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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 02/03
Women's Advocacy and the Building of Civil Society in Serbia
Lilijana Cickaric
December 2000
Abstract
This study provides an analysis of the role of women's organizations in the rapidly developing non-profit sector in Serbia. It presents up-to-date information on the shifting political and socio-economic context within which women's organizations operate, the main areas of activity, and a representative sample of women's organizations and initiatives. The research design was based on the feminist principle of subjectivity, where the researcher is also an activist whose purpose it is to make women's history socially visible and recognized. The objective was also to emphasize the essential role of women's advocacy in a wider network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) oriented toward the building of civil society.
The significance of women's actions in the alternative political scene in Serbia in the last fifteen years is discussed, particularly in the development of anti-nationalism, anti-militarism, anti-war, and peace movements and wider anti-regime civil initiatives. The motivation for the proliferation of women's organizations in Serbia and other parts of the Former Yugoslavia has two sources. On the one hand, women felt compelled to join the harsh criticism of official nationalist, chauvinist, 'macho' politics, armed conflicts and poverty; on the other hand, women were forced to struggle with problems that selectively confront women in societies in crisis.
After a decade of experience, women in particular have felt the negative effects of the post-communist transition. Unemployment among women has increased and participation in the political process has dropped significantly. At the same time, women's NGOs have participated in accelerating the development of civil society and the third sector. They have taken up the call for individual responsibility and civil initiative to challenge the political system. NGOs, community-based organizations, and women's groups and associations have emerged as important actors in the implementation of women's interests and concerns and have placed women's issues on national, regional, and international agendas.
Women's advocacy in Serbia is experiencing a stage of restructuring and creating new identities and practices in the current social and political context. The main characteristics of the Balkan tragedy and Serbian turmoil include disintegration of the Former Yugoslavia, civil wars, UN sanctions, political, economic and cultural isolation, transition into a non-democratic, authoritarian political regime, and, finally, the collapse of all social institutions. Women's activism has perpetuated strong feminist resistance to growing ethnic nationalism, racism, xenophobia, genocide, and "ethnic cleansing." The dominant motives for women's decisions to self-organize in order to help themselves, help other women victims, and strive for protection of women's human rights emerged from women's very negative personal experiences in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo, experiences that included daily physical violence, sexual abuse, mass rape, sex-trafficking, refugee status, and invalidity.
After a short discussion of the contribution of women's advocacy in the building of civil society in Serbia, the paper focuses on several specific issues within the remunerative activity of women's organizations. During the "war games" in the Balkan region, the activities of anti-war and peace organizations overlapped with autonomous women organizations. Women's initiatives represented an essential framework for non-nationalist, multiethnic conflict resolutions. Fostering the construction of an important legitimate space for civil society, they have opened possibilities for reconciliation of relationships with the international community. Parallel discussions are held on questions of resistance to highly manifested male violence against women, in war, armed conflicts, and in everyday life.
Autonomous women's organizations criticized the instrumentalization of women and sex-discriminatory practices aimed at achieving national hegemony, arguing that women's issues were highly politicized in the most negative manner through a nationalist agenda. From the outset of the Balkan crisis, women's organizations were committed to develop peaceful resolutions to preventing armed conflicts. They claimed that violence in war could not be separated from violence in the everyday life of women. They called for a de-militarization of the Former Yugoslavia, and a moratorium on war propaganda and forced migration strategies.
Mass rape and forced labor in stationary and mobile bordellos called "silk battalions" were a constituent part of war strategies and became part of the everyday life of women in militarized regions. Women were excessively represented amongst refugees and victims of "ethnic cleansing." The suffering of women, active and passive victims of war, exposed the rudimentary character of patriarchal society. This uncivilized and brutal experience on the threshold of the 21st century was a chief motivation for the proliferation of women's autonomous groups and solidarity network building amongst women's organizations.
War and armed conflicts invariably increases the level of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse within the family and in everyday life. Women's organizations identified more intensive domestic violence and new categories of male violation - men returning from war and husbands and partners who tortured women of different ethnic and national origin. Numerous centres were formed consisting solely of women members, operating in the field of legal, medical, psychological, social, and humanitarian services. They combined feminist activism with practical, policy-oriented, concrete measures, pushing the question of male violence against women to the top of the public agenda and stimulating changes in legislation regarding family violence, sexual assault, and marital rape.
Women's organizations were among the first members of civil society to bring to the international public agenda issues of economic, social, and political human rights in Serbia, particularly in Kosovo Province. After the NATO bombing campaign in 1999, women's organizations offered material, psychological, moral, and emotional support to women of Albanian, Roma and Serbian nationality from Kosovo and organized projects for health and humanitarian aid to displaced families in the local population.
Despite the real poverty, social tension, and trauma experienced in the current period and the extremely unfavourable environment for feminism in Serbia, women's advocacy continues to broaden the spectrum of their activities and interests. Active measures have been taken to promote the participation of women in politics, private business, and civil society. Women's organizations have chosen and adapted international "best practices" to produce programs in education, awareness and training, research, mentoring, and leadership by example. They have also proposed voluntary targets to promote gender balance, which are gradually being implemented within political parties and NGOs, and created publicity and discussion around gender equity in decision making.
Deep economic depression, increasing poverty, and struggle for survival in these conditions are the worst enemies of any sort of social activism and weaken the capacity to build civil society. These processes have also affected women's advocacy, but the cohesion and enthusiasm of women's activists has opened up a space for rethinking gender perspectives in the future development of society. The women's organisations profiled in the paper participate actively in safeguarding a place for civil society. Moreover, they have been successful in providing a voice for the concerns of women, in calling for greater attention to women's practical and strategic needs, and in monitoring the success of initiatives directed at the promotion and protection of human rights for women.
