s issue” and is resolved “now”, on the one hand, normatively, through law, as women’s equality, in the political sphere, and through equal economic opportunities in employment, pay etc., and on the other, as the employed woman’s and employed mother’s care for the family, as working class’ care for its own reproduction. Since the care for the employed man, the employed father, is never mentioned, it is obvious that the traditional, patriarchal division of labor in the family is still in place: the separation of private and public life.
Everyday forms of discrimination against women are considered to be remnants in people’s consciousness that are not grounded in the new relations of production. The “universality” of the class issue in relation to the “particularity” of the women’s issue is also the “universality” of the working class emancipation understood as human emancipation.
The universality of emancipation is interpreted as state ownership of means of production, strengthening of socialist statehood, centralism and planning.
Emancipation understood in this way is essentially the emancipation of civil society as political emancipation, which is, in socialism, deprived of the contradiction of social production and private appropriation inherent to civil society itself.
The means of liberation of etatist socialism is therefore “universality”. Its “universality” in relation to the working class and to everyday working conditions of workers lies in the unquestionable appropriation of the production forces of capital, primarily science and technology. Since this science and this technology, invented within a different type of production relations, the rent relations, with a different purpose – generation of profit – create alienation, the estrangement can be seen in the relations of production, in the domination of “universal” over “particular”, politics over economy.
The abstraction of this “generality” necessarily assumes the authoritarianism of the division of labor resulting from a scientific organization of labor, authoritarian interpersonal relations, authoritarian relations between the individual and the state, bureaucracy and technocracy, as well as authoritarian relations between men and women. The bureaucracy as well as “the women’s issue” is claimed to have no social, real foundation; the relation with it is a remnant of the past in people’s consciousness, since it is the socialist bureaucracy, the working class bureaucracy, which is simply contradiction in adiecto.
The authoritarian production of material life necessarily approves of the authoritarian family and authoritarian socialization and personality formation, so that “the women’s issue” can neither be resolved nor raised, because the patriarchal family with patriarchal morality and division of labor is precisely the premise of this entire production of life.
“The nature of woman” as a biological being, as a mother, remains a constant that is preventing her self-actualization. As a worker, in public life, she performs the same jobs as a man and the nature of woman does not prevent her from doing that, but in private life, she remains a woman. And the circle closes: the authoritarian production requires the authoritarian family and the authoritarian family socializes authoritarian people, which are, in their “particular” interest, assimilated into the “universal” interest of the state and party.
This process of production of life is regarded as necessary; the emancipation of the working class for “now”, and tomorrow, “later”, will lead to a full emancipation of a classless society.
The socialist morale is considered to be the cement of such a society, based on a patriarchal family morale, authoritarian and productivist morale.
Subsuming “the women’s issue” as a “particular” issue under the “universal” issue of proletariat has proven to be a “particular” relation between the working class and the state, so that Cristina Glucksman, a French feminist and member of the French Communist Party notes: “I was surprised by many analyses pertaining to class relations and the state I had studied. These analyses are dedicated to the creation of a bolshevist-stalinist ideology, but issues such as, for example, “the political function of the moral norm” (italics added, B.D.) as the means to justify power and the normalization instruments, bringing into order, social control over subjects are usually not considered.”
The relation between the “women’s issue” as “particular” and the proletarian issue as “universal” has been solved within the framework of etatist socialism as the loss of any “particularity” into one abstract “universality” of the state and party. This abstract universality is regarded as necessary on the basis of the possibility of “now”, on the basis of the “empire of necessity”.
The Marxist understanding of the relation between the “women’s issue” and the class issue as the relation between “particular” and “universal” overlooks the fact that the “women’s issue” shows up precisely because women do not achieve the level of emancipation of their class. The disadvantage of the reductionism of the “women’s issue” to the class issue is evident in the fact that the emancipation of women is below the level of emancipation of their class, that is, below the level of what is possible now – the “now” as a historical possibility.
The bourgeois revolution as the revolution of the “third estate”, the bourgeoisie, establishes the equality of humans before the Law, before the state. It designates the human as the citizen, which is treated equally as other citizens by the blind goddess Iusticia. This great social and political revolution of the bourgeoisie before the “universality” of the state has made humans equal before the law and justice. It has defined the human emancipation as a political emancipation and thus expressed its freedom project, its scope and boundaries.
The Marxist critique of the bourgeois understanding of freedom of man as a political being shows that it is a formal democracy, pointing out the inequality of men in their practical, productionary, everyday, empirical life. However, the form of this equality, the equality before the law, is a result of a unique expression of the culture of bourgeois society, both in production and legislature. For the people to be able to be conceptualized as equal, even in their abstractness towards the state as the abstract universal, the cause must be in production, which has already turned abstract production of commodities and money, as well as workers as a commodity, into a quantitative relation of exchange. Therefore, the bourgeois democracy as w whole, the political democracy, is understood as human emancipation, the result of abstract exchangeability of the quantitative elements of commodities and workers as commodities, in which humans are understood, despite the equivalent exchanges, as equal in relation to the abstract universality of the state.
Since the bourgeois culture is based on production of commodities and money, on the fetishism of commodity, different quantitative equivalents are attributed to an equal measure of exchangeability, the value of the object itself. Through fetishism of commodities, which conceals the relations between people, rent relations, the overall relation is established as a different value of commodity and man – worker. This difference as the premise of the entire bourgeois culture necessarily entails the abstraction of equality before the Law, just as the abstract “universal” in the state is precisely that which is the universality of the bourgeois culture itself. But, whereas this abstract universality, that is, the scope of the bourgeois, political emancipation, applies to both the bourgeoisie and proletarians – men, it does not apply to women. As regards their establishment of equality, women do not have the right to vote, do not have equal pay for equal work, for two reasons: 1) because of their “nature”, they have a lesser value as the equivalent of exchange, and 2) the bourgeois morale benefits from the socialization of the family, suitable for the needs of the bourgeois culture as a whole. The abstract universality, through which the bourgeoisie has expressed the political emancipation of equality and democracy, declares that the “women’s issue” is not so “universal”, and that emancipation does not refer to women to the same extent, so that the “women’s issue” in relation to this “universality” appears as a “particular” issue, as feminism. Therefore, the “women’s issue” is below the level of “universality”, enacted by the governing class for itself, as well as for the exploited – men. So, the “women’s issue” is not only a class issue – the problem of the emancipation of women lies in the fact that woman should first emancipate itself to the level of emancipation of the governing class and the governing way of production. Because of this “particularity” of the “women’s issue” within the identification of women on the basis of their sex, within the “destiny of woman”, in the relation towards her “nature”, the direct obstructer is the man, regardless of his class. Women particularly experience this relation in the double morality, sexual morality, the morality of the relation between the sexes, internalized by many proletarian men themselves, as well as by many proletarian women. That is why Marxism still faces a lot of work on exploring morality as the premise of “practical agency of communists”. Morality is also the premise of the self-cognition of the individual as a free being in general. “Every critique of morality is always also a critique of ideology. But, it is never quintessentially done: within the worker’s movement, there has always existed a certain form of morality derived in some sense from Christianity. The fact is that the defiance to norms as a form of repression has appeared subsequently, in addition to the movement for women’s liberation. The morality has, from one point of view, always been Christian and male interpreted. All in all, Marxism has never dealt with the creation of morality as addressed by Nietzsche.”
(italics added)
Gender identification as the common basis of the emancipation of women, the struggle against men as a gender, as that directly present, sensory, everyday exploiter, is the basis of what is called “bourgeois feminism”. The “abstract universality” of the bourgeois scope of freedom could on its own premises attain a different evaluation of humans according to an equal abstract equivalent of exchange and ideologically remove the abstraction of this exchange in the citizen – man, but does not allow women this ideology of equality, this degree of universality.
The political articulation of “women’s” interests in various forms of “militant feminism” is the negation of the “women’s issue” as the class issue, thus ruling out the possibility of theoretical grounding within Marxism. Militant feminism treats men in the same way the Luddite movement treats machines or militant atheism treats God. In a direct sense, everyday sensory experience of repression of women is attributed to the male gender and stands militantly against the “aggressor”.
The Marxist theory of society, of course, cannot be grounded in gender struggle as class struggle or gender struggle replacing class struggle. But, the reductionism of the “women’s issue” to the class issue in women’s everyday experience of their own real inequality enables them to become aware of their own being.
The Marxist feminism, apart from a declared focus on the working class struggle, has a lot of experience with the self-awareness process women go through, coming together to analyze their female experience, interpret violence, and acquire the self-reflection of liberation. Women decipher the symbols of speech, models of thinking and culture, made by “humans” – men.
The assimilation of the “women’s issue” into an “universal” issue, the proletarian issue, through the negation of its particularity has also defined the class issue, the proletarian issue, as “particular” in relation to the “universal” of the state and party. The etatist model of socialism favors the reduction of the “women’s issue” to the class issue for the purpose of the entire authoritarian production of life: material production and biological reproduction. Woman is below the emancipation level of her class – and here lies the whole “particularity” of the “women’s issue” – and suffers repression as a working woman and as a woman, which is not the case with an employed man and a man.
The International Declaration on the Equality of Women and their Contribution to Development and Peace of 1975, signed also by Yugoslavia, recognized this in point 20: “However, the achievement of economic and social goals, essential for the realization of women’s rights, will not in itself lead to a full integration of women into development on the basis of their equality to men, without special measures aimed at full elimination of all forms of discrimination against women.”
It is all about the implementation of special measures!
The implementation of “special measures”, which would not be mere volunteerism or “moral resentment”, is possible within the Marxist theory of society, Open Marxism as the scientific and theoretical basis of practical agency of communists, as the product of self-awareness process of the avant-garde and as declared in the communist program.
These “special measures” must be based on “the achievement of economic and social goals” of socialist self-government. “Economic and social goals” of socialist self-government are based on the freedom project, economic emancipation, human emancipation, on the “now” and justification of “after” only if it is in the “now”.
The new culture of socialist self-government understood as the culture of labor – mastering the conditions of results of one’s own labor and conditions of living in general – is equivalent to the new production of life. The production of life, both material production and reproduction of life, is a unique process. The new culture as an alternative model to etatism is primarily a non-authoritarian culture. The struggle against “universality”, the process of socialist self-government as the real, not just legal nationalization and public ownership of production, is the basis of expansion of Marxist theory of society and the creative modification of this theory. It presupposes a different relationship toward nature, different relations between humans and different relations between women and men. The process of nationalization of the authoritarian division of labor and technology presupposes a process of nationalization (public ownership) of family. It primarily means the elimination of the double morality of “private” and “public” and introduction of women into history. The elimination of “universality” represents the elimination of the “firm hand” by self-governing understanding and agreement as the new human sensibility.
