Education and Emancipation of Albanian Women in Kosovo during the Post-World War II Socialist Period (1945-1953)
Abstract
The purpose of the research paper is to identify the mechanisms through which regulatory and legal reforms and educational initiatives influenced the transformation of the social status of Albanian women in Kosovo in the context of Yugoslav socialist modernization. The study applied the principles of historicism, objectivity, and consistency, as well as methods of structural and functional analysis, the comparative method, critical analysis, systems analysis, and an intersectional approach to examining multiple forms of discrimination.
The scientific novelty lies in the comprehensive analysis of how legislative acts – including the Federal Law on Compulsory Education, the Decree on Schooling, and the Law on the Prohibition of the Veil – shaped the institutional foundations of gender equality in Kosovo. The study also reveals the contradictions between the formal implementation of equality and the persistence of regional and ethnic imbalances, reflecting the limits of socialist modernization in a multi-ethnic context.
Conclusions. It is established that the evolution of the legal provision of women’s education took place through three key legislative acts: the Federal Law on compulsory education, the Decree on Schooling, and the Law on the Prohibition of the Veil, which created the legal basis for formal gender equality; but their practical implementation revealed substantial regional and ethnic imbalances.
Literacy programmes have shown impressive quantitative results – girls’ primary education completion rates increased from 10-15% to 85% during the study period, and about 90,000 Albanian girls and women have completed specialised courses; but regional differences between urban (80-90% academic performance) and rural areas (30-40% academic performance) have remained critically high.
The specifics of the model of ‘emancipation from above’ are identified, which was characterised by the instrumentalisation of women’s liberation to legitimise the socialist regime and by the limited agency of women themselves in the process of emancipation. The intersectional nature of discrimination against Albanian women as members of a gender, ethnic, and regional minority created a unique configuration of social exclusion that required specific approaches to overcoming multiple forms of marginalisation.
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