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The Annual International Seminar on 'Women and Politics' in Dubrovnik, Croatia - An overview
Djurdja Knezevic
In 1996 Zenska infoteka (1) organised a first seminar with the topic "Women in Politics"(2). In the beginning, it was not at all envisaged to continue to hold it as an annual seminar. In fact, this first one was meant to be a kind of pilot-seminar. The organisers wanted to find out if holding such seminars was worth the effort. The response of participants, as well as of those who had an opportunity to read the presentations later on, was extremely motivating. We therefore developed the concept of an annual gathering of women focusing on different topics, which are related to the main title of the seminar Women in Politics.
The Idea
From the very beginning, the seminar was oriented almost exclusively to participants from countries that used to be part of the former eastern block. The assumption was, on the one hand, that women from these countries have experienced rather similar political, economic, cultural and social developments therefore they share similar social concepts, understandings, discourses etc. On the other hand, in most of these countries, indeed in all of them except former Yugoslavia, feminism did not reach them even in theory, let alone in practice. However, after the fall of the Berlin wall, intensive communications and exchanges between east and west began, although, to tell the truth, there was and still is no mutual balance. To put it rather bluntly, it often looks like an import of feminism and feminist 'know-how' from the west to the east. For some years there has already been an overwhelming feeling that women in eastern parts should analyse their own situation, their own social condition in a wider sense, not always and not necessarily related to western experiences and practices. Therefore the simple idea was to bring the "easterners" together in order to have a less complicated exchange of experiences and knowledge. Another assumption was that women from the post-communist countries do understand each other, maybe not better, but certainly more easily. There is however, a limited number of western colleagues that follow discussions and take part in the work of the seminar.
The other important point of the concept of the seminar is to create a balanced group of women coming from various countries: those women that are dealing with theoretical work, research etc., and those that are activists, but preferably, both looking over their theoretical or activist boundaries into each others' field.
Last but not least, each year the group is small (between 20-25 and 30-35 at the most) and throughout the whole seminar women are working and discussing together in one group.
Topics of Discussion
Since 1996 six seminars have taken place with all together close to 200 women from 22 countries: Albania, Armenia, Austria, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, India, Poland, Romania, Russia, Germany, Slovenia, Yugoslavia, Macedonia, USA, Finland, Great Britain, The Netherlands, Italy, and Ukraine. The first one, in fact the only one that happened to be in Zagreb (after which we started co-operation with the Inter-University Centre in Dubrovnik and moved the seminar there), had as goal to do a sort of mapping of the political picture of the status of women in post-communist countries. Under the title "Government Without Women or The Long March" women discussed various aspects of national and regional politics such as: problems of participation, disappearance of women from public life as a paradox of democratic changes in Eastern Europe, analysis of the political situation of women in particular countries. Later, we had topics dedicated to the legal status of women, women and media, etc., with interesting analyses of these problems.
The seminar in 1998 brought the problems of a new militarization in Europe into the focus of discussions. Women were discussing the whole spectrum of issues related to that topic, starting with rhetoric questions like "Is the new militarization of Europe possible?", through an analysis of the masculinisation of our societies, which is directly due to the war or indirectly to the militarization. We tackled the problems of prostitution as a consequence of NATO bases having been established in regions affected by war(s), problems of land mines, and how militarization is reflected in the media discourse.
The next seminar discussed problems of discourse(s) reflected through the understanding and usage of the concept of "feminism". Under the title "Feminism with an eastern touch", the discussion focused on feminism as a "threat for democracy", on the discourse-practice dichotomy, but there were also contributions in the form of stories such as "Tales of a Feminist in a Small Town".
Last year's seminar was titled "Women in History / History Without Women". The methodological starting point was the obvious and simple fact that women lived in the past as well as men. However, when we asked about their role in societies of the past, their social position in various aspects of life, we did not get many answers. History as a science of the past excluded women from its focus of interests, entirely as a group but also to a great extent as individuals. Bearing in mind the distinction between history as a past series of social changes and History as a discipline or science, we can say, or maybe better, we can imagine, that women certainly appear as involved in the past, but not in History as a scholarly discipline. This ambiguity appears as the most difficult problem in the field of women's history-writing and in historical research regarding women and their roles in history. As can be expected the contributions were mostly focused on biographies or history of women's movements and there were interesting papers such as "The Burden of History: Women's Movements in The Third World", "Conservative and Extreme Right-wing Women in Contemporary Hungary", the Context of Oral History, but we also discussed ideas about how to write history.
Gender in Political Theory
The last seminar, held in May 2002, focussed on "Gender in Political Theory". The participants were invited to think and to examine the category of gender and its place in political theory. There are many controversies surrounding the notion of gender as a socially constructed category. There are even more controversies and (mis)understandings about how the notion (gender) is situated in political theory. How are women placed in political theory and who is the one who is defining fundamental notions and concepts, which either marginalize certain social groups or go further and even erase them from the concepts and understanding of the reality of the community? Our assumption as organisers was that in modern political theory, thanks to the work of numerous feminist theorists, significant development has taken place, however this is not sufficient. Many critical analyses of the traditional notions of political theory have been done with the main aim of including new insights, concepts and methodological approaches to the theory, and then redefining them. This means to redefine both notions and the theory. However, we also thought that such analyses, research and approaches in general are not (yet) on the regular agenda of non-western feminism. Therefore we decided to open this issue in spite of its "unreadiness" and even in spite of the lack of that type of work. At the end of the day, an interesting topic was raised and focused on a few issues, due to contributions such as "Gender and Political Theory: From Vindication of the Rights of Women to Differentiated Citizenship", "Gender and Global Restructuring", and the claim for one more Feminist Manifesto.
Further Plans
Of course, there are already further plans. Bearing in mind that the political, social, economic and cultural (to mention the main points) development of our post-communist societies and of the women's / feminist movement within it, is extremely fast and followed by fundamental and often sharp changes, there is certainly a need from time to time to make a sort of balance. Therefore, one critical analysis and discussion on the Contemporary Women's / Feminist Movements in Post Communist Countries - 10 Years After can be helpful in an attempt to think about a reorganising of existing practices, to deal with the question how to restructure existing knowledge, and maybe even to build up new knowledge.
Last but not least, every year Zenska infoteka publishes seminar documentation. These books contain a selection of the presentations. Since the first seminar the contributions have been published in two languages (in Croatian and English), and two years ago German was also included. In fact, this documentation is perhaps one of the crucial points of the seminar, because it reaches a much wider audience. The feedback always received by Zenska infoteka shows that the publications are surprisingly well accepted in various communities, both academic and activist ones, all over the world. They are also often and regularly quoted.
The Seminar Women and Politics has its specific approach: it is for example geo-politically defined; the working group(s) are small and usually consist of academics interested and often involved in feminist practices, and vice versa: activists interested in and familiar with the theoretical efforts and researches; our publication extends the life and ideas of the seminar further on in time and to an incomparably wider audience than the seminar itself. Therefore Women and Politics seems to be a challenging forum that attracts great interest and provokes highly motivated thinking about and working on gender issues.
(1) Zenska infoteka: Women's
Resource Center in Zagreb, Croatia
(2) Organiser: Zenska infoteka
- Women's Resource Center, Zagreb; in co-operation with: Heinrich Boell Stiftung
- Regional Office Sarajevo; Inter University Center in Dubrovnik; and WISE
- Women International Studies in Europe.
Djurdja Knezevic is editor in chief of the Croatian feminist magazine Kruh & Ruze (Bread & Roses), and director of Zenska Infoteka, Zagreb, Croatia: http://www.zinfo.hr/