Naslov
Women’s Struggles and Political Economy: From Yugoslav Self- management to Neoliberal Austerity

Autori
Čakardić, Ankica

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Poglavlja u knjigama, znanstveni

Knjiga
Welcome to the Desert of Post-Socialism: Radical Politics After Yugoslavia

Urednik/ci
Horvat, Srećko ; Štiks, Igor

Izdavač
Verso

Grad
London : Delhi

Godina
2015

Raspon stranica
243-260

ISBN
978-1-78168-620-1

Ključne riječi
women's struggles, Women’s Antifascist Front, transition, neoliberalism

Sažetak
The paper aims to map women's struggles from the period of Yugoslav self-management to the current austerity regimes that dominate Balkan societies. In the first part of paper we discuss the importance of Women’s Antifascist Front (AFŽ) as the single most important organisation of women during World War II and the Yugoslav self-management period. Second part offers a scheme for the systemic analysis of 1990s during the “transitional” period after the break-up of Yugoslavia. In the center of this sort of analysis lays a consideration of the ideologies connected to feminist struggle after the demise of Yugoslavia. Special attention is given to the Croatian “transition” as a paradigmatic case for all other post-Yugoslav states. Because the socialist ideal of women’s status still left women in the doubly-oppressed position which was to be regenerated through neoliberal forms of labour inequality and exploitation, one can observe a certain consistency in the subordination of women in the transition from one model of political economy to another. In this sense, neoliberalism means an active role of the post-socialist state in organising market oligopolies and commodifying the social sector, in spite of narratives of a “minimal” or “neutral” state. The result was a fully regressive form of redistribution of domestic work that since the late 1990s has rapidly transferred, together with other social and public sectors, to a privatising mode. Finally, in the third part I consider feminist responses to crisis in the time of neoliberal austerity policies and their overall consequences. I argue that without serious historical-materialist analyses of the position of women in the post-Yugoslav region during the financialisation of capitalism, it is difficult to provide a basis for anti-capitalist feminist struggle which would ally itself with contemporary leftist movements.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

POVEZANOST RADA