Month: March 2015

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International Women’s Day in the Balkans: Antonio Mihajlov

Antonio Mihajlov is President of the Association for the critical approach to gender and sexuality – Subversive Front in Skopje and a Committee member of the National network against homophobia and transphobia.

 

“Women MPs in the Macedonian Parliament vote on misogynistic legislation changes imposed by men. Young girls glorify marriage as the only feasible and possible way for a woman to realize her potential, and most miserably, mothers teach their sons and daughters to obey underneath the powerful sword of patriarchy.”

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International Women’s Day in the Balkans: Ana Vilenica

Ana Vilenica is a researcher, theorist and an activist. She is the editor of the book Becoming a Mother in Neoliberal Capitalism, co-editor of the book On the Ruins of the Creative City and the chief editor of uz)bu))na))) journal for art, politics, theory and activism. She regularly publishes texts on social issues in anthologies, journals and portals.

“The austerity measures in Serbia have a strong gender dimension. Their implementation is increasing gender segregation of labor, mental and physical insecurity of women, puts pressure on women’s reproductive decisions and contributes to the retraditionalisation of gender roles in order to preserve the ethno-capitalist order.”

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International Women’s Day in the Balkans: Tijana Okić

Tijana Okić is a philosopher and one of the founders of the Sarajevo Plenum. She teaches at the University of Sarajevo and translates from English,French and Italian.

“Feminism has been reduced to gender mainstreaming policies conducted either by state bodies or by the ocean of NGO’s, which depoliticize not only feminism, but also have negative longterm effects on women’s lives and the process of emancipation in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

 

What does the 8th of March mean in Bosnia and Herzegovina?

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International Women’s Day in the Balkans: Nita Luci

Nita Luci holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor. She heads the University Program for Gender Studies and Research and teaches at the departments of Anthropology, Sociology, and Contemporary Art at the University of Prishtina. Nita co-founded the independent feminist organization Alter Habitus – Institute for Studies in Society and Culture, which has focused on gender perspectives to post-war collective memory in Kosovo.

“The culturalist explanations about Kosovo, that dominated in Serbia before the war, i.e.

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International Women’s Day in the Balkans: Jana Tsoneva

Jana Tsoneva is a PhD student in Sociology and Social anthropology at CEU, Budapest. She researches the latest anti-government mobilizations in Bulgaria and is interested in theories of populism, ideology and civil society.

“The new textile factories, which fuel Bulgaria’s exports to Western Europe offer local women primitive working conditions and a pay that is often delayed and withheld. This precarious work environment is rife with industrial accidents. In the most notorious case, two women died of exhaustion on the shop floor of a textile factory ironically called ‘Euroshoes’.

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The systematic decline of women’s rights in Macedonia in recent years

'My body, my choice'

This publication has been made in cooperation with the Serbo-Croatian political web portal Bilten.Org. A version of this piece was also published on the author’s website, Amateuress.

In recent years Macedonia has undergone a very subtle, yet dreadfully pervasive deterioration of the situation with womens’ rights. After an initial surge of promise with the introduction of gender quotas for political parties in 2006 and the adoption of the Law on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men, which, paired with the history of equal treatment from the previous system, led to even higher percentages in female representation in certain areas compared to the EU average, things started moving downwards steadily, without sufficient public resistance.

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Barcelona en Comú: the city as horizon for radical democracy

People signing the Guanyem manifesto. Source: Guerrilla Translation

Barcelona en Comú, the municipal movement formerly known as Guanyem, has opened up a new set of intertwining horizons for radical democracy in the city.

With all eyes on Syriza, Podemos and the Troika, the focus of attention among the left these days is the possibility to reclaim democracy at the state — and, inshallah, at the supranational — level. Yet at the same time, somewhat less visibly, there is a new cycle of struggles for democratic governance unfolding at the level of the city.

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Putin’s enemies within

This piece, by Ben Neal, was originally published on the British socialist website, Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century.

At least 50,000 people marched in Moscow last Sunday in memory of the slain liberal opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, who was shot dead two days previously on a bridge just steps away from the Kremlin. The assassin is currently unknown.

The march replaced the planned “anti-crisis” opposition march, which was due to take place on the same day but in an out of the way suburb of Moscow.  

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Hungary’s Brokerage Crisis: How Far Will It Reach

Source: FN24

Note from the LeftEast editors: This text was originally published on the authors’s blog Global Social Change, dedicated to his book The European Union and Global Social Change: A Critical Geopolitical-Economic Analysis, Routledge 2009 , and is reprinted on Lefteast with the kind permission of the author.

Hungary’s National Bank, in its capacity as financial regulator, has recently suspended a Hungarian brokerage firm by the name “Buda-Cash” for major irregularities. The claim is that the infractions unfolded over a period of more than ten years, and the estimate of the magnitude given by the regulator exceeds HUF 100 billion (approximately USD 371 million at the time of the announcement).

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A socialist case for Ukraine

Source: Socialist review

On the anniversary of the fall of Ukrainian President Yanukovych, which marked the onset of the current conflict, Rob Ferguson and Tomas Tengely-Evans interview Volodymyr Ishchenko in Kiev. Originally published at Socialist Review.

RF: Volodymyr, there is currently a crisis over the ceasefire in the east and the retreat from Debaltseve. What is your judgement of the crisis in the east of Ukraine? It depends how the Ukrainian state perceives the takeover of Debaltseve. We don’t know exactly what happened in Minsk and whether it was decided that Debaltseve would go to the separatists, or why the Ukrainian government did not agree to take its soldiers out of Debaltseve immediately.