Biti žensko u srpskoj tradicionalnoj i savremenoj kulturi: etnografski rad Miroslave Malešević kroz prizmu rodnog pitanja
Being Female in Traditional and Contemporary Serbian Culture: The Ethnographic Work of Miroslava Malešević through the Prism of the Gender Issue

Author(s): Sonja Radivojević
Subject(s): History, Gender Studies, Gender history, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology
Published by: Етнографски институт САНУ
Keywords: Miroslava Malešević; gender; women; humanities; ethnography; feminism.
Summary/Abstract: Although, from the birth of the feminist movement and women’s activities within the so-called first wave feminism of the 19th century, through the second wave feminism that emerged in the 1960s, to contemporary third wave feminism, a large range of (in)formal rights have been gained, women’s efforts to establish a level playing field in society continue, keeping this issue current. Labeled the second sex, women throughout history have been deprived of participation in social and political life, while remaining cut off from the mainstream of academia, both as researchers and writers, and as those written about. Women in academia, and the academics of women, and their unknown achievements, began to be heard during the second wave feminism, and anthropology, as a discipline that traditionally gives a voice to otherness, was a natural ally in this struggle, contributing to the continual rethinking of gender. Although today the gender issue is one of the main investigative themes of modern ethnology and anthropology, it has been in the shadow for a long time in the domestic context. One of the founders of a systematic and consistent interest in gender issues in Serbia is the ethnologist-anthropologist Miroslava Malešević, who has maintained a permanent interest in gender, and especially women. Considering the importance, quality and quantity of not only ethnographic material concerning women’s perspectives on everyday life, the construction of gender and gender relations in the traditional and contemporary context, in the village and the city and among different categories of women, but also the theoretical and methodological importance for a wider range of domestic social sciences and humanities, I present in this paper the author’s scholarly and ethnographic work based on a reading of two monographs – Didara and Female – while drawing attention to the overall contribution to science that can be attributed to it.

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