Feminism was never just a struggle to eradicate sexism, but all forms of domination and subordination, it was said today at a conference organized by the non-governmental organizations Center for Women's Rights and ANIMA.
NGO ANIMA activist Paula Petričević, speaking on the topic "The relationship between feminist politics of resistance and women's rights", said that different types of feminism tried to improve the position of women and, as a rule, not only women.
"What feminism loses through the process of institutionalization is the breadth of its maximalist demands. This means that for me, feminism has never been, nor will it ever be, a struggle only to eradicate sexism, but a struggle to eradicate all forms of domination and subordination," Petričević said.
She believes that the greatest danger of the institutionalization of feminism is the isolation of only the gender aspect.
"That aspect can be incorporated and various gender equality policies can be formulated, which will give us some significant results in some 100, 200 or 300 years, provided that we give up those excessive demands," said Petričević.
Commenting on the statement of the president of the Montenegrin parliament, Ranko Krivokapić, who said today that "women have always walked side by side with men", she assessed that there is a repetition of the question that medieval philosophers and theologians were dealing with, "developing their heads on the fact that does a woman have a soul, among other important questions".
"It is very obvious that until today, especially in some places and in some contexts, we have not yet realized that women are people too," Petričević said.
NGO ANIMA activist Ervina Dabižinović assessed that feminist politics of resistance and women's rights are directly related.
She said that feminism is a social movement and that it developed in different ways.
"In the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, liberal feminism was present. That feminism demanded political rights - the right to vote for women, the right to education and the right to economic independence. In the 19th century, Marxist feminism emerged, which is significant for us, because the legacy of Marxist feminism focused on the economic rights of women - on the right to work," she specified.
After that, as she added, came socialist feminism, which forms within itself the achievements of liberal and Marxist feminism and treats women's economic rights.
"Radical feminism, which was exclusively concerned with the resolution of women's issues through the emergence of patriarchy - the disempowerment of patriarchy as a social system. "Radical feminists introduced freedom of choice of sexuality and freedom over one's own body into the body of law," said Dabižinović.
She said that none of these systems went deep enough or revolutionary enough to disempower the patriarchy.
Dabižinović said that the impression of the women who were in the parliament today was that "it is very static there."
"We heard that the rules of the game there are that you cannot say something outside of the protocol. It's a situation where, if you step outside the box, you're breaking the law and someone can arrest you today. I no longer have the free right to come in front of the Assembly, I climb the stairs, because today the police were there, and if I spill red paint, they will come to arrest me," she said.
Dabižinović said that we are not talking about a system that is anarchy.
"We live a democracy today. That democracy says that I have no right to go and spill paint on the steps of the Assembly, that I cannot say in the parliament that they gave me a bad answer to the question because I will get a negative. That kind of domestication and that kind of manipulation with what is the legacy of the women's movement is problematic," she believes.
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