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The paper investigates Ioannes Zonaras’ Epitome Historiarum, a Byzantine XII-century chronicle for normative conceptions of gender in Byzantium. The article explores two gender-appropriate women’s roles in Byzantine society. It focuses on the behaviors, activities, and attributes attached to and prescribed for the widows and mothers to reiterate the patriarchal social structures. Also, this research intends to uncover the interplay between text and language through crucial gender signifiers, which influenced the balance of social and political power in the Medieval Roman Empire. Тему истраживања представљају нормативни концепти рода у Хроници Јована Зонаре из 12. века. Рад испитује две родно одговарајуће женске улоге у Византијском друштву, фокусирајући се на понашања, активности и атрибуте који су били везивани и очекивани за мајке и удовице, а све у циљу реитерације патријархалне друштвене структуре. Такође, овај рад има за циљ да разоткрије динамику између текста и језика кроз главне родне означитеље, који су утицали на равнотежу друштвене и политичке моћи у средњовековном римском друштву.

This paper attempts to answer the question as to whether the right to "life and death" of a woman (ius vitae ac necis) at the hands of male family members or partners is indeed a timeless category. Is it possible that in Serbia of the 21st century there is still a struggle to promote the "right to life" of women to the level of "basic human rights"? What contributed to the fact that the concept of innate human dignity based on "human rights", which dates back from the feudal social order, has not as yet fully come to life in Serbia as far as women are concerned. What social circumstances contributed to the Roman ius vitae ac necis to outlive centuries and take root especially in Serbia, only under a different name - that of femicide? This notion has been defined as "gender based murder of women, girls, and babies of female sex by persons of the male sex". The murderers in cases of femicide include partners (ex / current, spouses or extramarital), family members or relatives: father, father-in-law, son, son-in-law, etc. Both expert and general public wander whether enforcing more stringent norms by authorities or acting towards changing the consciousness of the abusers or both at the same time, can contribute to eradicating this devastating phenomenon in the 21st century.

Slobodanka Peković, Časopisi po meri dostojanstvenog ženskinja: Ženski časopisi na početku 20. veka (Journals suited for respectable women: Women’s journals from the early twentieth century), Novi Sad-Beograd: Matica srpska, Institut za književnost i umetnost, 2015, 378 pp., RSD 550 (paperback), ISBN 978-86-7946-154-4.Stanislava Barać, Feministička kontrajavnost: Žanr ženskog portreta u srpskoj periodici 1920–1941 (The feminist counterpublic: A genre of woman’s portrait in the Serbian periodical press from 1920 to 1941), Beograd: Institut za književnost i umetnost, 2015, 436 pp., RSD 1100 (paperback), ISBN 978-86-7095-224-9.

Trumpet orchestra "Danijela" belongs to the type of mixed gender orchestra, in which the women is the leader in men surroundings. This orchestra today mainly plays musical arrangements of the popular music, from folk to pop and rock, jazz and Latin. Danijela and her orchestra do not try to copy already existing interpretation, but they are doing their best to give to their music their personal touch in different musical securements, whether formally or in arrangements. Danijela, herself says that there are not essential difference between male and female trumpet orchestra, all, actually, depends on the personal impact. This personal impact is due to the musical education which helped Danijela's orchestra to, especially in harmony and articulation add its style to already existing interpretation. Regarding the performing of tracks which belong, by its style, to the repertoire of southeast Serbia, it is notable, especially in the aspect of articulation and ornaments marching to the style definitions of the trumpet music in West Serbia, which is general equal for all trumpet orchestras in West Serbia, which play the repertoire of the other trumpet places especially southeast Serbia. This ensemble takes part in most different kind of media, which promotes, not only this orchestra, but also the idea of women's leadership, and the fact, also that the women (in this case a young girl) can play the instrument which up to recently, was considered to be only for men. At the very end, we may conclude that today in Serbia there is no more radical difference in gender regarding musical instruments, the epithet 'male' or 'female' is not explicit any more, as it was before when men had priority. Of course, the prejudices still exist, but they are not any more so important and they are easily overcome, especially if performers get good critics from the audience for their work, no matter what instrument is in question.

This article explores discourses of gender, nation, and education in the women’s magazine Žena/The Woman, published in the Serbian language over the period 1911–1914. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Serbian intellectuals believed that education should be designed to help women to become better (Serbian) wives, mothers, and daughters. Owing to the specific historical and political milieu (the process of the formation of a national state and the Balkan Wars), women were seen as both the mothers and the teachers of the nation. Many women, as advocates for women’s rights, demanded the right to a formal education for girls and young women, in the name of national ideals. Thus, for such (proto)feminists, emancipation was a national project.

This paper looks at how the marriage metaphor structures the discourse concerning the relationship between political parties in Serbia. In January 2007, in the first general election to be held in Serbia since its union with Montenegro was dissolved in 2006, no party succeeded in gaining an absolute majority. Eventually, after more than three months of coalition talks, the main pro-reform parties agreed to form a government: the conservative and moderately nationalist right-leaning Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), together with the pro-Western Democratic Party (DS). Compiling a small data collection from the leading Serbian dailies and political weeklies we have tried to track the metaphors through highly argumentative discourse in regard to the formation of political coalitions and their break-up. The main aim of this study is to show how the metaphors may be mapped and used as a vehicle of public discourse for achieving overt or covert political and ideological objectives on the complex political scene in contemporary Serbia. We will also argue that Serbian political discourse is highly gendered, as gender roles, manifested through the assignment of wife and husband roles to political parties, are clearly delineated according to the traditional male-female dichotomy, implying stereotypical traits and patriarchal values characteristic of Serbian culture.

The socialist state run modernization produced low fertility throughout Eastern Europe. Fertility rates started falling soon after the end of the Second World War quickly reaching below replacement levels in many areas. This article examines the state responses to the falling fertility as well as birth control practices that individuals relied on in order to maintain small families. After outlining some common features of population policies under the state socialism, the article focuses on family planning policies in Yugoslavia. It is argued that liberal population policy and uninterrupted liberal abortion legislation in Yugoslavia, resulted, among other reasons, from the communist leadership's commitment to national and gender equality, respectively. It is further argued that gender hierarchy within the marriage and family remained almost untouched by the socialist project of women's emancipation and that these hierarchical gender relations shaped birth control practices in specific ways.