Politics of Representing Women Scientists in Socialist Yugoslavia

• In Event: Women's Emancipation in Politics and State Socialism in Central and East Europe

Abstract

The paper examines how women scientists were represented in the press of socialist Yugoslavia and how this representation changed over time. The press material includes interviews with prominent researchers and professors, and portrait-pieces about them, obituaries, articles dedicated to the topic of women in academia, particularly in STEM disciplines, both in general press and those targeting women. At the backdrop of previous studies of representation of womanhood in Yugoslav socialist press, this analysis looks into what gendered norms were inscribed in different strategies of representing a ‘woman scientist’. By focusing on how media texts create an image of a ‘scientist’, and discursively construct a ‘woman scientist’ in particular, the paper examines negotiation of overall gender order (in society) and specific gender regime (of a specific institution/discipline) at a given moment. Furthermore, the paper analyses how private and (demanding) professional sphere were negotiated, both by media outlets and women scientists as interviewees in the context of socialist modernisation where working mother was a social norm. The overall aim is to unpack how social concepts such as ‘academia’ and ‘scientific excellence’ were negotiated with concepts of ‘woman’ and ‘mother’, or how a concept of ‘technology’ was negotiated with a concept of ‘femininity’. When did distinct conception of a ‘woman scientist’ emerge, and how did it transform over time? The paper demonstrates changes that took place over time: in the patterns of representation, discursive strategies, gender-sensitive language, tropes and topics that are associate with women in science.

Author

• Jovana Mihajlovic Trbovc, Slovenian Academy of Sciences & Arts (Slovenia)