Vacation is a luxury that most women in Montenegro can rarely afford. When they get a legally guaranteed break from work, often more demanding unpaid work awaits them, because behind New Year's lights, decorated Christmas trees, full tables and tranquility is what is everyday for women: unpaid work, which is often an unwanted "gift" created due to stereotypes and patriarchal expectations. Montenegrin society.
From the south to the north, the story is mostly the same, namely that there is more unpaid work than what is recorded in the work book. Capitalism and patriarchy, current policies and those who decide on them are common "obstacles" on the way to women's emancipation and equality, according to the interlocutors of "Vijesti".
"What do you mean unpaid work? Think about everyday life," answered Baranka MB, a mother of four without the right to a pension, when asked what her day looks like when she spends unpaid work.
She wakes up, drinks coffee, "tightens" the living room, and the dishes from dinner are waiting for her. Her dishwasher doesn't work, so she just puts it in it to drain. Then there is the preparation of food for lunch, and how much work there is depends on whether the grandchildren are coming. Two or three washing machines, as time permits vacuuming, dust cleaning, pet care...
He also spends sunny days in the garden, around flowers or washing the terrace, cleaning the yard and moving wood. When asked what her retired husband does during that time, she replies that he mostly rests or watches television.
"Holidays are particularly demanding. Two children live with me and two have their own families. We gather for the holidays, so more food and cakes have to be prepared, I like everything to be ready and clean and to welcome them properly. My youngest daughter helps me the most, as soon as she finishes work, and my son maybe goes to the store by car", says Baranka and claims that it is not difficult for her, that she is used to it and sometimes she even likes it.
The children contribute financially, the husband has a pension and says that they live well. She mostly takes care of everyone, and she is the only unpaid one. She is lucky to live in Bar, she thinks, most of the days are warm and there is always a way to "at least finish something".
She receives compensation from the state for mothers of three or more children in the amount of 192 euros per month. Two euros always go to the postman, she says, and the remaining 190 cover bills and a couple of days' worth of food. It's not that it's not enough, but it's a humiliating "reward" for what is daily work "from morning to night" that didn't allow her to gain seniority.
Three interviewees of "Vijesti" from Bar, two employed and one looking for a job, are looking forward to the holidays, despite the fact that they have a big job waiting for them. One is expecting her husband's relatives from Serbia, so she is already working on "household preparations" as soon as she finishes work.
That visit will also require babysitting and food preparation while they are on the bar promenade or on a city tour.
This work is expected and implied from them. They understand that it requires physical effort and investment of time, but, as one says, they have accepted such a fate in Montenegro, and the only thing they can do now is to teach their children better. If they did not meet expectations, they would first encounter criticism from their family and then from everyone else.
"I can, it's hard for me, but I can. It's easier for me to get undressed than to listen to comments or feel like I haven't done what I have to do," one of them is honest, even though she has a lot to do.
The other "doesn't care" what others will think because she is not a machine for satisfying and serving inherited false moral expectations.
Work awaits even after work, especially in the countryside
It is somewhat colder in the north, but the work in and around the house certainly cannot wait and also falls on women's backs.
What she did, in the house, in the fields, around the cattle..., "when she comes from work", as Kolašinka says Mrs. Vujisic, a registrar and a long-time councilor in the local parliament, it was three times more difficult, but it also benefited the household budget many times more significantly, than her monthly salary. Although this work of hers in and around the house was never officially paid and "was taken for granted all the time", it made the Kolasinka's working day last from five in the morning until midnight for decades.
"I have been a registrar for 28 years, I have also been active in local political life for a long time. I tried to be present on several fronts and to fulfill each of those obligations with quality. Such an engagement required a whole day of hard work. In addition, I am the mother of a child with a health problem, and almost all the care of my daughter was also my responsibility.
"In Kolašin, there have never been adequate services that would support the care and upbringing of such a child. Some of the work could be taken over, sometimes, by my husband's other daughter", says Kolašinka for "Vijesti".
He explains, there was never any money to pay for help with the housework. New Year's, as well as other holidays that imply a fuller table, but also the arrival of guests, Vujisić explains, for women, instead of rest, mean extra hard work, without space for "celebration". In the areas of Kolasin, this usually means the arrival of many relatives "from outside".
