After World War II, women in Yugoslavia gained active and passive voting rights. Subsequently, they acquired rights related to property ownership, maternity and pregnancy leave, as well as the right to abortion and family planning. Additionally, they secured rights concerning family and children, such as mandatory literacy, the availability of nurseries and kindergartens, eight years of compulsory primary education, and free further vocational training. Health and pension insurance were also part of the rights granted.
In the subsequent stages of the development of women’s movements in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), after the dissolution of the Women’s Antifascist Front (AFŽ) and its transformation into the Women’s Association, there was a shift from the image of the militant and state-building woman to that of the homemaker and mother. This led to the merging of International Women’s Day and Mother’s Day, symbolized in collective memory by school assignments like making greeting cards for mothers. From that time, the slogan “Proletarians of all countries, who’s doing your laundry?” emerged from the significant historical feminist conference “Comrade Woman,” held at the Student Cultural Center (SKC) in 1978, commemorating 30 years of feminist struggle.
