Centre Dubrovnik.
The topic of this year seminar is:
"Women and Politics - Ten Years After"
The period between 1996 and 2006 in Eastern Europe has been a turbulent time and a period of big political, economic, cultural changes. In 1996, the war in former Yugoslavia just ended; meanwhile, many of the countries from the former communist block have become members of the European Union, so the problems of globalisation came into focus like never before. Democracy was and still is the most common word and civil society was something like a regional catchphrase. The question is whether the social dynamics related to women's problems within the general idea of human rights have been equal to those related to the societies in general. Or, in other words: to what extent have the social and political positions of women changed, and how far has the impact of their political activism reached? During the period of the last 10 years, ®enska infoteka has been organizing the annual seminars Women and Politics, each year trying to focus on a particular important political question related to women, but which is at the same time a general political question of the period, to which we all relate as human beings. Doing so, many questions have been raised, like problems of history, politics, sexuality, art and culture, and others. Each time, this was an effort to bring certain issues again into public discussion and to try to put these problems back onto the social agenda in general. This year, the jubilee will be used as the basis for summarizing these efforts, to see if some ideas and social phenomena which we discussed several years back can stand critical analysis today. The goal of such an approach is to find out what is happening with the development of women's issues. Is it perhaps the case that all that was on the agenda (in the world of the women's/feminist movement) remained marginalized and
unrecognised, or did some changes happen? If changes did happen, what was the kind of these changes? Has this been the time of deterioration of the status of women, or
improvement, or stagnation? During last 10 years, the seminar brought up in discussion topics such as:militarization, sexuality, political theory, art, history, feminist movement, Third World feminism. We invite you to think and write about these processes in feminist movement, politics and thinking in the last ten years. The papers can focus either onregional and global levels, or on the national.
We expect participants of the seminar to prepare a research paper on the topic: women in politics and changes in gender social positions / roles. Please, send absrtacts (approx. 900 characters) of your research papers by e-mail until March 1st, 2006, when the Organizing Board of the seminar will make a selection of the papers most appropriate for this year's topic. The seminar is mostly, but not exclusively, orientated toward women feminist researches and activists from non-Western countries. Women interested in attending the seminar as active participants are encouraged to contact ®enska infoteka by phone, fax, post or e-mail at the
earliest possible convenience. Please, confirm your interest for participation, so that we can proceed with the organization of the seminar. We are looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Sincerely,
Djurdja Knezevic
Director of Zenska infoteka
Zenska infoteka
Varsavska 16
10 000 Zagreb
Croatia
phone: 385 1 4830 557
phone/fax: 385 1 4830 552
e-mail: zinfo@zamir.net
www.zinfo.hr
[preluare e-nass]