"Of course, all the burden of welcoming the guests, as well as preparing the holiday food for the guests and family members, is again on the woman. Let's say, during the New Year's holidays, a woman's rest is reduced to a few hours around midnight and maybe an hour longer sleep the next day, because there is food left over from the previous day. That's all. In general, holidays for working women are a time when things that were not done during the working week are finished around the house", says the "Vijesti" interviewee.
Vujisić, however, has been apostrophizing for years that when it comes to unpaid and unrecognized work, women who have not had "a single day of work experience" are in the most difficult position, and have been "bypassed" by all kinds of benefits and income "from the state treasury". Among them is the 80-year-old "Vijesti" interviewee, a resident of a village in the north of the country.
"I was never in a situation to receive my dinar. What I earned from selling cheese, milk and other things that we produced in the household was always shared, although I know that I was the one who created the most. I have four children, I have never been registered at the employment office, so I don't even have the allowance for mothers. I can't receive old-age agricultural allowance, because my husband receives a pension. Those are the rules, and the rules have never been in favor of women," she says.
And during these New Year's holidays, as in previous years, he will welcome guests and relatives from the cities in his home. Although she is at an advanced age, she says, the rule is that she takes care of most of what will be on the table. As she learned, she will be the first to get up in the morning and the last to go to sleep.
"I am a housewife and that is expected of me. It's not fair, but when she learned from her mother and, later, from her mother-in-law that she had to do it that way, one shouldn't even think about the fairness of what a woman is obliged to do. Now it is too late for anything to change in my life. "Younger women can do a lot to make themselves better and to cope with sharing the heavy burden of housework with the rest of the household," says the old woman.
Women sustain life and in turn are marginalized
We live in a society where the daily work of cleaning, from the coffee cup to the toilet bowl, children's bodies, and then the bodies of parents, relatives and others, the work of preparing food is necessary for the physical development of life, on women. These are "services" that are taken for granted, and the system remains unquestioned as to why they are not there. The physical and emotional work of women is necessary in a patriarchal society, when everyone sinks and she knows she has to save the sinking ship, without support for her own depression and often the despair she regularly falls into.
Tako Ervina Dabižinović from the peace and feminist organization "ANIMA" describes the life of women in Montenegro.
"The daily violent task of working on one's own invisibility and ostracism and disrespect is defined through the role of a good daughter, mother and wife... What can we say about such a society in which one gender performs life-sustaining tasks and is spat on daily with fists, humiliation or the absence of political will. Such a society is neglected, poor financially, emotionally and without ethics of responsibility", she emphasizes.
Such a society lacks the basic pillar of community, she thinks, which is equality and the chance to broaden the spectrum of humanity because it expects more than half of its population to live subjugated, insecure, unsafe and wiped out.
Former and current policies towards women are not in the least ready to make fundamental changes, she claims. He sees the greatest responsibility in the political elite, which destroys the little evolutionary progress in Montenegro and consciously and intentionally humiliates women.
"In circumstances where education is the lowest point, and it should be the most important. In circumstances where the entire cultural pattern is politically turned and handed over to the clero-nationalists, the least that should be done is to appeal to women who have no chance to come to their senses," says Dabižinović.
Their awareness goes beyond the great suffering for which policies and politicians are responsible, he concludes. How to recognize the forms of unpaid work if behind the mask of caring for the family and children hides the monstrous face of capitalism, which needs the female resource both as a commodity and as a potential to produce war, she asks and adds that Montenegrin society is most vulnerable precisely in this basic relationship and that women are asked to support their own oppression, and "politicians, priests and thieves also ask them to do the same".
She says that there are women who recognize this and of course it is very difficult to offer an alternative to someone whose soul has been occupied since childhood by abuse by the patriarchy and the church which represents women's life "through patience to the splendor of paradise".
"Changing education, changing institutions and changing politics are the main places where answers should be sought, and women will not have another task, which is to resist and fight guerilla. In these circumstances, a woman's unpaid work completely excludes her from the single labor market. He redirects them to the margins of society. It distracts from further development and education, from improvement and from participation in public affairs. It eliminates the changes that took place in the twentieth century from the aspect of women and women's rights," underlined Dabižinović.
"Most of us had mothers who worked in public space and thus participated at least in economic, social and cultural strengthening. Of course, since the nineties we have had a negative trend that has escalated in the last couple of years. Women lost their jobs in the 1990s, were declared losers of the transition, were returned to their homes, or had to devote themselves to smuggling in order to survive the years in which poverty was the only index," she stated.
