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Belgrade, Serbia – Six months later, Blanka Brizanak still remembers the moment she learned that a Belgrade tabloid had interviewed a serial rapist who had recently been released from prison.
“The moment I saw the announcement of this interview, I felt humiliated,” the 22-year-old recalls, sitting in a coffee shop in the heart of the Serbian capital. she has brown hair. “I remember thinking: How should we live as women in a society where rapists are free to tell us through the media how to behave while they are raping us?”
In an interview published in September by the pro-government newspaper Informer, Igor Milosevic, who was serving a 15-year sentence for multiple rapes and physical assaults against women, said he had only instructed the women how to behave during the attack. I also explained how it was freed. It was for him that he committed the crime. “I felt free while raping and robbing,” he said. He also threatened a female journalist who interviewed him, telling her, “If I decide to rape you, I will.”
Bryzanak, a history student and co-founder of the Belgrade-based women’s organization Ženska solidarnost (Women’s Solidarity), believes that in many ways the tabloids made Milosevic a celebrity. His movements were regularly reported by Informer journalists, who advised women and girls to buy personal protective equipment and avoid walking alone at night.
Frustrated with the tabloids and determined that women’s voices should be heard, Brizanak and other members of her group urged women to protest. I was.
The demonstration exceeded Britzanak’s expectations. Hundreds of demonstrators whistled, held placards and chanted slogans such as: Justice for Women and Girls” and “Women’s Revolution!”
It was the first time the Jenska Solidarists had organized such an important event, and Brizanak said it was both stressful and exciting.
The collective started in 2018 as a Facebook group for women to share stories about domestic violence. The demonstration helped it develop into a protest movement.
Currently, Jenska Solidarnost aims to draw attention to the violation of women’s rights in Serbian society, to promote the idea of sisterhood and political solidarity among women, and to promote the protection of women at the national level. We are pushing for legal reform.
“No woman is responsible for the violence that men direct against her. We took that anger into the streets,” Brizanac said, adding that she hopes to continue the demonstrations once the snow melts.
‘Women in power do very little’
At first glance, Serbia has taken a step towards gender equality. The country has had a female prime minister, Ana Brnavić, since 2017, but the number of women in parliament over the past decade has regularly been around 35%, currently the second highest in the region after North Macedonia. (PDF).
But critics say political representation has not led to true equality for Serbian women.
“Women in positions of power are doing very little for other women,” said one of the three co-leaders of the left-wing Together party and its presidential candidate in the 2022 election. One Birjana Stojkovic says: “And even if they [female lawmakers] They could have been more proactive, but they themselves decided to limit their roles and meet the expectations of their own political circles. This is especially sad for Brunavich.”
Brnavic was the first woman nominated by Serbia’s nationalist president, Alexander Vucic, the first openly gay prime minister, and is considered a supporter of Vucic. Stojkovic said the nomination of a woman prime minister was intended to promote the country’s accession to the European Union and to create a facade of equality to distract international observers from something more sinister, she believed. ing.
Since taking office in 2017, Vucic has eliminated nearly all domestic checks on power, filled key posts with loyalists, and helped them claim control of many state-owned assets. According to a 2022 report (PDF) by the Women to Woman (Kvinna until Kvinna) Foundation, a Stockholm-based women’s rights group focused on contributing to the deterioration. A person who has faced a physical attack or threat. The report also notes that women are significantly underrepresented at the regional level. In 2021, her 13% of local governments will elect a female mayor or president.
“I can’t really say that women are the driving force in Serbia,” says Stojkovic, Vucic’s candidate in the last election. She won her 3.3% of the vote. She points out that Vucic himself is still the main decision maker. “Essentially, nothing has changed,” she says.
Jelena Liznic, a 25-year-old sociologist who is a member of Jenska Solidarnost, says the fact that someone is a woman and is a lesbian doesn’t mean her politics make her a feminist.
Sitting in a coffee shop next to Brizanak, Liznich explained that Brnavic never promised to fight for women’s rights or the LGBTQ community.
