Something unexpected has appeared in Zagreb - Women's Infoteka, a women's information and documentation centre. Women's Infoteka was founded and registered in December 1992, with regular activities beginning in March 1993.
The feminist/women's movement in former Yugoslavia was one of the most developed within Eastern European countries. In the mid-'70s in Zagreb the first (neo)feminist group Woman and Society held lectures, discussions and workshops which opened a new approach to women's issues. Several women's groups were created as a result which tackled and exposed to the public the layers of women's reality which were previously invisible.
The group Tresnjevka (active in the '80s) started the SOS telephone for women and children victims of violence and was the first to speak out in public about domestic violence. In 1989, SOS telephone branched out to form Women's Aid Now which established - by squatting in a city-owned apartment - the first refuge for abused women in this region. Today the refuge is run by a separate group of women - Autonomous Women's House.
Women's groups in Croatia, including the Lila Initiative, the feminist group and magazine Kareta, the Independent Alliance of Women, the female part of LIGMA, Zagreb Women's Lobby, and the Centre for Women War Victims, have and continue to create herstory in this part of the world.
On the other hand, since the beginning of war in Croatia in 1991, feminism has undergone a fundamental crisis of identity due partially to the war but also to the difficulties inherent to feminism. In the current moment, a time of neither war nor peace, some of the rights achieved by women are jeopardised.
The lack of democratic principles in the construction of the state and society is most radically manifested through the restriction of independent media, increased conservatism, revival of patriarchal values (numerous attempts to restrict the right to abortion being the most obvious examples), with the war situation often used as justification.
Repercussions on the economic and social status of women are enormous. We are the first to be affected by rising unemployment and we are forced out of the public labour sphere by a policy which is reinforced by ideological pressures demanding women to increase the national birth rate.
The race toward a free market economy has been applied through sex discrimination and the effects, which have been escalated by the war, have fallen most heavily on women: women have fewer job retraining opportunities than men, we feel the effects of the drastic reduction in affordable day care services, and the current economic crisis pushes many women to the edge of existence.
In such a social context attempts are made to restrict woman to her three famous functions - kitchen, kids, church. The setting up of a women's information and documentation centre imposed itself as necessary to reverse the deconstruction process we are witnessing today, and to give incentive to open new possibilities and approaches to the women's movement in Croatia.
The basic function of Women's Infoteka is to make women visible and present. Women's Infoteka collects data and documentation on the development of the women's movement, on women's groups and organisations which are active today, as well as women's/feminist research in various fields. Our goal is to make the official figures which are usually called "grey" (women are invisible) "bright red": this includes statistical data on the social status and needs of women, on women's health care (health education, contraception, abortions) and on violence against women (physical and psychological violence in/out of family, rape in/out of family, prostitution).
We initiate and support women's projects, provide women's groups and activists with information and assistance in organising campaigns, and sponsor and support research on women by women. We also have plans to translate feminist books and to publish works of domestic authors on women's issues. We hope that Women's Infoteka will become a place for women's gathering and coming closer to each other, a place to exchange experience and knowledge. We also hope Women's Infoteka will not be alone - let it be just one among many public spaces created by women. The time has come![Abridged from Kruh i Ruze (Bread and Roses), via Pegasus.]