We are presenting an article by Zlatiborka Popov-Momčinović concerning the political and legal situation of women in Bosnia and Herzegovina, originally published in Bosnian and English on the website of the Heinrich Boell Foundation Sarajevo office. We are presenting the article in Georgian language because, regardless of historical, cultural, political, social, or other differences, we believe that the text strongly resonates with the modern context of Georgia, in particular, the issues of femicide, anti-gender discourse, and the ultraconservative or anti-Western "turn". We believe it will be interesting and thought-provoking for the Georgian readers to get acquainted with these similarities and to contextualize the current political events on a regional and global scale.
In her study Horses, Women, Wars about the history of the Women's Anti-Fascist Front (WAF), its contribution to the anti-fascist struggle, but also its marginalisation within the socialist revolution, which culminated in the famous ‘self-dissolution’ of this mass women's organisation in 1953, Lydia Sklevicky noted that there were more pictures of horses than pictures of women in history textbooks. Horses have always been considered noble animals, while women have been treated as unfinished or incomplete men, bound to nature and biology as fate, who dwell in the outpost of history, somewhere between animals and humans.
Due to the nobility of horses, their death, torture, and killing have always caused outrage, and even the Pannonian sailor Đorđe Balašević sang the verse "I feel sorry for the horses" in one of his anti-war ballads. Mistreatment of horses is often used as a metaphor for the inhumane treatment of humans and their suffering. The famous film by Sydney Pollack from 1969, which portrays the desperate struggle for survival during the great economic crisis and depression of the 1930s, is entitled They Shoot Horses, Don't They?. But why is the suffering of women rarely used as a metaphor for human suffering in general, considered less important, and at best treated as collateral damage? This issue is mainly addressed by a small number of feminist authors (and male authors), but for the social and scientific mainstream this issue is factually irrelevant. Such a symbolic nullification of women has been directly related to discrimination, marginalisation, and gender-based violence throughout history.
From improvement to a new conservative turn
On the other hand, sceptics will say that things are much better than they seem at first glance. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, for example, numerous laws have been passed and improved and various mechanisms (agencies and commissions) focused on gender equality have been established. Instead of the former statistical error in political life, women are now in important positions and have managed to maintain themselves in not so negligible percentages. Women are getting more and more educated, they are graduating from universities in higher numbers than men, and they are in prominent positions in almost all spheres of society. Today we see women in blue uniforms and in the armed forces, and violence against women has entered the public discourse.
However, more realistic reflections and deeper analyses point to still rooted imbalances that concern the unequal distribution of power between women and men around the world. The only exception are the Scandinavian countries, and Sweden, where 2% of the European Union population the lives, is the absolute leader in virtually all spheres. Despite the significant advances in the last ten or more years at the European Union level, it is considered that the achievements are fragile, and the progress is still very slow and extremely variable from country to country in the European continent.
In the USA, a country where the women's or feminist movement has had a long tradition and always been the strongest, Equal . Rights Amendment (ERA) was never adopted, which was championed by individuals and women's groups who believed that a constitutional guarantee of equality between women and men was necessary. Although it seemed that its adoption would finally come in the seventies of the last century, primarily due to the successful and massive mobilisation of the feminist movement, the counteraction of conservative women gathered around the charismatic Phyllis Schlafly successfully prevented it. The main argument of this conservative group is that equality between women and men will actually worsen the position of women in society, and deny them some forms of protection they have because they are women, especially mothers. Although voices are again heard about the necessity of finally adopting this amendment, the strengthening of the right, right-wing populism, and extreme polarisation in the American society make these attempts uncertain. With a recent decision by the US Supreme Court, overturning an earlier 1973 ruling that guaranteed the right to abortion nationwide, the issue is no longer considered constitutional. Now it has been returned to the states or elected representatives to solve it, meaning ban or allow it. Regarding this ruling, Donald Trump declared that it was brought by God himself. Also, his countless statements are full of misogyny, sexism, chauvinism, homophobia, racism and xenophobia, and they are always viral on social media: "Send her back", "Mexican rapists", "Chinese Virus/ China Virus", "Grab them by the pussy", "How does she even get on television ?", "If I can test her [DNA] personally ...".
