engleski

Values in Transition: The Continued Modernization of Women in Croatia after Socialism

The paper examines the changes in values, attitudes and practices of women in Croatia in the period of postsocialist transition. Taking into account empirical evidence extending from mid-1980s to the present day, in this particular case it calls into question the “retraditionalization thesis”, prominent in the social science accounts of the social and cultural trends in Central and East European countries in the last twenty five years. Namely, a comparative study of the results of different surveys of values in Croatia extending between “late socialism” and “mature transition” has shown that “retraditionalization” affected indeed the dimensions associated with political identity (“national exclusivism” and “intensity of religiosity”) but not that of “gender conservatism” (Sekulić, 2012). Sekulić’s analysis has actually revealed that “gender conservatism” was the most accepted of the three analyzed value orientations in late socialism and the least accepted one in 2010, i.e. as the transition period approached its completion. In other words, according to this author, “gender conservatism” “constantly and permanently decrease[d]” in the postsocialist period. The paper departs from the quoted Sekulić’s insight, and elaborates on it by means of discussion of primary data from the surveys of women’s values, attitudes and practices carried out in 1999 and 2005. This analysis confirms that, when women are at stake, the process of modernization of the Croatian society continued uninterruptedly in the transitional period, in spite of retraditionalization pressures. However, the analysis also shows that this modernization is atypical, in the sense that in the case of Croatian women traditional and even premodern values and attitudes coexist side by side with modern and postmodern ones. This is interpreted as an outcome of a non-linear modernization and a partial acquisition of values it entails (Tomić-Koludrović, Petrić and Zdravković, 2014), as well as with the specificities of the Yugoslav, “third way” version of socialism, which Croatian society was a part of between 1945 and 1990.

women ; values ; postsocialism ; Croatia ; modernization

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