ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I present the ways women politicians navigate gender and national identity in relation to the democratisation processes. In the first part, I analyse how they utilised the space opened for them with the process of democratisation. I conclude that democratisation created space for women’s political participation, but it did not automatically erase the patriarchal and nationalist matrix upon which societies in Serbia and Kosovo/a function. In the second part of the chapter, I analyse the obstacles women have to overcome in order to collaborate with other women that I call the “rings around sisterhood”. I reveal two kinds of obstacles. The first is the party and the second, the ethnie soldiership. I conclude that both Serbia and Kosovo/a struggle with the implementation of democratisation processes and the establishment of democratic institutions. This significantly impacts the ways women politicians behave in the public space, the obstacles ,and the “patriarchal bargains” they make in order to stay in politics. In the last part of the chapter, I reveal some survival strategies women politicians applied when attempting to navigate the hybrid democratisation process with its faulty institutions.
