Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Psychosocial Notebook, Volume 2, October 2001
outside and they remained here, and finally boys understood
that they are not gods.
Actually, statistical surveys documenting the proportions of men and
women aged 20 to 49 still register an imbalance, probably due to the number
of young men killed during the war. Accordingly, there would be 118
women for every 100 men. 18 This feeling of greater equality might therefore
indicate a perception that gender relations have changed, realigned
along new boundaries to reflect the new sense of independence that young
women are beginning to experience.
These changing gender relations also affect the womens’ perceptions of
their own roles within the community. When Mimoza, Blerta and Lindita
spoke of the future, they did not exclude the possibility of marrying a foreigner,
something that could likely happen should they study abroad or,
more likely, given the crowds of international workers currently in
Kosovo. The open-mindedness expressed by the three friends might be
due to the fact that their interviewers were foreign women, and thus representative
of a society that values a completely different model of feminity.
On the other hand, their tolerance also toys with the traditionally valued
role of women as conservative guardians of custom and culture. A
Kosovar woman’s marriage with a foreign man is usually proscribed by
tradition. Further, many of the interviewees pointed out that while it is rare
for a Kosovar-Albanian male to marry outside the community, this would
not present a particular problem. If a Kosovar-Albanian woman were to
marry a foreigner, however, “Everybody says that is not good”.
Hasime, who is almost fifty, lives in Mitrovica and works at a womens’
centre set up by an Italian NGO, identified this custom as one of the major
cultural differences between Kosovar Albanians and Serbs. In her narrative,
the practice of ensuring that Kosovar Albanian women marry within
their ethnicity, (a custom which is actually widespread over the
Mediterranean area), was proudly presented as evidence of a strong collective
identity amongst Albanians, a characteristic presumably missing in
the Serbian community. 19 “We have our tradition, they don’t have anything.
They don’t care. For example women don’t marry someone who is
not Albanian. They do it.”
To Nazife and Leonora, however, the prohibition for a woman to marry a
foreigner was a “localism”, of which they predicted a short duration:
Nazife: I think that also here it will pass, it has just started to pass…
At the moment this kind of rule is still in power in Kosova.
But day by day it is going to disappear.
Question: Do you think this is good or bad?
Leonora: I don’t know.
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