“Her policy was clear from the beginning,” Liznich says. Shortly after her inauguration, Brnavic described herself as a “technocratic prime minister”, which many critics interpreted as confirmation that her role was to carry out Vucic’s policies.
Liznic points out that the Serbian opposition is in many ways as misogynistic as the ruling party. “[They] Call her a man on TV to know exactly when to exploit Brunavich’s sexual orientation,” she says.
Patriarchy and Toxic Masculinity
Political power struggles aside, there are many other challenges facing Serbian women. According to her 2019 survey by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, 34% of Serbian women between the ages of 18 and 74 have been physically assaulted by their partner at least once since the age of 15. have experienced physical or sexual violence.
According to a 2020 report by the Council of Europe’s Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, women and girls in Serbia have a “very low” conviction rate for most forms of violence against women. , are often afraid to report abusers.
In 2021, Serbia reported 20 cases of femicide, the deliberate killing of women and girls because of their gender. It was the highest number in the prefecture. According to her 2020 survey by her FemPlatz Civic Association, a women’s rights organization in Serbia, more than 74% of these crimes for her occur in family or intimate partner relationships.
In the 2016 documentary film The Victim Has a Woman’s Face, which explores the issue of violence against women in Serbia, journalist Ana Manojlović interviews a man who murdered his female partner. One of them told her that he invited her friends to her house and cheated at her party, which led to him stabbing his wife to her death.
According to Visnja Bachanovic, a gender equality consultant and trainer based in Novi Sad in northern Serbia, this kind of ownership and superiority towards women is common in many other post-communist countries. It is also widespread in Serbia. She explains that there is “no real alternative” to “toxic masculinity,” suggesting that modern beliefs about gender and sexual identity sensitivities are not deeply rooted in Serbia. Institutional plans of action still rule the world. [Serbian] landscape,” she says.
She argues that this traditional way of thinking affects many other everyday issues, such as women’s low participation in the labor market (44% compared to 62% for men in 2022) and decision-making at home. explains that it lies at the root of the problem. According to her 2020 report (PDF) from the U.S. Agency for International Development, women are still responsible for cooking and cleaning in Serbia, whereas men are usually seen as controlling household spending. increase.
“Many men are under pressure from society, which teaches them that men are ‘the way they should be,'” Bachanovic said, adding that Serbian culture has created an image of a dominant male. It explains that women are only seen as stay-at-home moms or are sexualized, whereas they often encourage it.
Riznić said all he had to do was “drive down the highway and see sexualized female bodies used in sports betting ads or get sponsored ads about nightclubs on Instagram.” says. She recalls an advertising campaign last year in which the Serbian branch of the international environmental group World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) was widely criticized for being sexist. One of her ads showed a woman’s legs sticking out of what appeared to be a shower, with the inscription “Don’t touch my fish.” It is likely that she intended to draw attention to the issue of endangered fish. When news outlets and her users on social media criticized its ads and other campaigns, WWF apologized and removed them.
“troublemaker”
Stojković says women who speak out or participate in public risk stigma. Society sees them as “some kind of extreme element, a troublemaker,” she explains.
Ženska solidarnost wants to fight this image by encouraging women to make their voices heard and fight for law change. Contrary to the popular local saying, “women are wolves to women,” meaning that women see each other as enemies, Brizanak and Liznich believe that only together can women make a difference. He says he believes he can.
But Bachanovic says feminist organizations like Jenska Solidarnost have had limited impact on women in rural Serbia, where traditional cultural practices are entrenched and access to information is more limited. point out that no
She feels they can contribute to change in Serbian society. “But not now,” she says. “Change should be defined. They need to know what they want to achieve beyond getting people out on the streets.”
Still, she admires her creative and innovative approach to raising awareness among young audiences and using social networks and educational activities to get her message across.
“They continue to send a constant message to women, undermining a strong patriarchal structure in Serbia despite the fact that our rights are regularly violated.
“Serbian women are really fed up and need this kind of rebel to voice their problems.”
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