How the Female Subject was Tempered. An Instructive History of 8 March and Its Media Representation in Naša Žena (Our Woman)

• Published in: Comparative Southeast European studies (Print) Vol. 69; no. 1; pp. 19 - 43
• Main Author: Petričević, Paula
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Regensburg De Gruyter Oldenbourg 26.05.2021; Walter de Gruyter GmbH; De Gruyter
• Subjects: 8 March; Feminism; Gender; Mass media images; Mobilization; Modernization; Montenegro; Political activism; political subjectivation of women; Representation; Socialism; Society; Voting rights; Women; Women and politics; Women’s Antifascist Front (WAF); Workers; World War II
• ISSN: 2701-8199; 0722-480X; 2701-8202; 2364-933X
• DOI: 10.1515/soeu-2021-2001

The author explores the socialist emancipation of women in Montenegro during World War II and its aftermath, using the example of the 8 March celebrations. The social life of this ‘holiday of the struggle of all the women in the world’ speaks powerfully of the strength and fortitude involved in the mobilization of women during the war and during the postwar building of socialist Yugoslavia, as well as the sudden modernization and unprecedented political subjectivation of women. The emancipatory potential of these processes turned out to be limited in the later period of stabilization of Yugoslav state socialism and largely forgotten in the postsocialist period. The author argues that the political subjectivation of women needs to be thought anew, as a process that does not take place in a vacuum or outside of a certain ideological matrix, whether socialist or liberal.