The success of the demands of women and feminists and the power of antifeminism in Slovene territory before the Second World War

Selišnik, Irena (author), Cergol Paradiž, Ana (author)

The present paper examines the dialectical relationship between the women’s and feminist movements in the Slovene lands during the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and in the aftermath of the First World War, as well as the antifeminist responses that emerged in both the media landscape and in structural political measures. The establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes brought about significant political and cultural transformations alongside rapid modernization, which led to a redefinition of antifeminist discourse and the introduction of new state policies aimed at restricting the participation of women in public life. While earlier opposition to women’s emancipation was often grounded in moral arguments, this gradually gave way to pseudoscientific frameworks such as (racial) anthropology and eugenics, with medicine increasingly becoming the dominant lens through which resistance to gender equality was articulated. The article pays particular attention to how the Great Depression and the demographic crisis influenced the debates surrounding women’s suffrage, access to the labor market, and most notably, reproductive rights. Additionally, special emphasis is placed on how these issues intersected with contemporary constructions of motherhood—an aspect frequently overlooked in existing scholarship on the topic.

• Language: English
• Keywords: women's movement, feminist movement, gender, Carniola, Slovene history, 19th/20th century, discourse, motherhood, suffrage, reproductive rights, labor market, Great depression, demography
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FF - Faculty of Arts
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2025
• Number of pages: Str. 19-38
• Numbering: Vol. 19, no. 1
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-170199
• UDC: 94(497.4)"19"
• ISSN on article: 1337-6861
• DOI: 10.31577/forhist.2025.19.1.2
• COBISS.SI-ID: 240948739
• Publication date in RUL: 02.07.2025

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Forum Historiae
• Shortened title: Forum Hist.
• Publisher: Historický ústav Slovenskej akadémie vied
• ISSN: 1337-6861
• COBISS.SI-ID: 18746371

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: žensko gibanje, feminizem, spol, Kranjska, slovenska zgodovina, 19./20.st., diskurz, materinstvo, sufražetke, reproduktivne pravice, trg dela, velika gospodarska kriza, demografija

Projects

• Funder: ARIS - Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency
• Project number: J6-4602-2022
• Name: Materinstvo in reproduktivna politika v 19. in 20. stoletju