Krassimira Daskalova

The women's movement in Bulgaria in a life story

Abstract This article is a first attempt to research the activity of Dimitrana Ivanova, one of the most prominent Bulgarian feminists and, for almost two decades, chairwoman of the major feminist organisation in the country, the Bulgarian Womens Union (founded in 1901). It explores the social conditions of her life and provides a perspective for the understanding of gender relations in modern Bulgarian history. The article highlights the key issues that were addressed by the womens movement in Bulgaria as well as the international context in which Bulgarian feminism was situated.

Fani Popova¿Mutafova

The article explores the life and professional activities of Fanny Popova–Mutafova – the most prominent of the few writers of historical fiction in Bulgaria and one of the most prolific and published Bulgarian women authors of the interwar period. Her life spanned two epochs – the ‘bourgeois’ epoch prior to World War II, and that of the communist regime. While she was celebrated as one of the best and most productive writers and intellectuals in Bulgaria before 1944, the communist regime pronounced her ‘a people’s enemy’, held her responsible for ‘Great–Bulgarian chauvinism and fascism’, banned and destroyed her books and ruined her life. The story of her life is embedded in several decades of Bulgarian intellectual life and, besides giving an idea of a woman writer’s existence there at that time, reveals wider sociopolitical and ideological contexts in which various discourses affecting Bulgarian women were articulated.

Establishing a women's history course on women in Bulgarian society, 1840-1940, at Sofia university

Abstract This article outlines the content of the first Womens history course established in Bulgaria, at Sofia University, in 1999. The course focuses on Bulgarian women over the period from 1840 to 1940 and includes discussion of statistical data about Womens lives, the family, education and employment, as well as Womens subjectivities and cultural identities. Attention is also given to the analysis of powerful discourses about Womens role in society and the challenge of the Womens movement to these ideas. Wherever possible, comparative material from other Balkan societies and Western Europe is explored, as well as gender differences between men and women