In countries where authoritarian and conservative trends are clear and manage to effectively control the entire society, the position of women and the many rights that have been won are even more threatened. One example is certainly Russia, where the connection between chauvinism, sexism, and autocracy is more than obvious (see for example the book Die chauvinistische Bedrohung by Sabine Fischer), which should be particularly addressed due to the actual and potential spread of this influence to other countries. Namely, with the collapse of socialism and the great economic crisis of the nineties, the most vulnerable categories of society paid the highest price, including women. Socialist emancipation above was not only abolished but also strongly attacked, and women virtually disappeared from political life. And while the feminist movement began to take shape again during the nineties, increasingly strong attacks on civil society, especially after the passing of the law on the so-called agents of foreign influence, forced it underground and lead to its increasing de-politicisation. The most visible women in the public sphere are those who, consciously or unconsciously, participate actively in the regime's policy of hypermasculinisation of society. In Russia, there is no law that treats domestic violence as a criminal offense, and it can potentially be sanctioned as a violation of public order and peace. Russia is not a signatory to the Istanbul Convention, and the reason given is "incompatibility with Russian tradition and culture". Oksana Viktorovna Pushkina, who, among other things, advocated for better legal solutions for violence against women and was elected on Putin's list in 2016 United Russia, in the new election cycle was not on the electoral list for the Russian Duma. When it comes to the alleged sexual affairs of Berlusconi, the Russian president described it as well-known Western hypocrisy, because Berlusconi, allegedly, would have been fine if he lived with a homosexual. In this regard, LGBTI rights are also under attack and its members are sentenced to strict privacy or emigration from the country. Discursive analyses of media content show that the attacked Ukraine is extremely feminised, portrayed as a "fickle" woman who has no right to control her body or territory and decide on her political destiny. Welcomed guests from abroad are many European right-wingers, who wholeheartedly fight against "gender ideology". The National Front (Le Front National), headed by Marin le Pen, Northern League (Lega Nord) from Italy, Freedom Party (FPÖ) from Austria, Alternative for Germany (AfD), and the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, are some of them. The so-called gender ideology is becoming the new ideological glue that binds different illiberal groups and movements around the world, and gender, as noted by prominent feminist theorists Adriana Zaharijević and Katarina Lončarević, editor of Genero, a rare feminist magazine in the region, is strangely torn from the arms of feminist theory. There is an uproar against sex education in schools, because the victims (read girls and women) are best kept in submission if they are ignorant. Abortion is equated with moral turpitude, as are same-sex partnership issues. Attacks on numerous rights are formulated in the name of supposed protection of human rights, freedom of speech and assembly, but only for like-minded people. At the same time, alleged democratic principles such as the "rule of the majority" are referred to, which is allegedly increasingly threatened by various minorities. The civilisational achievement of democratic development that it is necessary to protect minority voices and groups in order not to slip into the so-called tyranny and despotism of the majority is being erased.
