Women and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941-1945 Book

The participation of women in the Yugoslav National Liberation Movement is one of the most significant events in modern history. In no other country in the world have women played such a decisive role in the achievement of victory over an occupying enemy and the creation of a Communist state. WOMEN AND REVOLUTION IN YUGOSLAVIA is the first book in English on women's role in the Yugoslav partisan movement of World War II. It is based on research in primary sources in Yugoslavia and on the author's interviews with Yugoslav women who fought in the war. The book examines the various functions that women performed in the fight against fascism and German occupation--as soldiers, as members of the Yugoslav Communist Party, and as part of the effort to provide support to those on the front lines. It also traces the evolution of the woman's movement and analyzes women's postwar status. Many women partisans view their participation in the war as the decisive factor in the liberation of all Yugoslav women, as having opened the door to their equal participation with men in the building of the new Yugoslavia. But at the end of the 1970s, a new generation of Yugoslav women began to challenge these assumptions of emancipation, calling for radical changes in existing social values and institutions and an end to the patriarchal order. Jancar-Webster reconciles these radically different positions into a realistic picture of the gains made by women through their participation in the war.