The authoritarian and patriarchal division of labor and family morality socialize authoritarian personalities.
The reductionism of the “universality” of the “women’s issue” to the class issue deprives the proletarians of their own premise of human emancipation, which is given to them as a historical possibility. The hardest struggle of the proletariat against itself lies in the relation towards the woman, who because of her “nature” remains always below the emancipation level of her class on the basis of an internalized morality of the governing class. “The proletariat completes itself by eliminating itself; by bringing its class struggle to an end, it achieves a classless society. The struggle for this society, in which the dictatorship of the proletariat is only one of its phases, is not merely a fight against an outside enemy, against the bourgeoisie, but also the struggle of the proletariat against itself: against the destructive and humiliating effects of the capitalist system on class awareness. Only when the proletariat overcomes these effects, it will secure a true victory. The division of individual areas that should be unified, and the various degrees of awareness that the proletariat has achieved in various areas, are accurate indicators of what has been achieved and what should be achieved in the future. The proletariat must not be afraid of self-criticism, because the victory can only be achieved with the truth, and that is why self-criticism must be its life element.”
“The destructive and humiliating effects of capitalism on its class awareness” are particularly visible in its relation towards women. The discrimination against women in any aspect of “private” or “public” life is the relation towards “the nature of woman” within the appropriation of morality understood as the principle of domination. On the other hand, the negation of the “women’s issue” as “particular” is the consequence of “etatist sensibility” using “the political function of moral norm” as the means to justify power. That is why woman in socialist self-government is most radically interested in all norms proclaimed by self-government. She sees the possibility for her own emancipation in this whole non-authoritarian culture of production of life.
Women regard removing the quotation marks from the “women’s issue” as the premise of their emancipation. But, it is also the premise for men, proletarians being emancipated as human beings.
Women, who most directly feel authoritarianism in their lives, are a huge potential force for the realization of culture of socialist self-government. But, only the women with the highest level of awareness are prepared for this today, just as the members of working class and working people with the highest level of awareness use, that is, apply the laws of science, as stated in the Program of the Communist Union of Yugoslavia: “Communists use, that is, apply the results of science in accordance with the social interest and degree of social awareness of the most progressive part of the working class and working people in general and in accordance with the society’s material possibilities.”
(italics added) The proletariat itself suffers devastating and humiliating effects on its class awareness. Due to their “nature” and the dominant patriarchal morality, women have difficulty entering into history to self-actualize themselves into individuals. They have also internalized the authoritarian morality: peace, care, order and work, and are struggling to free themselves of it through an exacting opposition to the environment and with a sense of guilt. Emancipated women are “emancipated” only in the search for their female identity, which is more difficult than Proust’s “search for lost time”.
For the women’s cause, for the emancipation of women, the most destructive thing is the male, etatist designation of their self-awareness process as “elitism” or “bourgeois feminism”. Gaining self-awareness of the class elements of their “nature”, of the cultural pattern of society, moral norms, linguistic symbols etc. is a painstaking process for women. Although only women themselves can articulate the forms of their bondage, they cannot emancipate themselves “without the implementation of special measures aimed at full elimination of all forms of discrimination against women”. “The implementation of special measures” is possible only as the self-knowledge of the male avant-garde that these measures are the premise of their own emancipation.
The addition to the consideration of the “women’s issue” in socialist self-government is based on the development of the Marxist theory of society, which is the basis of practical agency of communists and socialist self-government as the anti-authoritarian model of socialism. The relationship between Open Marxist theory and anti-authoritarian production of life within the culture of socialist self-government in the creative relationship between “theory” and “practice” is possible as a freedom project.
The freedom project presupposes a different understanding of the relation between the “particular” and the “universal”. The reduction of the “particularity” of the “women’s issue” to the “universality” of the class issue also reduces the “particularity” of the class issue to the “universality” of the state and party bureaucracy.
Factum brutum that the “women’s issue” surfaces as the consequence of inequality of women and inability to achieve the emancipation level of their class confers it the “particularity” that cannot be subsumed under “universality”. The grounding of “the women’s issue” in gender by confirming its “particularity”, the replacement of class struggle with gender struggle, is located outside of Marxism and outside of what women in socialist self-government would want.
The freedom project of socialist self-government enables women, within the pluralism of self-governing interests, to organize themselves by gender and exchange their experiences. This is often called “feminism”, and the dread of feminism in Yugoslavia is entirely caused by the fact that women are using the democratic structure of our system to express each and every direct interest of workers and citizens. But, women’s interests are not merely one of those particular, direct interests of workers and citizens; their “particularity” contains the entire “universality” of the working class.
Thus, in Yugoslavia, there is no feminism that would be positioned outside the class issue of working class. If the plurality of feminisms has in common only the fact that they are always a unified effort to liberate women, we could talk about the Yugoslav mode of feminism, the self-governing way.
But, the expansion of Marxist theory of society as the theory for the practical agency of communists is not content with this kind of effort, but demands a revendication of the relation between the “women’s issue” as “particular” and the proletarian issue as “universal”. This relation cannot be resolved through etatist socialism, since the struggle against its abstract “universality”, against its authoritarianism, is the basis of socialist self-government. The relation between the “particular” and the “universal” can only be the relation between the “particular” and the concrete universal, which means that all “particular” is contained within the “universal”, and all “universal” is contained within the “particular”.
The “particularity” of the “women’s issue” contains in itself the “universality” of the proletarian issue. Each “particular” women’s issue contains the problem of human emancipation. What is at stake here is not political emancipation and its “universality”, but human emancipation. Human emancipation is possible only within the new, non-authoritarian culture, in the freedom project that represents the process of elimination of division of labor, public ownership of labor, public ownership of science and politics, and such a culture needs the non-authoritarian production of humans, non-authoritarian relations in the family that socialize individuals – self-governors. In this sense, the emancipation of women is the premise of human emancipation, and each “women’s issue” is a human issue. The “after” of resolving emancipation of women exists as much as the “now” for the entire working class.
In order to resolve the reductionism of the “women’s issue” to the class issue, it first must be addressed. To address the “women’s issue” as the class issue, whose “particularity” reflects all moments of humiliating, rent effects on the class awareness of the proletariat, is to raise the “women’s issue” as a sexual issue, in which the repression of women is the expression of slavery of all humanity. This is what talking about the “women’s issue” as a human issue means. The abstract opposition between the sex and class disappears, and each and every sexual issue, “women’s issue”, reveals the alienation of the “men’s issue”, the class issue.
In order to address the “women’s issue” in such a way within the Marxist theory of society, it is necessary to get rid of the quotation marks. So, the women’s issue in socialist self-government exists as a human problem of human emancipation of the proletariat.
This addition to the consideration of the women’s issue within socialism is the addition to the Marxist theory of society, which is at the same time the scientific and theoretical basis for the practical agency of communists in the realization of the alternative model of socialism.
Open Marxism as the “theory” and “practice” of communists realizes the freedom project dealing with all problems of necessity, but recognizes this necessity from a position of freedom.
The proclaimed declaration of the equality of women is realized by eliminating the abstract ambiguity of achievement of economic and social goals and implementation of special measures aimed at equality of women, by addressing the women’s issue as a human issue in a joint effort of women and men for a new production of life, a new culture without abstract universality.
Removing the quotation marks from the “women’s issue” implies a possibility for a theoretical grounding of Marxist feminism. Since revolutionary theory is not possible without revolutionary practice, the theoretical grounding of Marxist feminism is the premise of human emancipation of women and men.
As I already mentioned, the possibility of theoretical grounding of Marxist feminism is extremely important, because of the differences between real-socialism, etatist socialism and self-government. These differences are theoretically based on the difference in understanding between the dogmatic and Open Marxism. Marxism understood as the foundation of political emancipation of the working class is institutionalized in the ideology of both the relations of production and forces of production. The dictatorship of the proletariat along with the elimination of private ownership is understood as universal emancipation in which every “particular” issue is lost, including the “women’s issue”. Marxism understood as the foundation of human emancipation, as the emancipatory momentous idea, is merely the beginning of the process of self-government of a socio-economic and socio-political system directed towards the humanity’s liberation of everything outside and above it, towards the “association of free manufacturers”. But, it is clear that this is still “an empire of necessity”. “Freedom in this area can mean only that the associated man, the associated manufacturers, rationally arrange their movement of matter with the nature, to bring it under their joint control, instead of being ruled by it as if by a blind force; and to do it with the smallest possible use of force and under conditions that are most befitting and adequate to their human nature.”
The organizing of manufacturers with the aim of rationally arranging their movement with the nature, and the nature of women, that is, the relations in the family and gender relations, is fundamentally different in state socialism and self-government. Considering the women’s issue from the perspective of Marxist feminism is one of the controversies of Marxism. Predrag Vranicki was one of the first theorists in the region to point out this controversy.
The Open Marxist thought must be self-critical; in this case, self-criticism must be directed at the controversy of the social position of women in real-socialism and socialist self-government.
Secondly, for the theoretical development of Open Marxism, the important challenge is the existence of alternative global movements, especially feminist ones, which is the premise of the strategy of relations between the worker’s movement and the new social movements, that is, the worker’s and feminist movement.
The importance of this line of thought increases in times when the conservative politics and ideology in the West are gaining influence. No working class of Western states is immune to these conservative anti-feminist ideas, and neither are socialist societies.
Thirdly, the grounding of Marxist feminism is necessary for the self-awareness and emancipation of one half of humanity that is called women. Marxism and feminism have so far been living in an “unhappy marriage” – as the socialist feminist Heidi Hartman claims. I would add that for the most part they have been living in a common-law marriage, the disadvantage of which is the fact that this relationship is regarded – from the patriarchal point of view – as an accidental partnership or “wild marriage”.
