UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 7th Annual International Postgraduate Conference

Inclusion Exclusion

16-18th February 2006

Friday 17 February 4:30 – 6:00: Panel G3: Gender Regimes

Anne Jenichen (Centre for Feminist Studies, University of Bremen): ‘Gender equality policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina: continuity or change in the political inclusion of women after war?’

In the former Yugoslavia egalitarian ideology of the socialists under Tito led to a series of measures towards the promotion of gender equality. Although socialist gender equality policy didn’t lead to full gender equity and although it was widely perceived as imposed from top down by the socialist state – and as established for other reasons than women’s rights, it paved the way for greater degrees of women’s participation in the political, economic and societal sphere.

The internal war over the disintegration of Yugoslavia and political and economic transformation interrupted the active promotion of women by the state. In Bosnia and Herzegovina in the second half of the 90ies, the Dayton Peace Accords and the international intervention as well as internal political decision-makers neglected gender issues almost entirely, resulting in high degrees of women’s exclusion from political and economic life and an alarmingly high level of violence against women. Not before the year 1999 the international community proactively recognized the problem and only then internal political decision-makers started to adopt and implement corresponding measures to combat exclusion, discrimination and disadvantage of women in the political, economic and private sphere.

At the moment there doesn’t exist a systematic stocktaking of gender equality policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina in English and German academic literature at all, therefore, the research paper brings up this issue and analyses gender equality policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2000-2005 in relation to gender equality policy under communist rule in the 70ies and 80ies in former Yugoslavia.

It argues that gender equality policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina proves to be path-dependent in parts, but in other parts, particularly regarding the issue of violence against women, has got a new quality which could be traced back to international intervention.