The authors address working class women’s activism in socialist Yugoslavia, focusing on archives produced at both factory and municipal levels by local društva žena or aktivi žena (women’s societies/sections) in the industrial town of Varaždin, Croatia. Their critical exploration of archival sources produced between the mid-1950s and the late 1980s has enabled the authors to challenge dominant interpretations of women’s activism during state socialism, particularly the idea that no relevant activism existed after the dissolution of the Antifascist Women’s Front (AFŽ) in 1953. To counter that view the authors highlight the continuities between the AFŽ and subsequent women’s organizations, the Union of Women’s Societies (SŽD) and the Conference for the Social Activity of Women (KDAŽ), in terms both of discursive narratives and of biographical trajectories. They argue that local archival collections provide new and differentiated insights into past gender and labour conflicts and into working class women’s activism.
This article discusses the debates on abortion rights and practices that took place in socialist Yugoslavia. It focuses on the microhistorical case studies of Varaždin and Karlovac, with specific attention given to the period between the first liberalisation of abortion for social reasons in 1960 and the full liberalisation of abortion until 10 weeks in 1969. The primary sources for this article stem from the collections of the Conference for the Social Activity of Women in the Croatian State Archives, as well as periodicals such as Arhiv za zaštitu majke i djeteta issued by the Institute for the Protection of Mother and Child in Zagreb. Digitalised local press sources – Varaždinski vjesnik and Karlovački tjednik – are also explored. As shown in the paper, the liberalisation of abortion in 1960s Yugoslavia generated a wide array of dilemmas for women and practitioners alike. While legal abortions were seen as necessary to curb illegal ones, they were nonetheless perceived by local practitioners as something that should best be prevented and which could prejudice a woman’s reproductive abilities, particularly in the case of first pregnancies. Many women recurred to legal and illegal abortion as a result of the lack in health infrastructure, unavailable contraceptives, difficult social conditions and persisting patriarchal gender norms.
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