In a logical and methodological sense, from the perspective of the scope of the term “Marxism”, the term “feminism”, the “women’s issue” as a gender issue, is regarded as subordinate, and from the perspective of the term “feminism”, the term “Marxism” is regarded as contradictory. In short, the focus was either the class issue, in which case the women’s issue was reduced to the class issue, or the gender struggle between women and men, because their inequality preceded the bourgeois society, so that Marx’s categorization apparatus was inappropriate for the critique of capitalism, and consequently for the resolution of the issue of patriarchy in socialism. The theoretical grounding of Marxist feminism is challenged from the point of view of traditional Marxism. On the other hand, women’s self-awareness process is an effort to shift from opinion, from that which does not represent some universal thought by itself and in itself, because of some personal belief, to the final truth, to travel the path from vague images to a clear concept. This path is almost analogous to the 19th century socialist conceptualizations of the working class, leading to the proletariat’s self-awareness of itself and for itself in espousing the idea of scientific socialism. Within the framework of the political, revolutionary struggle for the realization of the idea of scientific socialism, within the struggle for human emancipation in the 20th century, women represent one half of humanity. The marginalization of the problem of one half of humanity in the name of either class or conceptual universality and conceptualization of exclusively philosophical and mental universalities should at least abate before one already acquired point of view: “A healthy human mind refers to the concrete. Reflection of the ratio is an abstract theory, untrue, and true only in the human brain – among other things, also not practical.”
It is unpractical not to conceptualize the political potential of one half of humanity except in its subordinate position to “class”, “proletariat” or “human”. The danger of feminism, women’s self-awareness, that is, its theoretical grounding, is to adhere to opinion, which is conceptualized by this “concrete” as personal belief based on “feelings, premonitions, intuition etc., that is, on subjective reasons or generally, on the particularities of the subject in question.” From opinion, the “concrete” appears as gender, as gender struggle between woman and man, as contradiction and site of struggle for the emancipation of women.
The struggle between the sexes as the premise of theoretical grounding of the emancipation of women starts from the abstraction of differences, which do not comprise anything concrete. “Only the ratio, rational opinion, understands the others as intolerable for one another.”
The grounding of Marxist feminism on concrete universality, on stepping out of opinion (dox) and into science (episteme), on one hand, and on the other, from the abstraction of “class”, “human”, from ideology of already disabled consciousness disabling the other consciousness (Paić), is possible within the conceptualization of the scope of the term “Marxism” and the scope of term “feminism”, that is, the scope of the term “class” and scope of the term “gender”, as interfering terms.
In contrast to this concrete universality, Marxism as the self-awareness of the emancipation of proletariat has conceptualized the emancipation of women as the term of “gender” as a subordinate term.
Without the differentiation between natural concreteness and the concreteness of thought in its abstract struggle between the sexes as the premise of the emancipation of women, feminism has conceptualized feminism and Marxism as two contradictory terms.
The interfering scope of Marxism and feminism is situated on the territory of the concrete universal, where the emancipation of women presupposes the emancipation of class, which is premised on the emancipation of women. This line of thought leaves one part of the scope of emancipation of women devoid of the abstract reduction to class, and one part of the scope of Marxism, as the premise of emancipation of humans regardless of sex. One part of the scope of feminism refers to the patriarchy, preceding capitalism, and one part of the scope of Marxism as the discovery of excess value, contradiction of capital and labor, possibility of human emancipation through the elimination of private property, refers to man – worker, regardless of sex. The interfering contents of the term Marxist feminism mean the movement for the liberation of women, which presupposes socialism, but socialism eo ipso does not imply the elimination of patriarchy. The possibility of grounding of Marxist feminism as the interfering term of Marxism and feminism holds ground and collapses on two premises:
1. that Hegel’s dialectical and speculative method of the philosophy of freedom is conditio sine qua non of the reading of Marx,
2. that the spirit of Marxism in its epochality, and not the letter of Marxism, and to an even lesser extent, institutional Marxism in its interepochality, is competent for this relation.
For the theory of Marxist feminism, new fields of research are opening up: ideology, reproduction, patriarchy. (See: Das Argument, Berlin W. 1982/132).
The inequality of wages, the inequality of the complexity of jobs she perform and the patriarchal structure of family make the female proletarian dependent on the male proletarian and, if these concepts are not analyzed, the subject of the revolution is also male, and fundamentally disabled for a revolution, because the governing ideology internalized also by himself closes his horizon of freedom. By accepting this ideology and morality, the working class mediates through the family the intellectual nature of the needs of the bourgeois society, division of labor and the state.
Engels intimates something in this direction: “The modern monogamous marriage is based on the overt or covert domestic slavery of women, and the modern society is a mass consisting of monogamous families as its molecules. In the greatest majority of cases, the husband must be the one who earns and feeds the family, at least in capital-owning classes, which gives him the position of power, which needs no special legal privilege. He is the bourgeoisie of the family, and the wife represents the proletariat.”
In spite of this, the conclusion is that the elimination of private ownership creates merely premises for the emancipation of both women and men. Self-awareness of women requires Marxism to acknowledge the originality of the women’s issue in the analysis of ideology, reproduction and especially patriarchy. The object of criticism is objectivist Marxism, which regards class as the concrete universal in thought.
The critique of the “holy proletarian family” (See M. Barett: “Unsoziale Familie”, Das Argument, 1982/136) is relevant for both Marxism and feminism, because in times of crisis in the modern world, the neoconservative, neoliberal ideology and the new Right gain strength. This bloc is becoming more and more homogenous in the West and consists of a large number of working class members.
The traditional 20th century Marxism in real-socialism proclaimed its ideology as a scientific ideology, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a secularized idea of Hegel’s absolute freedom, the eliminated private ownership is the universal private ownership, and “the holy proletarian family” prepares its members for morality in relation to the state. The traditional Marxism lost the revolutionary character of Hegel’s dialectical and speculative method of the philosophy of freedom.
Marxist feminism as the theoretical field of interfering terms of feminism and Marxism is, in its considerations and studies, the premise of emancipation of women and men. As a theory, it does not understand the woman-man as mere intellect understand them, as others intolerable to one another. Marxist feminism, as we interpret it here, in theoretical articulation of the women’s self-awareness process, questions the thought of both the governing class and the governing gender as the bases for the existing production of life.
In the deideologization of the “sanctity of marriage”, it discovers the authoritarian principle of structuring the family, division of labor, technology, and production forces of labor and state. Therefore, the feminist stance from 1960s is fully understandable, and insufficiently elaborated, but articulated in its essence: private is political.
The grounding of Marxist feminism as the interfering term between Marxism and feminism enables an understanding of the women’s issue different from that in real-socialism. The difference in understanding of emancipation in these two ways of producing life gains concreteness in the understanding of criticism and analysis of patriarchy, which is relatively indigenous and independent of capitalism, so that it is not resolved by the elimination of private property. The legal and economic equality of women does not eliminate patriarchy, which, through its authoritarian division of labor and morality, remains the mediation between the bourgeois society and political state.
Owing to Marxist feminism based on Open Marxism, socialist self-government integrates the self-awareness process of both women and men in their fundamental human emancipation. The patriarchy inappropriate to the concept of socialist self-government and the bureaucracy inappropriate to the same concept, within the framework of their implied or at least unconscious union, enable the firm hand in the family and the firm hand in the state.
Denouncing feminism as bourgeois, especially by invoking bourgeois feminists, who, in the first stage of emancipation, fought only for the right to vote, and not for socialism, envisages that the female members of the bourgeois class, by fighting for their right to vote, have won that right for the entire gender, the female gender, and female workers, which is a very important civilization achievement, because today the real class struggles are taking place in the field of law, politics and the state.
The refusal to recognize feminism in socialist countries is aimed at denying the claim that woman is not at the emancipation level of her class. Just as the elimination of private ownership and legal nationalization (public ownership) of labor still does not imply an actual nationalization of labor, the legal equality of women, even in the economic sphere, does not mean their actual equality. Continual disturbances that challenge women’s rights, even their economic equality, such as, for example, questioning whether they can work equally as men, if they so desire, or claiming that two women can work at one workplace, and men cannot, phenomenologically shows that these disturbances are possible and cannot be resolved normatively and through regulations, because their causes do not lie in that sphere.
Defining the patriarchy as the real obstacle to the emancipation of women, but also of the entire class in self-government, is possible only from the perspective of Marxist feminism. Therefore, continual analysis of the forms of patriarchy in social relations, culture and morality is an effort to stress the inability to realize those premises that socialist self-government in the self-awareness of the working class set for itself.
Women will be able to take more active part in the institutional forms of self-government only when the society frees itself of the patriarchal mortgage. “Judging from historical heritage and actual developments in social life, our society is typically “male”. This can be seen in politics: since the war, the participation of women in political life has been decreasing. We are a “male” society also in the field of science and cultural creation. Woman in culture is as a rule a reproducer. If woman is completely suppressed in the most sensitive spheres of public life, where the prestige of social elites is built, this must be reflected in her position in society, her choice of profession, her agenda in social agency…”…”What we need is psychological work against the stereotypical choices of female professions. Our family upbringing nurtures an image of woman as a good mother, submissive wife, someone who is a hovering being, coated in cosmetics.”
1927
Proclamation of the Women’s Party
Convinced that it is only through a strong and sound organization that we can respond to the challenges posed by the modern age, we have embarked on organizing the Women’s Party.
The circumstances in which we find ourselves call for accelerating work and taking a firmer stand with regard to the issue of women.
We believe that it is imperative for the cultural, economic, moral and healthy survival of our state that women take full part in its organization and life. Hence, all women citizens must be equipped for political life as soon as possible.
The defense and development of the state require that all civic forces take an interest in it and are availed of accordingly. That is why it is first necessary for all adult citizens, irrespective of gender, to be equal before the law.
The Vidovdan Constitution
(Article 70) made it incumbent upon the legislative bodies of the state to introduce the right of women to vote. Virtually all political parties in our country came out in favour of introducing these rights in principle, but not a single one launched a decisive struggle towards that end or spread relevant propaganda among the people, and some, in spite of the statements made by their representatives, have yet to introduce into their programs any item that refers to women’s rights.
Obtaining the vote for women is simply a matter of time and of the law-makers coming to a proper understanding. By creating an organization in which women will come together, educate and prepare themselves for political life, we are responding to the duties that, under the Constitution, await us in the near future.
In working to develop political and social awareness among women, to achieve legal and political equality, we, as a whole, as an organization, shall, when circumstances so require, cooperate with all those political parties that assist us towards this end.
We believe that we shall find common principled ground with those parties that are fighting or will fight to implement our program.
We are founding the Women’s Party because we believe that it is to our country’s advantage for women to get used to working in a political organization akin to the ones that, once they get the vote, they will be able to join as equal, full-fledged voting members. Until then, their dispersal among extant parties, unless aimed at organizing feminist propaganda, can only harm the goals of feminism, because it scatters their forces and does not correspond to their commonly pre-set goal. In fighting for their rights, women must have this common goal before them.
Although the ultimate goal of feminism is to achieve cooperation between the genders, women in our country – because of injustices that make them second-class citizens, excluding them from participation in resolving the issues of men’s and women’s common life in the country – are, by force of circumstance, placed in one camp and compelled to group into a separate political organization.
