WOMEN DOCUMENTED Women and Public Life in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 20th Century Women Documented Women and Public Life in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 20th Century Sarajevo, 2014 Gender Edition of the Sarajevo Open Center Edition is run by Emina Bošnjak and Saša Gavrić Book 4 Title: Women Documented: Women and Public Life in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 20th Century Original title: Zabilježene - žene i javni život Bosne i Hercegovine u 20. vijeku Authors: Aida Spahić Amila Ždralović Arijana Aganović Bojana Đokanović Elmaja Bavčić Emina Žuna Fabio Giomi Ivana Dračo Zlatan Delić Zlatiborka Popov-Momčinović Editor: Jasmina Čaušević Translation: Adisa Okerić Zaid, Lejla Efendić Data Collection Contributor: Maja Kaljanac Proofreading: Cera Murtagh, Aida Spahić Layout: Lejla Huremović, Dina Vilić Publisher: Sarajevo Open Center For the Publisher: Saša Gavrić © Sarajevo Open Center / Authors Any non-commercial multiplication, photocopying or any other means of reproducing the complete publication or its part is desirable, with prior notice to the publisher sent to: office@ soc.ba. This publication is published in cooperation with partner organisation Heinrich Böll Foundation in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Swiss Embassy in BiH. Attitudes and opinions in the text are those of authors and do not represent attitudes and opinions of the publisher. Authors are held responsible for their respective texts. Women Documented - Women and Public Life in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 20th Century Sarajevo, 2014 CIP - Katalogizacija u publikaciji Nacionalna i univerzitetska biblioteka Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo 305-055.2(497.6)”19” WOMEN documented : women and public life in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 20th century / [authors Aida Spahić ... [et al.] ; translation Adisa Okerić Zaid, Lejla Efendić]. - Sarajevo : Sarajevski otvoreni centar = Sarajevo Open Center, 2014. - 209 str. : ilustr. ; 20 cm. - (Gender Edition ; book 4) Prijevod djela: Zabilježene. - Bio-Notes of author, contributors and the editor: str. 187-189. - Bibliografija: str. 190-205 i uz tekst. ISBN 978-9958-536-19-9 1. Spahić, Aida COBISS.BH-ID 21615622 CONTENTS Foreword 7 Introduction 10 PART I: 1914–1941 Women Through the Epochs 13 PART II: 1941-1945 The Second World War and Experiences of Bosnia-Herzegovinian Women 40 PART III: 1945-1990 Women in Socialism – From Accelerated Emancipation to Accelerated Re-Patriarchalisation 66 PART IV: The Nineties - The War and Post-War Period in Bosnia and Herzegovina 109 PART V: Borders of the Millennium: the Present 149 INSTEAD OF A CONCLUSION 181 Bio-Notes of Authors, Contributors and the Editor 107 List of References 190 Dedicated to all women who could not live a free life... ... a life by their own measure. FOREWORD Are the strategies of forgetting gendered? Forgetting is at times just an euphemism: it is about a more or less institutionalised censorship that can be directly linked to politics, various forms of powers of groups: an even clearer area of gender policies. In a culture bearing marks and scars of a totalitarian mentality, each construction of a collective memory deeply depends on the strategies of forgetting. Svetlana Slapšak, Antropologist The book you are holding attempts to represent the world of women D in the times when life became extremely accelerated – ideologised, in- dustrialised, psychoanalysed, technologised, mobilised, commercialised, relativised. Our book has many a limitation. Methodologically, its chap- ters are not fully harmonised; it lacks the analysis of the construction of woman in different ideologies. It was written quickly, but with passion, love and regret that not all archives, museums or libraries across Bosnia women OCUMENTED and Herzegovina and abroad were visited (a lot of the relevant material is not located in BiH). The driving force behind this endeavour of a group of people was the exclusion of women from the main trends, loss of continu- ity and their deletion from the cultural, scientific and all other memories. Therefore, this book primarily serves as the activist response to the sys- tematic neglect of the contribution of women to BiH culture and it is an attempt to provide a foundation to the study of the history of women in BiH. Oblivion, memory and women are the three main terms that deter- mine this book and we need to explain these terms for the book to be read as we envisaged it. Oblivion is the pre-constructed refusal to remember what has happened, suppressing and deleting the traces of life. Memory, in terms of re-inscribing events in time and space, by writing, is one of the tactics of the resistance to the oblivion regime. Women are defined through the words of Gorana Mlinarević: When I talk about women and women’s political agency, I do refer to essentialist or biological terms, but the political agency that is potentially emancipatory in terms of resistance to the patriarchal system. When I talk about women, I talk about