Preliminary Programme

Women's movement in Turkey has been shaped in conjunction with different problems at different times. The traditional religious content that dominated the political, public and cultural structure at the beginning of 19th century made its impact in every field and women's lives were limited to the private sphere. This structure entered a different phase as the changes in the outer world affected the Ottoman society and modernization efforts, especially during the Second Constitutional Period (1908-1918) had an impact on traditional patriarchy. The struggle of women, with the help of the gradual rights gained in this period turned into an independent movement. The turn of the century also stands witness to the efforts for constructing a national identity and including women within this framework. Starting from the first years of the Republic, nationalism became the hegemonic political ideology in Turkey. The parameters of the woman's struggle from 1908 to the Kemalist Republic (1923) have been shaped by the specific historical circumstances of Turkish nationalism. The influence of nationalism on the patriarchal structure implied its pressure hard on women and this differentiated women's movement of the time. That is, traditional patriarchy turned first into modernizing period patriarchy and than into nation-state patriarchy and the women's movement in Turkey took shape in an atmosphere consisting of the dynamics mentioned above. Women's movement after 1980, put the emphasis on the point that all solutions offered against patriarchy and its pressure should be questioned and any success could be gained if women's movement were independent. In this paper, I will dwell on different aspects of women's movement in Turkey. (Show less)

This paper outlines briefly some outcomes of my research on the role of women in book production and book consumption in modern Bulgaria. It discusses women’s roles and functions in the “communication circuit” (R. Darnton) during the 19th and early 20th C or to put it differently the roles of various female players and agents involved in the circulation of print culture.
The presentation has three main parts: the first one deals with women-authors; the second presents as a case study story of the only Bulgarian woman-publisher before 1944; part three outlines the main directions of a history of women readers during the same period (Show less)

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a clash between two opposing concepts in the Belgrade night life. In the National Theater, “that temple of the patriotic religion,” mostly absent audiences could see “historical dramas from the Serbian past.” On the other side of the same, Vasina, street, in the “Brana’s Orpheum,” capacity crowds enjoyed comic acts. While the National Theater promoted a constructed idyllic image of the patriarchal village, Orpheum showed urban life acts, whose aim was to mock modern-day women who stepped out of the roles traditionally imposed on them. The paper deals with the issue of whether these misogynous “pieces” could theoretically be interpreted as signs of modernization, since they, regardless of any interpretation, showed change in gender relations as a done thing. (Show less)

In the past the writers of the Greek women’s history faced problems in finding the right sources for this field of research, as very little was known throughout the centuries. The bibliography which the researchers studied about their history, comprised memoirs, diaries, judicial records and statistics, most of them written by men. This meant that the accounts which described women’s role and contribution to the Greek society were seen only from the men’s perspective. About thirty years ago, the Greek historians decided that the best sources for those who wished to study this field were the women’s magazines that mainly addressed to female readers and reflected the ideas and aspirations of their gender. These periodicals were thought to be the best means for bringing up onto the surface the ‘’women’s voice’’ in its true meaning.
In Greece at the beginning of the 19th century, women had been outsiders and marginal to opportunities for schooling because of the prejudices that existed. Some decades later a few educated women made their first timid steps in publishing articles about female rights, most of the times anonymously. At the turn of the century these editorial ventures gathered momentum .
The journals Thaleia, Evrydiki, The Family and Pleias were the most important of this kind. But the prefeminist phase of the female press began with the publication of a very successful magazine entitled, The Ladies’ Journal, the editor of which was an educated woman called Kallirhoe Parren. This journal signalled the beginning of the formation of an organized feminist identity in the late 19th century Greek society and also laid the foundations for the shaping of a new female model. The goal of The Ladies’ Journal was ‘’ to awaken the [Greek] women, to rouse their dormant sense of power, to give them determination and self-confidence, as these two qualities had been suppressed during the centuries’ slavery and barbarity ‘’. The journal defended women’s rights for access to education and employment in a period when women were exhorted to regard home as their only proper sphere.
Other magazines, such as Thaleia and Evrydiki, also favoured the expansion of female education as the only vehicle for enlightening women and of elevating their status. These two periodicals exposed the view that men and women shared complementary roles in the society. Within this frame of co-existence women could fight for a better social position. On the opposite side of this notion stood The Family and Pleias which proclaimed that women should keep only the Greek tradition and habits and not be influenced by “westernized” movements.
Attaining the proscribed female role of wife, mother and moral safeguard of home and family was more than many women could bear. New opportunities in education and employment caused many of them to question the role society cast for them at the turn of the 19th century. The Greek female press having The Ladies’ Journal in the forefront of their claims, started to seek for better social opportunities and activities for their gender. Involvement in any of these ventures often led to unanticipated results and actions that defined new roles for women in the decades that followed.
The purpose of this paper is to study the role of the late 19th century female magazines in the prefeminist phase in Greece. It also explores their contribution to the shaping of the Greek female model with the aim to show that women had to fight in order to claim their rights and improve their status in the Greek male-defined and male-dominated culture of the 19th century society. (Show less)