As activists and propagators, women are duty-bound to use their abilities first and foremost for the ideas of feminism and for a better life for all women. It is every woman’s civil duty to fight for feminist ideas.
While reflecting all the activities and social work performed by women, the women’s associations and societies that exist in our country today do not correspond, in terms of either their program or their organization and tactics, to the political tasks imposed by the times. However, these organizations do, if only indirectly, work to achieve feminism. We shall therefore try as a party to assist them in their work.
It is the goal of the Women’s Party to facilitate, enable and achieve the participation of women in our country’s political life. It presents, therefore, the following
Program
1. The Women’s Party shall fight to implement the ideas of feminism. We take feminism to mean the collective participation of the voting masses of women in the life of the country, participation which strives to adapt both state and other public organizations to the needs of the healthy, moral and cultural life of both the individual and present and future generations.
In this respect, the Party shall work towards getting the public authorities to take every measure aimed at improving hygienic, moral, economic and cultural living conditions. This applies, first and foremost, to measures and regulations concerning women’s rights in gender relations, to relations between parents and children, the public authorities’ relationship with children, youth and upcoming generations in general. These are the tasks envisaged for the public authorities under the Vidovdan Constitution (Section III, Articles 22-32 et al.), and without the collective participation of women in the state’s organization, they cannot be implemented as required.
2. In order to achieve the ideas of feminism, i.e. to achieve harmonious cooperation in the state between both factors (men and women), all voting rights must be recognized for all women, under the same conditions as those recognized for men: the right to elect and to be elected, both in elections for self-management units and in elections for the national and constitutive assembly.
3. The Party shall work to raise the awareness level of all women regarding their rights and interests, duties and obligations in state and political life.
4. The Party shall fight to achieve professional equality for all women, both those who work in the public sector and those who work in private enterprise.
5. The Party shall fight to achieve the equality of women in the state service, equality in administrative and judicial offices, and equality between female and male employees regarding both their spheres of authority and their actual earnings in the state service.
6. The Party shall launch a drive to defend women employees and workers, both in public organizations (state, self-governing, etc.) and in private enterprise (factories, printing houses, stores, banks, etc.).
7. The Party shall fight to ensure and demand that:
a) State and self-governing services do not take on people who lack moral qualifications, regardless of gender;
b) The law on women employees as well as all other specialized employment laws include regulations that punish any assault on the honor of women employees;
c) Whosoever uses his position to exert moral pressure on female personnel be considered disqualified for state service. Similarly, an immoral life on the part of female state employees is considered to be disqualifying for state service.
8. The Party shall fight for:
a) Female state employees, both married and single, to be recognized the same right to all personal income as male state employees;
b) Female state employees with families to be recognized the same rights to family income as male state employees.
c) Female state employees to be recognized the right to family income also in the event of the husband’s death, when humane reasons so require.
9). The Party shall endeavor to:
a) Ensure that all general or specific measures taken by the public authorities, and of relevance to relationships as envisaged under Article 1 of this Program, are in keeping with the feminist principles of morality and humanity;
b) Ensure that all state self-governing institutions respond to this demand;
c) Abolish immoral and unhygienic institutions such as, for instance, prostitution which must not be assisted on the part of the public authorities but rather should be treated, persecuted and wiped out. This requires that the entire state apparatus adapt to the tasks of a moral life.
10. Women as mothers are the most important factor in maintaining continuity in the country’s life (the uninterrupted aspect of life in the state), which is why they must be recognized the same position and rights in the family as fathers: parental rights must be based on parental equality. Hence, they must be in keeping with determining all other relations in private law. Married women must not have fewer rights than single women.
11. Men and women are to have equal inheritance rights.
12. In response to the demands of cultural, hygienic, humane and moral life, and in accordance with the principles of feminism, the Party shall fight for all rights and all needs concerning children and coming generations.
13. The Party shall call for tightening the legal punishment of assaults on the honor of women (girls and married women), and shall also call for introducing punishment for the seduction of male youths.
14. The Party shall fight for the reform of marital law, for the legal equality of spouses (personal and regarding property and citizenship). It shall also fight against the spread of polygamy in any form.
15. The Party shall call for the investigation of paternity and maternity.
16. In order to elevate the cultural and educational level of the people, the Party shall fight to introduce the schools and institutions needed to educate both the rural and working population; to ensure the strict implementation of mandatory elementary schooling for girls as well as boys (including in rural areas); to introduce fundamental concepts about our state and civil rights and duties into the programs of all national schools (elementary, agricultural, trade, home economics, etc.).
17. The Party shall fight to protect working women and mothers, especially in the hygienic and economic sense.
18. The Party shall work to ensure that women’s housework, as an integral part of the overall common national economy, receives the recognition due to it as productive work.
19. The Party shall strive to lay the ground in schools for the proper development of children, ground which will duly meet hygienic and aesthetic requirements; it shall strive to develop in schools a feeling of community and to reinforce social awareness.
20. All individuals who dedicate themselves to science, the arts, skills, etc. work for the interests of the whole. This is why there should be no gender-based restrictions on an individual’s freedom to develop. It is the duty of the community to enable and facilitate such development, which is why it is necessary to remove all legal and real obstacles. Working toward this end, the Party shall fight for and propagate these principles.
21. The Program of the Women’s Party, as spelled out here and as amended in the course of future work, will be fully implemented only through the normal work of the legislative body. This will be achieved as soon as all of our state’s citizens, male and female, cooperate in it equally, and once this happens, namely, once women in our state have all the same voting rights as men, then the Party’s Main Executive Committee will convene the National Assembly which will decide on the further work of the Women’s Party.
STATUTES OF THE WOMEN’S PARTY
I
Name, Aim and Means
Art. 1. – The political organization created on the basis of the Program and these Statutes shall be called: The Women’s Party.
Art. 2. – The aim of the organization is to achieve the feminist principles laid down in the Party’s Program. Toward this end, the Party shall fight against making use of women’s organizations on the part of any political party.
Art. 3. – In implementing its Program, the Party may cooperate with other political parties, severally or with more parties simultaneously, but only as a whole. This shall be decided by the Main Executive Committee by a four-fifths majority vote and the decision shall be submitted to all bodies and members of the Party.
Art. 4. – In fighting for its aims, the Party shall use all legal means to propagate them: oral and written propaganda, meetings, lectures, publications, etc.
II
Membership
Art. 5. – Every adult female citizen can become a member of the Party by declaring that she accepts the Party’s Program and submits to Party discipline, and upon acceptance by the competent bodies. Persons who have lost their civic honor cannot be members.
Art. 6. – Every citizen of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes who has scored important achievements for the Women’s Party can be an honorary member of the Women’s Party and is so declared by the Main Executive Committee.
Art. 7. – Persons who are refused membership by either executive or auxiliary bodies may appeal to the relevant higher executive body. There is no right of appeal to the decision of the Main Executive Committee. A request to be admitted as a member may be resubmitted at the end of six months.
Art. 8. – All members must be entered in the register. This register shall be maintained by the corresponding local bodies of the Party. Copies of all such registers shall be sent via the regional executive committees to the Main Executive Committee.
Art. 9. – Upon joining the Women’s Party all members shall receive membership cards. These cards are proof of membership. The membership fee is 12 dinars per annum.
Art. 10. – All members shall have equal rights and duties.
Art. 11. – Members are duty-bound to unconditionally obey the orders and instructions issued on behalf of the Party by its competent bodies; to support the Party with all their moral strength and, inasmuch as possible, materially.
Art. 12. – Members shall be entitled to the assistance and protection of Party bodies, in accordance with the means at the disposal of the Party.
Art. 13. - Members shall be duty-bound, in all circumstances in all institutions and organizations, to spread and defend the principles of feminism as expressed in the Party Program. Similarly, they shall represent Party interests in accordance with the instructions they receive from the competent Party bodies.
Art. 14. – Individual members shall not engage in work or assume any undertaking that would be binding on the Party as such without the authorization of the competent bodies.
Art. 15. – Members shall be duty-bound to recruit new members into the Party.
Art. 16. – Members of the Women’s Party may join other political parties only with the approval of the Main Executive Committee, wherein they must undertake to submit first and foremost to the discipline of the Women’s Party and to primarily represent its interests. If a member is reprimanded for not honoring these obligations or if she is asked to leave the Party she has joined and does not do so, the competent bodies shall adopt a decision on her expulsion from the Women’s Party.
Art. 17. – Members who work against Party interests or whose actions violate the organization’s discipline shall be punished.
Punishment shall take the following forms: 1) Warning. 2) Reprimand, oral or written. 3) Withholding the member’s right to speak at meetings or conferences, at assemblies or sessions. 4) Withholding the member’s right to participate as a Party delegate in individual societies, institutions or organizations. 5) Withholding the right to represent the Party. 6) Withholding the right to be elected as a member of the Executive Committee, as a representative. 7) Expulsion from the Party.
For acts that occur at public meetings, gatherings, conferences and assemblies, punishments 1 to 3 inclusive shall be pronounced by the chair of the meeting and be carried out immediately. In all other instances, these punishments shall be pronounced by the competent executive committee by secret ballot. Persons who do not submit to punishments 1 to 6 shall be expelled from the Party, a matter which shall be decided by the Main Executive Committee by majority vote. Expulsion shall require a two-thirds vote from the total number of elected Committee members.
Art. 18. – All members of the Women’s Party are forbidden to:
1) Participate in institutions and organizations which are declared by the Main Executive Committee as being contrary to the aims of feminism as expressed in the Program.
2) Ridicule and disparage members of the Executive Committees, representatives or any member as such, or denigrate and speak untruths even when they cannot be qualified as an insult or slander.
3) Distort the principles set out in the Program.
4) Speak or spread falsehoods about the Women’s Party.
5) Insult members of the Executive Committees (…)
(…) The Main Executive Committee shall issue decisions on expelling from the Party members whose names have been submitted by the Regional Committee or, in the event that there is no such Committee, by the Local Committee. However, it can, at its own initiative, decide on the expulsion of certain members. No one can be expelled from the Party before having first been asked to submit a written statement in their defense to the Executive Committee or representative of their town; the Main Executive Committee, if it deems so fit, can invite the member to present an oral defense before its members. Written statements in one’s defense shall be submitted to the corresponding bodies of the Main Executive Committee. The decision to expel a Party member shall be taken by the Main Executive Committee by a majority vote among its attending members; the expulsion of members of the Executive Committees (Regional and Local) shall require a ¾ majority vote among attending members, and the expulsion of a member of the Main Executive Committee a 4/5 majority vote of elected members, including the member in question who does not vote in this case. The Main Executive Committee is responsible for issuing disciplinary measures regarding its members and members of the Regional Committee as well as those Local Committees which have no Regional Committees to oversee them.
