ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I analyse the ways Serbian, Bosniak and Albanian women politicians in Serbia and Kosovo use symbols, myths, and rituals in their everyday work. I have found that women politicians have deep emotional attachment to primordial, anachronic and ethnic elements of their collectives. For some women, their ethnie symbols, myths, and rituals represent them and their collectives in their absence. They are an important part of their personal and their ethnies consciousness, that reflect their soul and spiritual vertical of their collectives. However, ethnic primacy in understanding the national identity causes a split in some Albanian, but also Bosniak and other minority women in Kosovo/a. They struggle to identify with the emerging Kosovar state civic identity because of its institutionalisation of predominantly ethnic Albanian elements in Kosovo/a. While, for ethnically Albanian women, the struggle does not cause much internal conflict because they see Kosovar civic and Albanian ethnic identity as inseparable, but for other minority women from Kosovo/a, the situation is different. I conclude that women politicians participate in maintaining of the ethnic core doctrine of nationalism and flagging of the ethnic homeland daily.
