This book is an original contribution to the historical sociology of gender-related transformations within the Muslim community in Bosnia between the end of the Ottoman rule and the beginning of WWII. Based on an extensive research into archival and printed materials in the local language, the volume reconstructs in vivid detail the lived reality of Muslim women at a time of profound political, economic, and social change. The history of Muslim women and the shifting discourse on gender relations is analyzed through the ideologies, activism, and social impact of the voluntary associations that emerged in the region during the Habsburg era and further increased their public presence during the interwar period. Various philanthropic, cultural, feminist, and revivalist associations engaged competing and often conflicting political projects with diverse ideas of the role and status of Muslim women. Their respective associational structures introduced different social practices, which left their mark on the larger society and contributed to the gradual transformation of gender relations.
The chronologically structured narrative of the book is organized in seven chapters. The first two discuss the Habsburg educational policies implemented in Bosnia after the province was included in the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1878, focusing in particular on the introduction of schooling for Muslim girls and the emergence of a small cohort of Muslim women engaged in public writing.
Chapter 3 analyzes Muslim women's presence in cultural, philanthropic, and feminist associations after the Great War, when Bosnia became part of the first Yugoslav state. Chapter 4 looks at the reconfiguration and expansion of the debate on gender relations in the interwar period, which now included discussions on women's place and role in the national community. Chapter 5 focuses on the voluntary associations’ gender politics reflected in the establishment of vocational schools, student dorms, scholarships, and literacy courses for women, while Chapter 6 looks at how the organization of various festive events by the existing associations became a tool for the empowerment of Muslim women. The last chapter compares the discursive practices of two new political phenomena that emerged in the second half of the 1930s: the spread of communist ideas and organizations among youth and the rise of Islamic revivalism seeking to counter the progressing secularization of Bosnian society. Despite their radical differences, those two forces converged on the crucial role they ascribed to Muslim women in their respective political projects for social transformation. The veiling practice became an important issue in the highly politicized debate related to the participation of women in the public sphere, in which Muslim men of progressive leaning opposed traditionalists, on the one hand, and Islamic revivalists, on the other.
Voluntary associations challenged the traditional sexual segregation within the Muslim community by involving women in the public sphere. By encouraging interaction with non-Muslims in a multi-faith society, they also undermined attempts by conservative Muslim elites to reenforce and strengthen religious boundaries. While in the heyday of associational activism during the interwar period, Muslim women's activism evolved mostly in the framework of the female branches of the male-established and led Islamic cultural and philanthropic associations, a limited number of Muslim women took part in the feminist organizations operating in the larger Yugoslavia. The latter focused on civil and political rights and made special efforts to include Muslim activists in their networks. Giomi's research demonstrates that despite their participation in the associational life of their community, Muslim women remained mostly silent in the Bosnian and Yugoslav public debates, and the number of Muslim women who took part in the debate about the “Muslim woman” was extremely limited until 1945.
The book showcases voluntary associations’ efforts to improve Muslim women's lives through access to education and participation in the public sphere before the WWII, and highlights tentative steps towards women's emancipation well before the gender egalitarian project of socialist Yugoslavia rewrote and profoundly transformed women's position and role in society. Importantly, the author convincingly argues that “debating appropriate Muslim gender relations was a way to discuss the fate of the Muslim community as a whole, in the post-Ottoman, European contest” (22).
This is a welcome contribution to discussions on the gender-differentiated experiences in the history of the Balkans. It will be of interest to students and scholars working in the fields of gender studies, Islam, European, and Balkan studies.