It resolves all other issues relating to the Party, its organizations, relations among Party members and Party bodies, inter-relations among Party bodies, inasmuch as these solutions do not impinge upon the rights of the National Assembly.
The Main Executive Committee can, within the scope of these statutes, issue rules on its work in session and rules on the work of the Regional and Local Executive Committees, upon receiving the relevant opinions of the Regional Committees.
The Main Executive Committee can communicate directly with all Party bodies.
The Main Executive Committee is composed of 15 members elected by the National Assembly. At the same time, 15 deputy members are designated for the Main Executive Committee.
The Main Executive Committee elects by public ballot among its members 7 Secretaries: 1 for the press, 1 for Party relations with women’s societies, 3 for the Party’s organizational affairs out of whom one is for the Party’s external relations with other political organizations, one is for administration and one is for finance.
The duties of the Secretaries are as follows:
1) Secretary for the Press: to ensure that the daily press and other publications carry articles in defense of women’s rights and in support of feminist ideas, articles in accordance with the Party program and written, first and foremost, by Party members.
2) Secretary for Women’s Societies: to be in direct contact with various societies, to propose the stand the Party should take regarding individual women’s societies.
3) Secretaries for Party Organizational Affairs: to spread and carry out the Party’s organization; one of the Secretaries shall also be in charge of the Party’s external relations with other political organizations and duly report and make proposals to the Main Executive Committee.
4) Secretary for Administrative Affairs: to receive the mail, take care of the entire administration of the Main Executive Committee, take the minutes, convene sessions, issue in a timely fashion the agenda for the next session set by the Main Executive Committee and report on urgent matters which have not been envisaged by the agenda.
5) Secretary for Finance: to receive deposits, revenue and all financial contributions, submit proposals for improved finances and make payments; to submit all financial documents for signature to the two other Secretaries, whoever they may be; to submit a bimonthly accounting report.
Each individual Secretary of the Main Executive Committee can communicate directly with and ask for a report from the Secretaries of the Regional and Local Committees.
A decision on the part of the entire Main Executive Committee is required for any orders, instructions and decisions involving lower Executive Committees.
A quorum of eight members is required for resolving matters at sessions of the Main Executive Committee.
The Party shall be represented before the law by the entire Main Executive Committee wherein all members bear equal responsibility.
Art. 24. – Regional Executive Committee. The headquarters of the Regional Executive Committee shall be the regional town. It is the Party’s executive body in the region and at the same time the Local Committee for the place where the headquarters is located. It manages the affairs of the Women’s Party on the territory of the region which coincides with the region’s administrative borders. It exercises supervisory power over all Local Executive Committees, representatives and Party members in the region. It reports to the Main Executive Committee on all matters, events, political circumstances in the region which are of interest to the Party. It submits quarterly reports to the Main Executive Committee on regional funds and a half-yearly monthly review of the Women’s Party’s overall situation in the region, as well as of political and cultural circumstances of concern to the Party’s work and program. It drafts reports on the Party’s work that are needed for the National Assembly and submits them no later than one month prior to the meeting of the National Assembly; if so requested by the Main Executive Committee, it is required to do so even earlier. It submits to the Main Executive Committee clear and legible copies of the members register. It decides on first-level membership for people from the regional town, and on second-level membership as per the decision of the Local Executive Committee, or representatives from towns that do not have Executive Committees.
The Regional Executive Committee consists of 10 members, elected by the Regional Assembly. Ten deputies are also elected. Five members carry out the office of Secretary and are appointed by the Regional Executive Committee by secret ballot at its first session. They are: one for the press, one for administration, and one for accounting, two for the affairs of the organization. The responsibilities of the regional secretaries correspond to those of the secretaries of the Main Executive Committee and are carried out on the territory of the region; in addition to expanding the organization, the secretaries for organizational affairs are also in charge of the following: one for relations with other political organizations in the region and the other for relations with women’s societies in the region.
In regional towns where the number of registered members is in excess of 1,000, a Local Committee shall be set up alongside the Regional Committee.
Art. 25. – The Local Executive Committee is set up in every town where there are at least 10 registered members; the approval of the Main Executive Committee is required to set it up. The Local Executive Committee consists of five members, two of whom hold the office of Secretary, one for organizational and propaganda affairs and the other for administration, accounting and the press. The Local Executive Committee performs the duties of the Party’s local executive body, receives and carries out the orders of higher executive bodies, brings in new members, keeps the register of members and sends copies to the higher executive committee, works to expand and strengthen the Party organization, propagates feminist ideas and informs the public about the Party’s aims in keeping with the instructions of the higher executive committees. The Local Executive Committee becomes the regional committee in the region when the number of members in the regional town exceeds 200 and the number of Local Executive Committees reaches the number of 5. This transformation of the Local Executive Committee into the Regional Executive Committee occurs by adding the necessary number of members, which is done by the Committee itself.
Art. 26. – From its founding, the Party is managed by the Founding Committee, which is constituted and functions according to the rules envisaged for the Main Executive Committee.
Art. 27. – Once the number of members registered in the Women’s Party in Belgrade is 200, the Local Executive Committee will be established for the city of Belgrade. The Founding Committee shall thereafter be called the Main Executive Committee and its number of members will be as provided for under these statutes. Once the number of members in Belgrade is in excess of 2,000, then in addition to the Local Committee, separate Committees for sections (areas) of the city shall be formed and shall be run as local committees but come administratively under the Local Executive Committee. This applies to all other towns in the state that are divided into areas.
Art. 28. – Until the Party’s organization is developed in line with these statutes in all regions, those Regional Executive Committees that do not have 5 Local Committees shall be considered as Local Committees.
Art. 29. – All Executive Committees are duty-bound, on behalf of the Party, to protect, defend and assist Party members.
Art. 30. – In all Executive Committees the sessions are chaired by Committee members in alphabetical order.
Art. 31. – The Local and Regional Executive Committees must convene a session at least once a month and the Main Executive Committee at least twice a month.
Art. 32. – All Executive Committees resolve issues by majority vote; if the votes are equally divided, the chair of the session carries the deciding vote.
Art. 33. – At least 8 members need to be present in order for the decisions of the Main Executive Committee to be valid, at least 6 for Regional Executive Committees and at least 3 for Local Executive Committees.
Art. 34. – Unless the Committee unanimously approves otherwise, only members of the Executive Committee can attend its sessions, except for cases stipulated under Art. 18 of these statutes (oral hearings of members by the Main Executive Committee). Members of higher Executive Committees are the exception and they can attend sessions of lower Executive Committees but they cannot vote.
Art. 35. – The decisions adopted by Executive Committees by a simple majority vote (1/2 + 1) are valid when signed by the relevant Secretary, the chair of the session and one other Secretary. Other decisions adopted by a qualified majority vote need to be signed by the chair of the session and all Secretaries.
Art. 36. – The Executive Committees have disciplinary authority over Party members within their territorial jurisdiction; they pronounce all punishments except for expulsion from the Party. The subject of the Local Executive Committee’s decision on punishment can appeal the decision to the Regional Executive Committee and, in the absence of a Regional Committee, to the Main Executive Committee. The Main Executive Committee is authorized to pronounce the punishment of expulsion. All executive committees, or in their absence their auxiliary bodies, forward such cases to the Main Committee.
Art. 37. – The Executive Committee holds disciplinary authority over its members during the session. It weighs and pronounces punishments as envisaged under Art. 17 of these statutes, from 1 to 4 inclusive; if the infraction exceeds the scope of these punishments, the case is resolved and the punishment pronounced by the Main Executive Committee.
Art. 38. – Members of the Executive Committee are prohibited from the following:
1) Announcing the conclusions and solutions adopted at sessions of the Executive Committee prior to the Committee having decided on their disclosure.
2) Insulting or slandering members of the Party or members of any body of the Party.
3) Behavior unbecoming to a member of the Executive Committee be it at or outside of Committee sessions.
4) Absence from a session without having previously notified the Executive Committee, except for the following reasons: insurmountable obstacles or being unable to attend for professional reasons. In such instances, the member is obliged to notify the Executive Committee post facto.
5) Tardiness at sessions scheduled to start at a specific time.
Art. 39. – Members of the Main Executive Committee may not be members of managing or supervisory committees in more than 5 women’s associations. The exception to this rule is the Secretary for women’s societies, who may be a member of as many women’s societies as is deemed to be necessary.
Art. 40. –When a position in the Executive Committee is left vacant, the deputy who is next on the list according to the number of votes is called upon to fill it.
Art. 41. – Only a member who has agreed in writing to being a candidate can be nominated for a seat on an Executive Committee. In her statement she can stipulate which areas of work she feels she is most competent in.
Art. 42. – All members of an Executive Committee shall have equal rights, equal duties and equal responsibilities. The title of Secretary carries greater duties and therefore greater responsibilities.
Art. 43. – In addition to their fields of work as prescribed by these statutes, all Secretaries in any given Committee are duty-bound to assist and advise each other, and to work together on strengthening and reinforcing the organization.
Art. 44. – Every Executive Committee Secretary has a deputy appointed from among the Executive Committee’s members to stand in for her in the event of her absence, illness or non-attendance for more than 15 days. If the Secretary returns to her duties within no more than 3 months, the deputy shall submit to her a report on the preceding period and do a handover.
Art. 45. – If a Secretary resigns or is prevented from carrying out her duties for more than 3 months, the Committee shall select one of its members to replace her.
B.
Representatives
Art. 46. – Representatives are the auxiliary bodies of the Party in places where there is a special need to strengthen, develop and assist the Party organization. The Party can have them both in places which do not have an Executive Committee and in places where the Executive Committee has its headquarters. They work for the Party, sign up members, work on organizing Local Committees; they are in touch with the nearest Executive Committees and are under the supervision of the Committee where they are registered. Representatives can be added to any Executive Committee.
The Regional Executive Committee holds the list of representatives from places that do not have a Local Executive Committee. In places that do have an Executive Committee the list is kept with the Local Executive Committee and a copy is sent to the Regional Executive Committee or, in its absence, to the Main Executive Committee. The Regional Executive Committees send copies of all representatives in the region to the Main Executive Committee. The lists of representatives is maintained and kept by the Executive Committee. Party bodies and members do not disclose these lists.