Western Balkans and thugs in power
Similar trends are present in the Western Balkans, where the connection between patriarchy, autocracy, sexism, and chauvinism is reinforced by the violent disintegration of the country, which is accompanied by the hypermasculinisation of society, the erasure of emancipatory potentials from the socialist period due to historical revisionism, and the fact that the power structures from the nineties wars period have remained quite intact. Non-transparent wartime privatisation led to a marriage between criminalised capital and particracy torn from democracy, and these societies are increasingly condemned to live on the semi-periphery exposed to various influences and interests of global players. In traumatised societies faced with a mass exodus of the population and further social decay, the highest price is paid by vulnerable social classes and marginal groups. For the ruling structures, obsessed with machismo-understood national interests, these layers and groups are possibly only important on election day. Although the legal regulation of violence against women has been significantly improved, it is minimally reported, female victims suffer it for many years in isolation, and budget allocations for safe houses remain minimal. Research shows that almost four out of ten women in Bosnia and Herzegovina have experienced psychological, physical, or sexual violence after the age of 15, but even these data are not sufficient to finally treat it seriously, as well as the recent, brutal cases of femicide. The monstrous murder of Nizama Hećimović in Gradačac, which the killer and her ex-partner broadcast via social media, reminded of other cases of murders of women by their current or ex-husbands, or partners or boyfriends. Sumejja Dedović (25), Sanela Trsten (39), Edina Odobašić (39), Miralema Mehmedović (52) are just some of the names of 75 murdered women between 2015 and 2022, and it is assumed that the number is higher due to the inadequate conduct of investigations and lack of adequate legal qualifications. The cases in Tuzla that happened this year disturbed the public, especially the fact that Amra Kahrimanović was killed by a member of the Ministry of Interior, firing several shots at her. Although it was announced that femicide would finally be recognised as a criminal offense for which the most severe punishments and sanctions can be imposed, the draft law was withdrawn from the further procedure in Republika Srpska without any explanation after the "moral panic" of several clerical organisations. It is clearly more opportune for the ruling structures to answer to right-wing organisations in the pre-election year, than to stand up truly for the victims of domestic violence and allocate the necessary budget funds for this purpose. Also, the draft law, according to which non-governmental organisations in Republika Srpska would be included in the register of the so-called of foreign agents, threatens to disable the work of women's organisations, which have been working systematically for the past twenty-five years to take care of victims of violence, and make any activism meaningless. In the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the improvement and harmonisation of legislation has been waiting for years, and the financing of safe houses is even more poorly regulated than in Republika Srpska. In some regions, active efforts are being made to prevent women from exercising their reproductive rights and, following the example of neighbouring Croatia, the so-called "prayers for the rosary" have emerged in this part of Herzegovina. The main meaning of this "silent mass" is longing for patriarchy and further re-traditionalization of society.
On the other hand, the laws that were improved did not produce the expected results. They were mostly brought in order to adapt to the European standards on paper and without the real intention of truly taking root. Admittedly, women are found or appointed to key positions, and sometimes in quite large numbers. Such was the case, for example, in Serbia, which in the last parliamentary session even had a "female government" with a prime minister and a member of the LGBT community at the head, and "even" 45.8% of the total number of deputies and ministers were women. However, this is the so-called phenomenon of pinkwashing, where gender equality is used mainly externally. Also, it has been noted all over the world that many regimes appoint women to key positions in order to cover up authoritarian tendencies in society, violation of human rights, threats to media freedom, etc. Real power remains out of women's hands, and even when they are in key positions, these women fail to sensitise society or improve the situation, and many do not actually try. For these reasons, negative stereotypes about women are actually reinforced, and the demands of the women's movement become meaningless. This is supported by the fact that women occupy key positions in many right-wing and populist parties and movements, which advocate more or less openly for narrowing women's human rights, as well as the rights of many marginalised groups.
Few women who truly aspire to change something in the political sphere are systematically marginalised. They mostly deal with issues that are considered less important (including gender equality, social justice, peace building, etc.), and their work is virtually invisible in the media. When they point out some unacceptable phenomena and practices, they face different forms of discrimination and violence, more or less subtle, which in some cases border on social pathology. Such is certainly the case of SDP's Besima Borić, who during her thirty-year political engagement gave a textbook example of selfless political contribution to the activist struggle for equality and social justice. However, after she publicly indicated that it was unacceptable for her party to nominate a person who is (was) accused of domestic violence (on 08 March!), for the position of minister in the Sarajevo Canton, she was even accused of defamation by the same person, who was in the meantime appointed to that position! If we lived in some ancient and even darker times, women like this would be burned as witches at the stake! But through the cunning of the patriarchy, more subtle methods have been developed to silence the unfit (women). And the eligible (women) are asked to remain silent, instead of actively participating in the burning.