Whose Crisis?

Feminism and Democracy in the 1920s Yugoslavia

Abstract

In 1929, the central feminist organization in interwar Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes / Yugoslavia Alijansa ženskih pokreta (Women's Movements' Alliance) removed the demand for women's suffrage rights from their program. By analyzing and carefully contextualizing articles published in the central Yugoslav feminist magazine Ženski pokret (Belgrade, 1920-1938), the article addresses a specific gap in historiography about women's movements and feminisms in interwar Yugoslavia, and argues that the removal od this demand from the feminists' program was not only a direct consequence of the Royal dictatorship, but also a reflection of a broader disillusionment with the parliamentary and party politics in interwar Yugoslavia. More broadly, the article addresses the narrative of the „crisis of feminism“, suggesting that this is not a sufficently satisfactory explanation for the transformation of feminism in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Furthemore, the article contributes to the historiography of the political history of feminisms, and acknowledges the entangled history of the Yugoslav feminist movement with the parliamentary and party politics. Methodologically, it follows the recent approaches to the history of political thought in East Central Europe, and gives new insights into the political thought of the feminists from the AŽP, and particularly their leader Alojzija Štebi and her „political vocabulary“ and her understanding of political neutrality, moral crisis of political life, and small-scale work.