Author(s): Marina Velickovic,Arijana Aganovic,Edita Miftari,Saša Gavric / Language(s): English
/ Publication Year: 2015
(English edition)
While working on improving our program and portfolio on women’s human rights we quickly realized the absence of a detailed and visible account of “women’s” history in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Although there are a significant number of publications and several activist initiatives that address certain fragments of history and explore events, periods of time, and regions, there is currently no exhaustive institutional account of women in Bosnia, nor are attempts being made to create one. The academic community has unfortunately failed in this area. The history of women and their contribution to public life remains at the margins of academic inquiry. The Sarajevo Open Centre published the book Women Documented: Women and Public Life in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 20th Century. The book was edited by Jasmina Čaušević, a program coordinator at the Sarajevo Open Centre, in cooperation with ten authors. Through publishing this book, the Sarajevo Open Centre and our partner organizations wanted to celebrate the centenary of the First World War in a different way. It was precisely the work on Women Documented that revealed to us the need for further work exploring women’s history in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We hope that our (virtual) museum of women’s history in Bosnia will eventually be institutionalized in Bosnian society. In November and December 2015, we will commemorate the 20-year anniversary of the Dayton Peace Accords – the international agreement that brought peace to Bosnia and Herzegovina and laid the foundations for the long and grueling process of peace-making and trust-building. The Dayton Peace Process was, as this book will demonstrate, a classic example of male politics. The commemoration will, again, be dominated by men – Bosnian and Herzegovinian and world leaders. We decided to conduct this research and publish this book to challenge the male-dominated approach to memory. This publication aims to offer systematic insight into the role played by women in political life. Our goal is to offer a better understanding and a concise overview of political life over the past 20 years, based on the stories of a number of women - activists, politicians and institutional leaders - with the hope that it will inspire other authors to explore BiH political history during this period of time. Since this aspect of history is particularly under-researched, the very process of gathering information was challenging and so we welcome constructive criticism, comments, and suggestions for improvement and enrichment of this text. I would like to thank Marina, Arijana and Edita, who accepted to work with the Sarajevo Open Centre on this project. I would also like to thank my colleague Maida Zagorac, who has helped me immensely with her excellent oversight of both the technical and the substantive aspects of this text. I also owe thanks to the Embassy of Swiss Confederation in Bosnia and Herzegovina for supporting our work and the research of women’s history in Bosnia and Herzegovinian.
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