Working Class Women’s Activism in Socialist Yugoslavia: An Exploration of Archives from Varaždin, Croatia

Abstract The authors address working class women’s activism in socialist Yugoslavia, focusing on archives produced at both factory and municipal levels by local društva žena or aktivi žena (women’s societies/sections) in the industrial town of Varaždin, Croatia. Their critical exploration of archival sources produced between the mid-1950s and the late 1980s has enabled the authors to challenge dominant interpretations of women’s activism during state socialism, particularly the idea that no relevant activism existed after the dissolution of the Antifascist Women’s Front (AFŽ) in 1953. To counter that view the authors highlight the continuities between the AFŽ and subsequent women’s organizations, the Union of Women’s Societies (SŽD) and the Conference for the Social Activity of Women (KDAŽ), in terms both of discursive narratives and of biographical trajectories. They argue that local archival collections provide new and differentiated insights into past gender and labour conflicts and into working class women’s activism.