The History of Women’s Work in the Slovene context in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

The core of the research project is represented by the analysis of women's labor at the conceptual intersection of labor history, women's history and gender studies. The research team will analyze women's work in the context of social and cultural history from the mid-19th to the end of the 20th century. Spatially, the research will be limited to the geographical area of today's Slovenia, taking into account its multiculturalism (border and urban areas). Temporally, the research project seeks focus on the mid-longue durée. This spatial-temporal point of observation allows for a comparative study of the women's labor market both in peacetime and wartime, in different political-economic systems and political-administrative frameworks (the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes/Yugoslavia, occupation regimes, Allied Military Administration, Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia and independent Slovenia). Particular attention will be given to the different social aspects of continuities and discontinuities in the formation of the labor market for women, especially during institutional and political transitions that coincided with disruptive cultural and ideological changes. The central research question is that of how the women's labor market was shaped in a society in which the traditional order was on the decline and modernization gradually gained ground. We will examine to what extent and in what ways women's work was an integral part of modernization, and to what extent it allowed for the maintenance of traditional social patterns in the family environment. How did the wars transform the market for women's work and how did women as workers respond to the economic and social upheavals? Another question posed is how the transitions from a market economy to a planned economy (and vice versa) affected women's labor and what role the struggle for women's emancipation and the attainment of women's equality played in women's entry into professional spheres traditionally reserved for men. How did the relations between women's reproductive, productive and representative roles resonate with regard to women's work? What factors influence women's work and employment? What triggers transitions between economic sectors, how are women's professional environments are shaped, to what extent is women's labor linked to the unionization and politicization of women, and to what extent does labor promote the involvement of women workers in the struggle for women's emancipation and the attainment of women's equality? Women's ways of working and not working mirror social change and changing economic, environmental and ideological laws and intimate beliefs, and it is of crucial importance for the project to look at women's labor from different perspectives. An additional focus is put on women farmers (the primary sector), industrial workers (the secondary sector), traders (the tertiary sector), teachers and medical workers (the quaternary sector). Also included are professions that are more difficult to place in these sectors, but are highly important for understanding women's emancipation processes in the field of labor (intellectuals and politicians). The project will result in the following: two professional meetings (workshops), one international conference, four original scientific articles, an exhibition and one monographic publication.