Representatives can be established, as needed, alongside the Main Executive Committee. Their number and names are kept by the Main Executive Committee. They must be Party members and they have priority in elections for Local and Regional Executive Committees. Three members present in the assembly can then check the list or a copy thereof as to whether the nominated member was a representative.
C.
National Assembly
Art. 47. – The National Assembly shall convene every October in Belgrade. The date shall be set by the Main Executive Committee and all executive and auxiliary bodies shall be duly notified about the meeting and its agenda one month in advance. The first Regular National Assembly shall convene no later than October 1930. The Main Executive Committee may convene the National Assembly in special session even earlier to resolve the issues envisaged by the agenda; when notifying the Party’s members and bodies of the special session, the Main Executive Committee must also notify them of the agenda, of the issues that are causing the National Assembly to be convened. It must do so no less than 15 days prior to the meeting of the National Assembly.
The National Assembly is composed of the following: all members of the Main Executive Committee and delegates of the Regional and Local Committees. Each Regional Committee has 1 delegate. If the Regional Committee has 30 Local Committees under it then it shall send 2 delegates, if it has 50 or more Local Committees under it than it shall send 3 delegates. Local Committees that are not overseen by a Regional Committee shall send one delegate for the entire region. Every Executive Committee elects its delegates by secret ballot from among its members. The delegates must be provided with identity cards from their Committees. The form of identity card can be prescribed by the Main Executive Committee. The National Assembly shall decide on amendments to the Program and Statute. Finally, it shall discuss all issues of principle.
Proposals to amend the Program may be submitted by the old Main Executive or by 20 members of the National Assembly. The proposal to amend the Program shall be adopted if ¾ of the attending National Assembly members vote in favor of it.
Proposals to amend the statute may be submitted by the old Main Executive Committee or by delegates of individual Executive Committees. The matter is decided by a majority (1/2 +1) vote of the attending members of the National Assembly.
The agenda of the National Assembly shall be decided by the Main Executive Committee. It must include an item for members’ proposals or questions. The agenda and date of the National Assembly session shall be submitted by the Main Executive Committee to all executive and auxiliary bodies of the Women’s Party one month prior to the said session.
Pending the session of the National Assembly, the Main Executive Committee shall elect by secret ballot one of its Secretaries to chair the National Assembly meeting. The other members shall be elected by the Assembly itself.
The Main Executive Committee shall submit its reports to the National Assembly. Speakers dealing with the reports shall register with the chair of the Assembly. If the Assembly so decides, even before all the entered speakers have taken the floor it can move on to adopting its decisions and then to the next item on the agenda.
The reports at the Assembly are voted on by standing up or, in the event of any uncertainty, by voting individually. This is done at the request of the chair of the Assembly or of a majority number of members.
The National Assembly may expel members of the Main Executive Committee from the Party if it determines the following:
1) that the said members have not abided by the Program of the Women’s Party;
2) that they have violated the Statutes;
3) that they have harmed the interests of the Party.
In the first two instances, the National Assembly shall decide by majority vote of its attending members. In the third instance, a ¾ majority vote of the attending members is required.
The National Assembly elects the Main Executive Committee from the list proposed by the out-going Main Executive Committee. The list must be composed of 30 names of candidates for regular members and 30 candidates for their deputies. The Main Executive Committee must have the written acceptance of all candidates. Every member shall receive this list and cross out the names of 15 candidates for regular members and 15 for deputies; the remaining names are considered to be voted in. The voting member shall personally submit this list to the Presidency of the National Assembly. The election can also be conducted by means of a list with 60 names posted in a visible place, whereby each member copies down 30 names – 15 for member of the Committee and 15 for deputy – and submits her list to the President of the National Assembly. Candidates for membership in the Main Executive Committee must be people who have distinguished themselves in the Party by virtue of their work, their feminist convictions, and their organizational skills. In addition, they must have demonstrated the moral fortitude necessary for defending feminist convictions.
Elected members of the Main Executive Committee shall be sworn in by the National Assembly. Their oath reads as follows: I (full name) hereby give my word of honor that as a member of the Main Executive Committee I shall use all moral means and the means within my power to achieve the Program of the Women’s Party. That I shall, to the extent that I can, provide material assistance to the Party and unconditionally submit to the discipline of the Women’s Party regarding the position of Main Executive Committee members. (Whoever so wishes may here add a religious oath).
Art. 48. – Regional Assemblies. Regional assemblies are convened in the regional center once every three years, in the second half of November. They are convened annually for the first 3 years after the founding of the Party. They are composed of Women’s Party members in the regional town and of 2 delegates from every Local Executive Committee as well as of all representatives for individual towns. When the number of members in the regional town is over 200, the Assembly is composed of delegates of the Local Executive Committee (3 each), all the representatives for individual towns and as many members from the regional town as determined by its Local Executive Committee by lottery until the number is completed by one third of the delegates of the Local Committees. The Regional Executive Committee submits a report on its work to the Assembly and notifies it of the instructions and messages of the Main Executive Committee.
The Regional Assembly is chaired by the Secretary who is elected by secret ballot by the outgoing Committee. The officers are elected by the Regional Assembly. All other matters are resolved within the Regional Assembly according to the procedure laid out for the National Assembly. The Regional Assembly elects the Regional Executive Committee from the double number of candidates for membership of the Regional Executive Committee proposed by the outgoing Executive Regional Committee.
The agenda of the Regional Assembly is decided by the Regional Executive Committee and released at the same time as the invitation to convene the Assembly. This must be no later than 15 days prior to the Assembly session.
Art. 49. – Local Assemblies. Local Assemblies are convened once a year, 15 days after the meeting of the Regional Assembly. They are composed of Party members from the town. Local Assemblies are elected by the Local Executive Committees from the double number of candidates proposed by the outgoing Local Committee. A Secretary appointed by the outgoing Local Committee is the chair. The Secretaries are elected by the Local Assembly. The Assembly dissolves the outgoing Local Executive Committee after the report has been submitted. It takes note of the messages and instructions of the Main Executive Committee.
Art. 50. – Treasury. Every Executive Committee shall have a treasury. The Treasury shall hold all membership fees and subscriptions to the Women’s Party. All gifts, contributions and subscriptions shall be sent to the Main Executive Committee. Local Committees shall send ¼ of the membership fees to the Regional Committee and ¼ to the Main Executive Committee.
At the request of individual Executive Committees, the Main Executive Committee shall determine the amount of assistance to be sent them from its own Treasury, provided their membership fees are insufficient for the Local or Regional Executive Committees to implement the aims of the Party.
Art. 51. – These Statutes must be read out at the first session of every new Executive Committee. The Party Program must be read out at every National Assembly.
Art. 52. – Work shall proceed according to these Statutes until the first regular National Assembly.
__________
Translated by: Kristina Pribićević
Đorđe Vajfert
1926
Opinions on the role of women in society remain divided. While the more conservative persistently uphold their conviction that a woman’s role is between the cradle and the hearth, the more progressive agree that the rights of women go hand in hand with those of men.
In large cultured countries, women’s rights have long since been resolved to their advantage. Based on the principle that women, like men, are free, these countries concur that women are, therefore, equal to men. By logical extension, therefore, women cannot be deprived of any rights that men have in public life, for these rights do not displace women from the hearth or cradle. The hearth, cradle and women are three natural, indivisible notions that are not excluded by the acceptance or performance of other duties in life. As with men, so with women, some exceptions cannot be ruled out. As is known there are men who neglect not only their home and family, but also many of their duties in society.
There is no need to stress that women are more delicate and sensitive than men and that therefore their activities in many patriotic, national, cultural, social and communal matters have achieved unusually great and useful results. There are many telling examples. If we look only 50 years back, we can see the extent to which our women have created beneficial institutions in the country, maintaining and developing them to the maximum.
In gratitude for their dedication and self-sacrifice, Mr. Djura Vajfert, the well-known philanthropist, organized an imposing Tribute at this University, bringing together the capital’s most distinguished citizens. Greeting the audience, he made the following address:
Ladies and Gentlemen,
“A long life is a life full of experiences”
I am a good example of this truism, because I never dreamed that I would one day be addressing such an august meeting in a venue dedicated to the height of scholarship.
First I wish to express my profound gratitude to the Chancellor for this honour; and I wish to warmly thank you, Ladies and Gentlemen, for having come in such large number.
I hope you will find that the liberty I took in inviting you to this testimonial is justified. Both this gathering and my speech are intended particularly for our honourable female compatriots. I am sure you will agree that the reasons which governed me to do this are warranted.
However, I am concerned whether my speech today will be able to pay due homage to the great contributions made by our women over the past several decades; I am concerned whether I will be able to do justice to them. Counting on your ever-present kindness, dear Ladies, I hope that you will receive my speech in the same warm spirit that I wrote it in, even if my words are a poor expression of what you truly deserve to hear.
To speak before Ladies about them themselves and to have abundant reason to do so with high words of praise – gives me great pleasure! They say that I am a lucky man regarding women, that I am popular in their midst, that they like me. What good fortune! And indeed, there is nothing better for a man in his social life than to enjoy the amicable disposition of women, who have always had great power and influence and who today can be said to be the sixth Big Power.
But even such friendliness, even your immense power, dear Ladies, is not what prompted me to organize this ceremony. My selfishness is not so boundless this time. No, what inspired me lies in you, not in me. It lies in the great and important patriotic, humane and cultural work you have been performing over the past fifty years for our homeland.
Women are the pillar of the home. It is not without reason that they say: A woman, not land, forms the foundation of a house.
I have no need to justify this adage by enumerating all the important marital and maternal duties that you perform – you know them only too well. Allow me just to mention the most important and most exalted of them all: the raising and moral education of their offspring. As a result of these great and sacred duties in both home and family life, today’s cultured world is striving to eliminate the age-old injustices and prejudices that prevail in the family and in legislature regarding women; much greater attention is paid today to the education and raising of future wives and mothers. It is not without reason that we have the saying: you need well-raised women to have well-raised men.
But a woman plays an important role not only in the home. Women are sensitive and receptive to everything that is noble and good, and therefore they have a progressive influence not only on the family but also on the environment and the society in which they move. With their fine qualities and especially their compassionate hearts and perseverance in work, women could be the best teachers in enlightening the people if only they were given the necessary training and opportunity.
We can take pride in the fact that the Serbian woman is not only a hard-working, honest and delicate Penelope; she is not only the pillar of the home. With her energetic work and success outside of the home, her work for society, for the people and the homeland, she has already set a splendid example of what can be achieved through pure willpower. This work has been so vast, so important, that it is almost matchless even among more cultured peoples. And it is this work that inspired me to organize today’s event, so that we could pay tribute to it. I only regret that the time at my disposal does not allow me to do more than sketch the main outlines of this work.
