The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

of the conflicts have proven to be incapable of peaceful resolution, by
supporting the particularly prevailing ethno-nationalistic tendencies. An
examination of the development of the ideological training of the population
for war reveals a number of distinct phases of the country’s development:
� The discrimination and the growing racism against the Albanian
and Roma population groups were an indicator of the incapability
of Yugoslav societies to realize the legally rooted equality and participation
of various population groups, apparent long before the outbreak
of hostilities between other groups.
� Long past historical dates, such as the Battle of Kosovo Field, were
recalled and documented in the media, and thus linked to current
patterns of interpretation.
� Economic problems were no longer seen as common problems,
but rather in the context of the strong and the weak: The strong no
longer wanted to share with the weak; at the same time, the weak
suffered from discrimination justified by their supposed incompetence.
� Neighbours become enemies: From a certain point on, enmity began
to no longer be restricted to the public realm, far removed from the
real relationships between people, but was rather lived at the individual
level.
� The new patterns of interpretation in the new national identities
demanded that one defend oneself against one’s respective enemy.
No one saw himself as the aggressor, but rather as the defender of
his own well understood national interests.
� No party to the war could do without legitimating ideological contexts.
Fighting for justice for one’s own cause was part of the self-legitimation
of war propaganda.
The fact that women were well integrated in Yugoslav society did not
contribute to the peace capability of Yugoslavia’s component societies.
Yet women’s self-help groups attempted to make European and Yugos-
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