Gender Relations in Instrumental Folk Music in Slovenia

Abstract

Gender studies are an important part of ethnomusicological research, but in Slovenia, not many studies or discussions have been dedicated to this topic. The position of a woman in the second half of the 20th century in Slovenia is, on the one hand, strongly connected to the socialist social system and its policy of equality, but, on the other, the article also reveals control mechanisms that maintained hierarchical positions between genders. Several cases of women public instrumental practices are described, with a focus on a narrative of a woman bell chimer through which the complexity of gender relationships in bell chiming is discovered and explained.