Fifty years ago, the Principality of Serbia was one of the smallest states in Europe, but its population was composed of worthy people with sharp minds and a great sense of patriotism. They felt that it was both a vital need and a patriotic duty to work for the liberation of their brothers living under the foreign yoke outside the borders of Serbia. But this was an exceptionally difficult, almost impossible undertaking. Little Serbia was aware of the super-human efforts required to fight against an enemy such as the Ottoman Empire, at the time one of the great powers in Europe and Asia, boasting an army and military commands that had been tried and tested in many wars. Little Serbia had nothing except its indomitable desire to liberate its enslaved brothers and unite with them; after lengthy consultations and hesitation it was decided that it had to embark on war.
Preparations were hastily made: big and small, rich and poor were mobilized; everything was diligently put to the task, in realization of the great effort that awaited the people. People were trained, armed and sent to the border – anyone fit for any kind of war duty was sent off to battle. Only the elderly, women, children and the ailing stayed behind. But they were not idle either. The back-breaking work in the house and in the fields fell mostly on the shoulders of the women. They had to work to feed both their own children and the army. In spite of the huge amount of work they had at home, women also managed to engage in patriotic efforts aimed at achieving their great goal.
And here begins the important work accomplished by our women, which has inspired me to speak today.
I have personally seen this work by our women in both town and country. At first, it was not so significant, propelled more by the wheels of state; but later it grew and became more and more diverse, as large numbers of women in both urban and rural areas voluntarily took the initiative.
When preparations for war started in 1875, women began getting involved. Queen Natalia took the lead, and we must pay tribute to her for doing so. Twice a week she invited the young ladies and women of Belgrade to join her at court and help her pluck lint to make bandages, because Bruce had yet to discover carbolized cotton for dressing wounds. This work was diligently performed not only at court, but also at home, where women got their children involved as well. And it was done not only in Belgrade, but in other towns as well, especially in those where there were casualty wards.
Women placed themselves at the service of the state not just in this area. When the wounded were sent from the battlefield to the hospitals, which at the time were terribly poor and lacked the necessary medical supplies, our women dug into their linen chests and took out all their underclothes to give to the hospitals; they also bought swathes of linen and sewed underclothes for the wounded. They sent over bed linen, sheets and other necessities, not to mention the mounds of food cooked at home for the wounded in the hospitals. Many urban and rural women and girls volunteered for the medical service, where they worked as nurses, tending to the wounded night and day, performing the most arduous duties.
When we remember that these women also had to tend to their homes and their children, and that rural women had to tend to the cattle and work in the field as well, we get a better idea of the patriotic effort and sacrifice they made for their people and their homeland.
Out there in the battlefield, we often thought about our loved ones back home and spent many a painful moment worrying about them and our homes. But when we returned, we saw to our great joy and surprise that our homes were in order, our children well taken care of and even the fields cultivated as if there had been no war!
My trusty good wartime comrade, Milan Pavlović, a soldier with the Belgrade squadron at the time, told me the following story: A relative, who was a farmer, paid him a visit after the war, and when Milan told him how the European press had been writing about the unimaginable suffering and superhuman courage of the small Serbian nation which had scored great achievements and deserved sweeping recognition, his relative replied: “Yes, yes. Europe didn’t know us, just as we didn’t know our women and what they are capable of achieving”!
The war ended and, by the grace of God and the courage of the Serbian people, a segment of the enslaved Serbs was liberated and joined their mother Serbia. Now it was time to work tirelessly on building a new state, the Kingdom of Serbia. Great commitment and effort awaited that generation.
Even then, our women did not sit idly by. On the contrary, they took even more of an initiative.
They immediately realized the full gravity of our position and took over a part of the work, creating numerous societies and institutions in the fields of health and culture, with humane and patriotic aims, building or helping schools, churches, hospitals, etc. Some of these societies had the noble objective of supporting and raising poor children, both boys and girls, and teaching them a trade as a way of training both genders to be useful citizens of the State.
But all of this required a lot of money and without money it is impossible to achieve very much in today’s world. You may wonder where all the millions distributed to our needy people by these societies came from? How were these millions created? By begging is the simple answer. Yes, begging. It’s easy to say but imagine how hard, more than hard it often is to go and beg! Some people are ill-tempered because of problems at work or at home, and they make little effort to be polite when women come to ask for donations to various humane or patriotic causes. On many an occasion our women have had to endure extreme rudeness for their altruistic efforts, and it will not be much different in the future, either.
Yet, none of this unpleasantness, none of these faltering steps, put our patriotic and energetic women off their stride. With their unflinching drive for all that is noble and good, and with their unusual perseverance in this work, women are the real heroines, leaving us men far behind as far as this is concerned. They have always managed to find their feet even in the most adverse circumstances, never losing heart, and I am sure it will be no different now. Their work in associations and institutions certainly takes its toll and, with all their household duties, they have to find and sacrifice their time to engage in the useful work they do. In addition to investing their fine minds and physical efforts, they even use their own material and financial resources to help achieve the noble goals of their associations!
These women’s societies are making steady progress. They have proven to be of great use to our nation. Some of them have even managed to build their own magnificent premises for the children of impoverished parents and national workers where they are cared for or educated or where there are schools to train impoverished women.
Even during the last great wars, from 1912 to 1915, these associations rushed to place their services at the disposal of the Medical Service and Red Cross, and their members worked tirelessly in hospitals, tending to the wounded and serving other needs there.
The number of such women’s associations is today sizeable. Permit me to enumerate them and to outline the activities of those for which I have obtained data:
1) The Belgrade Women’s Society, the oldest and largest association, founded in 1875. Its aim: to help the poor and those in dire straits and to work in all humane fields of endeavour.
It has branches in all major towns in Serbia.
At the beginning of the war in 1876, it set up its own hospital, helped the wounded, refugees, war orphans and sent financial aid wherever needed. It continued to perform the same work during subsequent wars.
It has had its own Workers School since 1879, later renamed the “Higher Vocational School for Women”. Thousands of impoverished girls have passed through its doors and this year it finished building a magnificent Centre.
It also founded Pazar for the sale of Serbian fabrics, the Home for Elderly Infirm Women and the Rug-Weaving School in Pirot.
Today its President is Mrs. Leposava Djiba.
2) The Jewish Women’s Society, founded in 1874. Its aim: to work in humane fields of endeavour, culture and health.
It supports its Trade School and has its own vacation centre in the Bay of Kotor on the seaside which can accommodate approximately 50 children a month from all over the Kingdom.
The president is Mrs. Jelena S. De Majo.
3) “Charity”, The Serbian-Jewish Women’s Society, founded in 1895. Its aim: to alleviate the pain and suffering of impoverished fellow-citizens by providing moral and material support.
It founded the Belgrade-based Federation of Jewish Women’s Societies in the Kingdom.
4) The Princess Ljubica Society, founded in 1899. Its aim: through the church and schools to help their compatriots in Southern Serbia and foster national awareness among them.
To date it has provided 250 churches and monasteries with needed articles and clothed many priests.
It built the St. Archangel Mihailo Church in Stimlje and opened the House of Mercy for infirm war veterans which today houses the Pupils’ Shelter for impoverished schoolchildren. It also opened a three-month Home Economics Course for children from Urosevac and Kosovska Mitrovica, and for girls from Stimlje and surrounding villages.
The President is Mrs. Milka Svet. Vulović.
5) The Circle of Serbian Sisters, founded in 1903. Its aim: patriotic-humane work in support of their unliberated compatriots and providing moral and material support to those striving for national liberation.
This ramified organization has its committees in all major towns in Serbia.
There is not enough time for me to describe all of the vast, important patriotic work done by the energetic and tireless members of the Circle before and during the wars, work in the country and outside, admirable work that outdid all expectations. I refer you to the report of the Circle in its 1924 “VARDAR” calendar.
Allow me simply to note that after the war, the Circle was in a position to grant permanent monthly assistance first to 2,000 and lately to 3,500 war orphans, not counting 130 elderly women, 32 disabled students, 50 families and 36 other people – all brought to ruin by the war.
Through the immense effort and self-sacrifice of its members, the Circle has also managed to build a large Centre, where the daughters of national veterans are educated.
The President is Miss Mirka Grujić.
6) The Maternity Association, founded in 1904. Its aim: to reduce child mortality and protect neglected orphans. Its first provisional Home opened in 1906, and own Home was completed in 1922.
The President is Mrs. Zorka Vlajić.
7) The Home for Secondary School Girls, founded in 1905. Its aim: to assist and preserve secondary school girls from physical and moral ruin. Today it has two large buildings of its own.
The President is Mrs Linka Krsmanović.
8 ) The Women’s Federation, founded in 1906. Its aim: to reinforce a feeling of national unity, with special reference to women. After the liberation it became the “National Women’s Federation” for the entire Kingdom.
The President is Mrs. Leposava Petković.
9) The Serbian Mother Society, founded in 1911. Its aim: to offer first aid to impoverished mothers and their infants and promote the principles of hygiene in childbirth and infant care. It has an apartment in Knez Milos St., and is preparing to open a Nursery School/Kindergarten.
The President is Mrs. Mila Jovanović.
10) The Saint Jelena Society, founded in 1913. Its aim: to bring war orphans to its premises and take care of them until they are equipped to live on their own. During the war it had more than 100 children, and afterwards it joined forces with the Society for the Education and Protection of Children.
The President is Mrs. Djurdjina N. Pasić.
11) The Wartime Women’s Society, founded in 1914. During the war it organized a large workshop in the Teachers’ Centre, where over 10,000 articles of underclothing were made for the wounded and troops.
The President is Mrs. Jelena N. Marković.
12) The Women’s Movement Society, founded in 1919. Its aim: to enlighten the people, especially women, and protect the rights of the latter. It organizes courses for housewives in Belgrade and in villages.
The President is Mrs. Leposava Petković.
13) Kindergarten No. 2, founded in 1919. Its aim: to take care of children who lost their parents in the war. It has a Home whose kindergarten can accommodate 64 children.
The President is Mrs. Jelena Spasić.
14) Kindergarten No. 3. It has the same aim as Kindergarten No. 2, but is under different management. There are approximately 60 children in the Kindergarten.
The President is Mrs. Jovanka Ristić.
15) The Women’s Organization of School and Kindergarten Teachers, founded in 1920. Its aim: to raise young girls both morally and physically.
The President is Miss Savka Radičević.