Most of the women we know, as he claims, were faced with such conditions. Over time, various forms of violation of women's labor rights have occurred. Today, in addition to work in the private sphere, unpaid work or work for love, there are newly composed forms of capitalist exploitation called secondary forms of employment such as part-time work, hired work from home, additional work in private and family businesses, and the like.
"Today, women are marginalized and excluded from the single labor market, which results in regular jobs, and thus a greater selection of occupations, being assigned to men. These secondary forms of employment destroy what was once a lot of economic and social citizenship of women", she is sure.
The policies of this state introduce women to violence and possible tragic consequences by returning the largest social group to poverty and under the patronage of the church, tradition, ideology of soil and blood, which gave the most expensive results in the not so long ago wars in the Balkans, says Dabižinović.
She wonders if it could be worse than that capital's violence against women happens through men who make policies and which is maintained and encouraged by the state against its own women citizens.
The policy led by the current government, and the previous ones are not far behind, is destructive and topics about women are not even on their agenda, she says. Politicians of the current government, with ignorance, irresponsibility and intent, arrogantly devastate the standards that protect a society from decay.
"By lowering the educational level for certain functions and jobs, wouldn't some relative get into the workplace for an indefinite period and thus preserve the vote for "ours", with the nepotism they represent by correcting historical injustice, by legalizing political trade in depth and breadth, with lies and malfeasance they are destroying what little essence that existed to say that institutions exist and function. They used to be a facade, but today that has also disappeared", are the honest words of Dabižinović.
The only thing we can do, she says, is to testify with our own experience and work against their ignorance, incompetence, arrogance and social pathology that they introduce us to every day.
"There is no civil level. There are individuals who act and think civilly. From that place, my message is resistance through knowledge, testimony, research, activism, solidarity with those whom the community makes meaningless on a daily basis. Certainly resistance to this policy of lies and destruction", is the message of Dabižinović.
According to the numbers, the majority, according to the rights of the minorities
Data from the Directorate for Statistics of Montenegro (MONSTAT) show that 316.826 women and 306.807 men live in Montenegro. In addition to making up the majority of the total population, they also make up the majority of the educated population in terms of high school or college education.
Women work more, so MONSTAT's publication "Women and Men in Montenegro" from 2024 shows that 278,3 thousand women are employed, 152,3 thousand men. Although women are more valuable according to the data, the figures of international organizations show that they are not paid equally.
They are more represented in service activities and the care and education sector, so in the transport, storage and communication sector, significantly more men (13,3 thousand) than women (4,0 thousand) are employed, while in the education sector it is significantly higher number of women (12,7 thousand) than men (4,8 thousand).
They are more professional, but there are fewer of them in decision-making positions, the data show. Among legislators, officials and managers, there are only about 25 percent of them, while the remaining 75 percent are men, although among what MONSTAT sees as experts, women make up 57,5 percent.
There are as many as 7,7 percent of them in the army, while service workers and trade workers make up 55,7 percent of that sector.
More than three-quarters of rural women over the age of 67, 77 percent, receive social assistance in the amount of 90 euros, because they did not have time to report to the labor offices, and all women spend 8 to 12 years of their lives in housework, the data are of UNDP.
The wage gap is increasing
According to data from the International Labor Organization, reminds Maja Raičević, director of the Center for Women's Rights, women in Montenegro earn on average 78 euros for every 100 euros earned by men. That, she says, is a "gap" of 21 percent "and it is worryingly larger compared to the measurements of some 10 years ago".
"One of the "invisible factors" due to which women are undervalued on the labor market is precisely the care of the household and family, which belongs to invisible and unpaid work that leaves women much less time for other activities. The little data we have about unpaid work was analyzed by international organizations during the pandemic, and they showed that women worked 92 percent more than men in this field and that this work, in three months, was worth 122 million euros," says Raičević.
The consequences of unpaid work, she claims, especially affect women from rural areas, who are at a greater risk of poverty, "even though in addition to working on the farm, they also work at home, and around children, often elderly household members." These topics were opened by representatives of organizations dealing with women's rights in Brussels with the European Commission's Directorate for Agriculture and Rural Development.
"In that directorate, they warned about the global trend of mass migration of women from the countryside, because as they say, "no one wants to live such a life". Therefore, everything that Montenegro needs to do in order to start solving the problems of women from rural areas is found in the recommendations of the CEDAW Committee (Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women). I use the opportunity to point out their importance and call for due attention in fulfilling them", says Raičević.
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