Women and Industry in the Balkans: The Rise and Fall of the Yugoslav Textile Sector

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Women's emancipation through productive labour was a key tenet of socialist politics in post-World War II Yugoslavia. Mass industrialisation under Tito led many young women to join traditionally 'feminised' sectors, and as a consequence the textile sector grew rapidly, fast becoming a gendered symbol of industrialisation, consumption and socialist modernity. By the 1980s Yugoslavia was one of the world's leading producers of textiles and garments. The break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991, however, resulted in factory closures, bankruptcy and layoffs, forcing thousands of garment industry workers into precarious and often exploitative private-sector jobs. Drawing on more than 60 oral history interviews with former and current garment workers, as well as workplace periodicals and contemporary press material collected across Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Slovenia, Women and Industry in the Balkans charts the rise and fall of the Yugoslav textile sector, as well as the implications of this post-socialist transition, for the first time. In the process, the book explores broader questions about memories of socialism, lingering feelings of attachment to the socialist welfare system and the complexity of the post-socialist era. This is important reading for all scholars working on the history and politics of Yugoslavia and the Balkans, oral history, memory studies and gender studies.

Reviews

It is thanks to books like this that such examples of resistance and resilience are kept alive ... socially engaged and empathic, yet critical and academically sound, works of this kind are sorely needed. * European Journal of Womens Studies *
An engaging and complex read that allows us to enter the world of individual experiences entangled in political, economic and social processes. * Wagadu *
[A]n engaging text ... Bonfigliolis book will be a mandatory reference for those interested not only in intersections of industrial labour, gender and class in socialism and post-socialism, but also in questions that shape current debates in the field of global labour history. * Social History *
From here, exciting scholarly debate can proceed. ... Chiara Bonfigliolis book provides a valuable discussion of gendered work during socialist and especially, postsocialist deindustrialization and exploitative reindustrialization in Yugoslavia and its successor states. * Aspasia: The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women's and Gender History *

Author Bio

Chiara Bonfiglioli is Lecturer in Gender & Women's Studies at University College Cork, Ireland. She has published and researched on gender history in Yugoslavia and post-Yugoslav states, as well as on transnational womens and feminist movements during the Cold War. More details can be found at www.chiarabonfiglioli.net