Abstract
This article discusses the interconnected histories of the emergence and growth of the Yugoslav self-proclaimed feminist network in the first half of the 1920s and the regional feminist organisation Little Entente of Women (LEW) founded in 1923. The article suggests the analytical term ‘interwar liberal feminism’ to point to these feminists’ adherence to the liberal constitutional systems of their states and to the post-WWI international state-order, and at the same time to their challenge to the nation-state and their struggle for reforms through parliamentary means regarding women’s rights. However, whereas interwar liberal feminists agreed on the problem of the inequality of the sexes in their states and the necessity of related reforms, it is argued that significant ideological differences existed within the interwar liberal feminist movement. By exploring the LEW, the article suggests that this ideological divergence was of a transnational character, which further implies that the LEW should be explored as a dynamic regional organisation whose ambiguous character can be explained by the ideological differences between the involved feminists, rather than through differences between national sections.
Highlights
In recent historiography, the period between the official end of World War I (WWI) in 1918 and 1923 is regarded as a period of profound instability of the social, political, international and gender order (Horne, 2012; Stibbe, 2017)
It was in 1923 that feminists from the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes/Yugoslavia (Kingdom SHS),1 Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland, Greece, and Bulgaria established the regional international women’s organisation Little Entente of Women (LEW) during the ninth congress of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) in Rome.2. Having this larger perspective in mind and building on the growing historiography on SEE and CE feminisms (De Haan et al, 2006; Daskalova and Zimmermann, 2017) this article sets out to enhance our understanding of the character of feminisms in the post-WWI years and interwar feminisms more generally
Grubački / The Emergence of the Yugoslav Interwar Liberal Feminist Movement and the Little Entente of Women coincidence that the Feministička aliancija (FA) was founded right after the establishment of the LEW in May 1923
Summary
The period between the official end of World War I (WWI) in 1918 and 1923 is regarded as a period of profound instability of the social, political, international and gender order (Horne, 2012; Stibbe, 2017). While 1923 can be tentatively marked as a year of piecemeal post-war stabilisation in Europe, it can be considered as the year of consolidation of the feminist movements in some South-eastern and Central European (SEE and CE) countries This was when Františka Plamínková founded the Czech National Council of Women (Feinberg, 2006: 52-53), when the League for Women’s Rights in Greece started publishing its journal O Agonas tis Gynaikas (Woman’s struggle) (De Haan et al, 2006: 569-574), and when Alojzija Štebi initiated the founding of the first state-wide self-proclaimed feminist organisation in Yugoslavia, Feministička aliancija u državi Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca (FA, Feminist alliance in the State of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes) (Kecman, 1978: 178-192). Nor is it a coincidence that both these organisations were understood as ‘feminist’ in the journal Ženski pokret (‘Women’s movement’, 1920-1938). As I will demonstrate, both organisations were created as a result of the new cooperation among women in the context of the post-WWI establishment of new nation-states in SEE and CE
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