ABSTRACT
Prior to the First World War, women activists in Southeastern Europe did not regard themselves as the British-style suffragettes of the region. At the international women’s congress in 1913, the Serbian representative from Austria-Hungary disregarded the so-called “militant suffragettes” in favor of the home and family which were said to be central to “feminism” in non-Western societies in Europe. Women needed to fight for their rights “slowly, spontaneously, in line with the time and culture,” and not focusing exclusively on the right to vote. Women’s movements in Southeastern Europe included women of diverse ideological standpoints, from the radical left to the radical right. In the years following the First World War, the division between the women’s movements in the countries that had already implemented women’s suffrage and those where protracted debates on the issue gained momentum at the end of the war was more visible than ever.