women as an analytical category.1 Materials and data were collected about the brave, interesting and successful women who did not consent to be obedient and who spited the rules of their environment and fought for better opportunities; we searched for individuals and associations who moved the boundaries of the usual by non-conformist and courageous action in their world. We tried to collect the basic knowledge also about those women who were successful in spite of all the forces working against them, about those who 1 A quote from a lecture by Gorana Mlinarević: Feminist Criticism of Militarisation of Ever- day Life (17 June 2014), Sarajevo, Muzej književnosti i pozorišne umjetnosti BiH. WOMEN AND PUBLIC LIFE IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA IN THE 20TH CENTURY 7 were the first to do certain things in history of BiH, those who risked or gave their lives for the ideas they believed in. We collected data about women, known and unknown, and gathered them in a single place. We dealt with history, but not historical analyses. Not because these are not important, but because the idea was to create a non-academic and non-historical book on a more recent history of women. The fact that the historical aspect is missing – that we have no historian in our group – was unintentional and it grew into a methodological fact. Therefore, it is very important to have this work assessed by historians. The book is chrono- logical in terms of its organisation, based on the social and political cir- cumstances set by the mainstream culture. Each chapter presents the broader social, ideological, legal, economic and cultural BiH political contexts, followed by an overview of segments of society from the perspective of women and women’s issues. The book contains information on how women acquired / won their rights, on women’s associations – humanitarian, educational, feminist, academic, WOMEN DOCUMENTED WOMEN political etc. - on the women’s workers movement, AFŽ, contribution of women in art, science, education and culture, on the specter of women’s roles in wars – fighters, diversionists, illegals, peacemakers, war criminals and many other. The eternal dilemma of peace feminists is the position- ing towards women soldiers and other directly militarised women is not tackled on these pages. Biographical and bibliographical data of certain women are presented in the end of each chapter. In some places, women who are singled out were selected per set methodological measures, and in some places the selection got out of control and completely overrode the principle of the more important experience, that this book is constantly trying to problematise anyhow. The book has two main goals, along with the most important one that refers to the activist-academic response to the problem of knowl- edge transfer and affirmation of women’s work and existence. The first concerns the creation of a database that shall contain, in one place, new and the already existing and collected knowledge. The second goal relates to the mutual networking of people who are interested in dealing with women, be it in terms of space or time or ideology. The book has its ancestors and it is definitely not the first attempt to present the lives of important women or the first attempt to resist oblivion and neglect of women’s contributions over time. To mention a few we followed: U građanskom ogledalu: Identiteti žena BiH građanske kulture 1878–1941 by Sarita Vujković; Ženski prostor i muško vrijeme by Sadmira Kotorić; Zaboravljene dobročiniteljke – sarajevske vakife by Selma Avdić Hajrović; Žene u istoriji Semberije by Tanja Lazić; Život i stvaralaštvo žena Banjaluke by Draga Daša Gajić; Žene u vremenu Bratunac by Mensura Mustafić, Žene u politici Bosne i Hercegovine by Amila Taljanović; Sve bih zemlje za Saraj’vo dala: žene pišu i čitaju grad by Dragana Tomašević; Žene u Bosni i Hercegovini: Dolje ti rijeka, dolje ti je pruga by Saša Gavrić and Hana Stojić; Ženski pokret u BiH: Artikulacija jedne kontrakulture by 8 WOMEN AND PUBLIC LIFE IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA IN THE 20TH CENTURY Zlatiborka Popov Momčinović; Sjaj ljudskosti – životne priče mirotvorki u Bosni i Hercegovini by Zilka Spahić-Šiljak etc. This work was also inspired by well-meaning persons, acquaintances, and friends who contacted us and kept bringing their texts and sharing their knowledge about women in the cultural history of BiH. All libraries opened their doors, and the most generous research center was Bošnjački institut (the Bosniak Institute). Women Documented: Women and Public Life in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 20th Century is the re- sult of the work and cooperation of many people, Sarajevo Open Center, Heinrich Böll Foundation Office in BiH, CURE Foundation and the Swiss Embassy. D Finally, we need to mention that the translation of the book from Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian is not fully compatible with the original as it lacks a number of chapters which did not directly relate to the life of wom- en in the 20th century.