Gender, nation, and education in the women’s magazine Žena (The woman) (1911-1914)

Abstract

This article explores discourses of gender, nation, and education in the women’s magazine Žena/The Woman, published in the Serbian language over the period 1911–1914. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Serbian intellectuals believed that education should be designed to help women to become better (Serbian) wives, mothers, and daughters. Owing to the specific historical and political milieu (the process of the formation of a national state and the Balkan Wars), women were seen as both the mothers and the teachers of the nation. Many women, as advocates for women’s rights, demanded the right to a formal education for girls and young women, in the name of national ideals. Thus, for such (proto)feminists, emancipation was a national project.