16) The Women’s Christian Movement, founded in 1920. Its aim: to enhance morale on the basis of Christ’s teachings, combat vice, raise awareness and instill love, joy and peace in the hearts of people.
17) The Little Bee Federation, founded in 1921. Its aim: to teach children the values of work and order, prevent any external harmful influence, help impoverished and unliberated women and establish ties among women throughout the Kingdom. It has Committees in different large towns, especially along the coast.
The President is Mrs. Jela Ivanović.
18) The Cvijeta Zuzorić Association, founded in 1922. Its aim: to propagate the arts by organizing concerts, exhibitions and the publication of books by our women writers. It has three juries: for music, literature and art. It has a branch office in Sarajevo.
The President is Miss Olga L. Stanojević.
19) The Women’s Association of Students, founded in 1922. Its aim: to gather women students together in a strong community, work on the mutual advancement of women, with a view to making them active and independent.
20) The Society for the Education of Housewives and Mothers, founded in 1923. Its aim: to prepare girls to be good housewives and mothers in the national spirit. It has set up home economics schools in towns and villages.
The President is Mrs. Mara Trifković.
21) The Society for the Protection of Blind Girls, founded in 1924. Its aim: to alleviate the poverty of unfortunate blind girls and ensure them a living. Its “My Will-Power” House of Peace is near Indjija – a gift from the heiress of Count Pejačević – which today numbers 16 residents.
The President is Mrs. Bojka Djurićić.
22) The Society for the Protection of Girls, founded in 1914. Its aim: the moral, physical and material protection of young girls between the ages of 7 and 21, irrespective of religion or nationality. It works through its Committee, called Guardianship, and the institution Girls’ Shelter.
The President is Mrs. Persa V. Vukićević.
23) The Belgrade-based Women’s Association of Secondary and Vocational School Teachers, Teachers of Belgrade High Schools for Girls and the Women’s Teaching College in Belgrade, founded in 1920.
The Association strives to:
a) follow the development and advancement of teaching methods in advanced countries;
b) see to the education of school-age children outside of the classroom;
c) foster a better knowledge of one’s homeland and people;
d) with a view to implementing the idea of unity, work on bringing together women teachers from all over the Kingdom and maintaining the closest possible ties between them;
e) represent the interests of both schools and women teachers, always striving for progress and the betterment of schoolgirls, teaching and the inner being of women teachers;
The Association achieves its tasks by:
a) exchanging information at sessions and conferences;
b) organizing public lectures and excursions;
c) dispatching their members to study school-related issues and undergo personal advancement in different environments;
d) publishing writings and documents;
e) maintaining ties with kindred societies.
In the five years since it was founded, the Association has managed to implement some of the items in its program.
Since its current resources are still insufficient, the Association has drawn up several plans for the future. First: a playground for schoolgirls. Second: preparations for publishing popular novels for secondary school girls. Third: a Home for Women Teachers. Forth: a children’s library.
The President is Professor Katarina Jovićić.
The above clearly shows the variety of humane and patriotic work carried out by these Associations and the degree to which they have been useful to the State and our nation.
Deeply convinced that there are many more such associations, established through the tried and tested energy of our women and young ladies , we regret that, despite the best of intentions, we have been unable to name all of them for want of sufficient information.
It must be said, however, that their efforts, energy and perseverance in pursuing their humane and patriotic work are admirable! We men should be ashamed of ourselves for having waited until now to pay our own public tribute to them and to express our own gratitude. But it is never too late to do what is right. In addition to our acknowledgement and gratitude, let us ask them to continue, through their benevolent activities, to enhance the advancement of our homeland, and to educate their children in such a way that they will earn the same gratitude of coming generations.
Praise be to our women! We thank them!
Long may they live!
*
* *
Many of the stalwart women who in the past 50 years took part in patriotic activities and in founding various associations which, by virtue of their dedicated work, paved the way for younger women, are sadly no longer with us. Let us today remember these fine souls and pay them due homage by rising to our feet.
May they rest in eternal peace! May their memory live on!
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen. I feel that today’s event should be commemorated and therefore I have taken the liberty to propose the following: to present to all women’s Associations and Institutions a Testimonial which would pay tribute to and thank them for their patriotic and humane work.
I am happy to take on the responsibility of drafting and distributing this Testimonial to all Women’s Societies.
______________________________________
DRAFT TESTIMONIAL
On the Day of the Annunciation, 7 April 1926, a formal meeting of Belgraders was held in the great hall of Belgrade University to mark the perseveringly humane and cultural work of Serbian Women’s Societies during and after the wars of 1875 and up to the present day.
In honour of all their noble work, the meeting unanimously agreed to issue this
TESTIMONIAL
to all women’s associations, in lasting tribute and gratitude to them.
In keeping with that decision, this Testimonial is issued to
(Name of the Association)
On behalf of the Meeting
ĐORĐE VAJFERT
(This Testimonial is written on parchment, along with its original drawings)
Translated by: Kristina Pribićević
Ksenija Atanasijević
1932
Feminism is one of those notions that have sparked a lot of superfluous and inappropriate words, both spoken and written, usually expressed in an angry or declamatory manner. Yet it is quite a simple notion, both in origin and substance. The inexorable and unremitting flow of culture has brought with it an awareness that women are no different from men in terms of their abilities, talents, virtues and sins, and that, therefore, their duties, rights and overall fate cannot and must not be viewed separately. However, it took a long time before a certain parallelism was established between the theoretical realization that women and men are equal members of the human race, and the practical acknowledgement of women’s rights. This parallelism has assumed very different forms in various countries. Some countries cannot to this day boast of truly enlightened public opinion on the subject of women.
In the latter instance, one can understand, therefore, the further spread of misconceptions and the emergence of a whole range of issues regarding something that cultured environments have long since considered indisputable. For instance, the view that today’s deep economic crisis is due to women having stepped out of the home and into the workforce is the subject of serious debate, i.e. that one of the main reasons why there is such high unemployment among men in the world – with the figures growing day by day – is because women are working outside of the home. It is worth noting that such claims stem from a quite common combination of ignorance about the deep-rooted, crucial reasons for the situation on the one hand, and a desire to shift personal antipathy to the realm of sociology on the other.
When considering these and other similar objections to women’s mounting self-awareness, growing activities and increasing rights, it is important to establish certain undisputed facts and distinguish between issues that often get confused with each other.
Today it is clearly unfeasible to restore women to their previous state of sweet patriarchal somnolence and the comfort of being insufficiently aware creatures. It is tasteless and naive to pine for such times, as if they represented paradise lost. The complexity and accelerated pace of modern life does not allow for one half of humankind to remain enclosed within four walls. Women have to engage in life’s struggle, whether they want to or not. Our times, which are witnessing the advancement and improvement of the lives we live, have made the old type of woman, so lamented by many, untenable in the brutal and unsentimental rumble-tumble of today. It is futile to discuss things that are inevitable; they simply have to be accepted and adjusted to.
It is even more naive to think or say that women who are encouraged to take care of themselves have lost the best part of their particular advantages. In truth, men and women – whom nature has made equal representatives of the human race and its serious and tragic fate - are very similar in the depth of their being; they suffer the same damnation and carry the same promise for saving their soul. These artificially drawn differences between men and women, which can ultimately be traced to the undeveloped provisions and doctrines of certain religions, have today largely been eradicated. This fact is the result not of any unnatural behaviour, but, on the contrary, the outcome of persevering efforts to erode centuries-old accumulated aberrations.
Today’s possibilities for women to develop have reached a level that, until recently, was the exclusive preserve of men. Women have achieved an array of successes as manual and intellectual workers, as artists and creative beings. And it is clear that there is no longer any reactionary method that can halt the strong headway being made by new generations of aware women who are steeled to deal with all the hard issues raised by this vital struggle.
All the basic mistakes made in debating the ideology of feminism stem from the assumption that there is a certain psychological and sociological incompatibility between the options of men and of women. Perhaps these mistakes come, in part, from the insufficiently articulated ideology of feminism. Moreover, while opponents of women’s liberation have highlighted the traits of men as being superior to those of women, feminists have gone to the other extreme, idealizing the traits of women in the aim of correcting one injustice with another. In fact, the fundamental truth is that all mental, spiritual and social distinctions between men and women are based on prejudices, deceptions, misconceptions, erroneous conclusions and all manner of falsehoods. Women are human beings, burdened and graced by the same range of shortcomings and virtues as men, except that in the case of women they are usually of a softer hue, in keeping with their physiological nature. Proceeding from this truism, one can develop a firm stand from which it is easy to make clear points about the moral and social importance of the feminist movement.
Today, competitiveness has taken the same hold of women as of men; needless to say, this does not lend meaning to life or lead to real progress in elevating the level of culture. Fortunately, however, not all women suffer from the mania of wanting to win this race. There are women who, with self-sacrificing perseverance, work only to achieve a spiritual, moral or social principle. Admittedly, their number is small; but, even though the bad far outweighs the good, both in human society and in the universe as such, it is the dispersed fragments of the good, and they alone, that maintain human existence. Hence, even women who are not gifted in demagogy or skilled at advertising their every achievement, however small, drive forward the real feminist movement and all that is lasting in it. As for the others, those who always think of themselves first, even their behaviour is no worse than men’s, with similar intentions. Here again, it is totally inappropriate to make any ethical distinction between men and women. Instead, it is important to distinguish among men and women, as members of the human race with equal psychological possibilities, those who are open and those who are blind to moral values. Because the most important ethical distinction of all is the one between people themselves. After that, only intellectual differences can be taken into consideration, nothing more.
As with men, so women of moral fibre and exceptional creative abilities are inexorably taking the lead. At the same time, they alone are truly contributing to dispelling lingering prejudices held in both genders about the inferiority of women. Every woman who does her job properly and devotedly, however small and unimportant it may seem, makes a more honourable contribution to feminism than any female “public worker” for whom the battle to improve the status of women is a convenient opportunity for her to gain greater visibility and a bigger audience. The creative work of brilliant women is the best and most irrefutable argument against various sceptical theories about women.
There is only one sure way for women to finally dispel the remaining prejudices about their natural predetermination and to entrench their liberation once and for all, and that is to focus as fully as possible on refining their ethical stance and on consciously revealing their intellectual qualities. All the arguments propagated by anti-feminists (and they include women) that women are not up to participating in public life, and all the compromises and unconnected activities which, in the ostensible name of feminism, some women are desperately engaged in, governed exclusively by their own personal motives and selfishness, thus become irrelevant and relegated to oblivion.
(Ženski pokret/The Women’s Movement, Belgrade, January 1932, pp. 2-4)
Translated by: Kristina Pribićević