To Forge a More Just and Happier Life

“To Forge a More Just and Happier Life”: Insights from the History of Feminism and Women’s Rights in East Central Europe
Speaking in 1911 at a gathering of the Dock Workers’ Union in Romania, socialist activist Ecaterina Arbore identified the socialist and women’s movements as the two forces that had been fighting worldwide for decades “to forge a more just and happier life” for all people. Arbore spoke against exploitative labor, the patriarchal family, unequal pay and unequal rights. More than a century later, the fight continues - now in the context of deepening economic inequalities, backlash against claims to social justice, and renewed extremism. The rich history of feminism and women’s rights discourses in East Central Europe can be a resource not just for understanding the development of thinking about the intertwining of economic, social, and gender inequalities over the long 20th century, but also for carrying the work of emancipation further.
In this event marking the publication of Texts and Contexts from the History of Feminism and Women’s Rights: East Central Europe, Second Half of the Twentieth Century (CEU Press, 2024), the editors—Zsófia Lóránd, Adela Hîncu, Jovana Mihajlović Trbovc, Katarzyna Stańczak-Wiślicz—will present the project of recovering, contextualizing, and making accessible over one hundred sources that speak to the issues of women’s emancipation, economic inequality, war, violence against women, reproductive rights, or sexuality, among others. Together with authors Isidora Grubački and Manca G. Renko we will discuss how the volume came together, the process of writing biographies and contextualizations for the sources, and how to carry further the insights from a variety of sources (from speeches, articles, official documents, art, or literature) into research, teaching, and activism.