Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.22586/csp.v58i1.38396
Constructing the Muslim Woman in Socialist Bosnia and Herzegovina: The Case of Novo doba (1945–1946)
Nehrudin Rebihić
; Department of Literatures of the Peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Sarajevo, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
*
Edina Nikšić Rebihić
; Department of Pedagogy, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Sarajevo, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
*
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
This article examines the representation of Muslim women in early socialist Bosnia and Herzegovina through a discursive analysis of Novo doba, the official newspaper of the Main Board of Muslims, published between 1945 and 1946. It explores how the newspaper constructed the figure of the “new woman” and how these representations reflected the ideological priorities of the emerging socialist state in the immediate post-war period.
The analysis is based on twenty-eight issues of Novo doba and combines hermeneutic reading with discourse analysis, supported by content, semantic, and socio-functional interpretation. Particular attention is paid to the ideological narratives, rhetorical strategies, and recurring topoi through which the newspaper promoted socialist values, legitimised the legacy of the National Liberation Struggle, and encouraged the integration of Muslim women into the political, economic, and cultural life of socialist Yugoslavia.
The findings demonstrate that Novo doba consistently portrayed women's emancipation as an essential component of socialist modernisation. Education, paid employment, political participation, and public engagement were presented as the principal means of overcoming traditional social and cultural constraints. At the same time, however, the newspaper largely represented Muslim women as recipients of emancipatory policies rather than as autonomous historical actors. Their participation in socialist society was framed within the ideological boundaries of communism and the broader project of “brotherhood and unity.” The newspaper traced an idealised trajectory of female citizenship, presenting Muslim women successively as partisan heroines, productive workers, devoted mothers, and educators of future socialist generations.
By analysing Novo doba as a historical source, this article contributes to the study of gender, ideology, and nation-building in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. It demonstrates how communist cultural policy sought simultaneously to modernise gender relations and to integrate the Muslim population into the socialist political order, while revealing the tensions between the official discourse of women's emancipation and the limited agency attributed to women within that discourse.
Keywords
Bosnia and Herzegovina; Novo doba; Muslim women; women's emancipation; socialism; communist ideology; National Liberation Struggle
Hrčak ID:
350881
URI
Publication date:
10.9.2026.
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