Karijera, kuhinja, konferencija: žene u hrvatskom društvu šezdesetih

Abstract

Based on an analysis of Communist Party (i.e., League of Communists of Croatia/Yugoslavia) documents, as well as the women’s, academic, student and youth press, this article explores the status of women in Croatian society during the 1960s. It opens perspectives for the study of “the role and status” of women in communism, with emphasis on the under-researched 1960s, in comparison to scholarship on the Antifascist Front of Women (Antifašistička fronta žena, AFŽ) of the 1940s and 1950s and the second wave of feminism (neo-feminism) of the 1970s and 1980s. The 1960s saw a marked rise in women’s education and employment, which was not accompanied by an increase in their “visibility” in society nor in their political representation (in the period after the abolition of the AFŽ in 1953). Similarly, there was no reformulation of the “women’s question” prior to emergence of the first feminist demands in the form of criticism of or dissent against the state in the 1970s. The first part of the paper defines the problem of the declarative “solution” of the women’s question with the introduction of legal gender equality. Alongside demands for reform, the 1960s witnessed evidence of political, societal and economic crisis during which women, regardless of their ever-growing level of education and qualifications, could not find an unobstructed path to leading positions. Subordinating the women’s question under the class question hindered genuine change in the social status of women, because the place of women in society was an indicator of the failure of the state monopoly over issues pertaining to women. The second part of the article analyzes women’s participation in the student movements of 1968 and 1971, but also their involvement in the emerging civic initiatives of the same period. Criticism of the invisibility of women as active participants in student, youth and academic endeavours correlates to examples of misogynist attitudes that permeated society during the 1960s.