Women in the FRY

The Belgrade office of Unicef commissioned a team of experts to conduct a sociological study on the status of women in the nation. The total number of women who participated in the study numbered 3200, ranging between the ages of 20 and 55, and including their families. They even managed to gather data on Albanian women in Kosovo. The latter is a surprise, since the Albanian population in Kosovo has been boycotting every census made by either Serbia or Yugoslavia since 1991. The team of experts claims that no similar study had been conducted throughout this period.

The main conclusion which they managed to reach was that, despite a deep several-year-long economic crisis, social pressures, and an impoverished lifestyle, the Yugoslav woman seems to be holding up. She manages to more or less look after her family, to take care of the children, the household, and to work for miserable pay. She seems to find time for herself, regardless of her responsibility for her children or the state of her marriage, although the amount of time she has for this seems to be in decline. She has reduced time for reading books, going to the movies, restaurants, theaters, and she visits the hairdresser less frequently. She goes to the doctor only when it’s necessary. Her main hobby is slaving over the house. She is not worried about having her identity and place in society threatened, and in 80% of the cases, she is happily married. Her main responsibility is to raising children.

Life With Regard to the Topic at Hand

Of the 2,380,000 women throughout Yugoslavia between the ages of 20 and 55, the majority live in urban environments, and of those, 69.9% are married, and have children. The largest block in the study, 39.5%, have two children, 20% have one, and 24% have none. The number of Yugoslav women with three children is around 5%, and half as many have five children.

The greatest number of women having only one child can be found in vojvodina, whereas in central Serbia, the two-child family seems to prevail. Three or more children can be found almost exclusively in Montenegro and Kosovo. And while the mortality rate has long surpassed the birthrate in vojvodina and central Serbia, the situation in Kosovo is different.

Yugoslav women, on the average, get married and have children much later in life than in previous years. Half the women in the study between the ages of 20 and 30 had not yet given birth. From an educational and socioeconomic standpoint, the greatest number of women seem to finish secondary school (48.9%). More than a fifth (21.3%) have only primary education or have dropped out, and 22.6% graduate from a university or a technical school.

Regionally, the most educated women are in Belgrade, where 39.6% have college degrees. The second in suit is Montenegro with 25.6%, and central Serbia with 24%. The worst levels of education are clearly in Kosovo, where 48.9% of the women have either no education or simply primary schooling. The experts attribute the phenomenon to strong traditionalist values and economic underdevelopment.

The situation does show some indication of improvement. Among women between the ages of 20 and 25, more than 71.5% have either secondary or college education. Their social status, lifestyle, and role in the family are significantly different from that of other women involved in the study.

Nevertheless, a large number of women live at a subsistence level and depend on the support of others. More than 43% are students, unemployed, housewives, or other kinds of financial dependents. The number of housewives is at 24%, while in Kosovo alone, that number is as high as 55.3%. Only 2.1% of employed women have managerial positions, and 5.8% work in their field of expertise.

Who is Leaving School

Almost 70% of women decided on their degree of education. While as many as 77% of women in Vojvodina decided to terminate their education, the number in Kosovo is at 47.4%, and 61.6% in Montenegro. By far the most important reasons were finances, which contributed to 55.5% of women in Vojvodina to end their education. In Kosovo, 60.6% left school prematurely, the main reasons being either marriage or pregnancy.

Life in the Households

They live in relatively satisfactory conditions: the average apartment is 85 square meters, the average living space per family member is 18 square meters, 92.7% have indoor running water, and 93.4% have indoor bathrooms. The worst figures again appear in Kosovo, where only 50% of the houses and apartments have indoor running water, 67.4% have indoor bathrooms, and 14.6% have phones. Of all women surveyed, 60% stated that for their family to meet all their needs, their household income would have to be two to four times its present levels. More than 17% live in households with a monthly income of less than 990 dinars. That number in Kosovo is at 35%. In the households which claim to have a “decent” income, eighty to one hundred percent of all the family needs are met.

A large percentage of women (80%) do not have full time jobs. There is less and less help from family members, either in the country or from abroad. Only 10% receive some kind of assistance from relatives living abroad. The level of assistance ranges between 201 and 500 DM.

A significant contribution from relatives at home appears to be food, given that 9.2% of the women surveyed claim to receive it. In September of 1997, almost 40% of the households spent 60% of their income on food. All figures warn of a further impoverishment of the general population.

The Allocation of Poverty

Last September, 33.9% of households spent 60% of their income on food. Standard indicators label families which spend more than half their income on food as having a low living standard . For house or apartment maintenance, 44.7% use 20 to 40 percent of their income. A third uses a mere 20% of their earnings for expenses of their children.
For other needs: the greatest funds are set aside for pharmaceuticals (451 dinars) and doctor's expenses (357 dinars), for repairmen (296 dinars for the house, and 392 dinars for others) For any further education of the kids, only 156 dinars are spent. In the past years, more than 10 percent of the GDP was spent on health expenses, amounting to something close to 1.7 billion dollars, despite the fact that the state provides for free medical care. And while Montenegro sets the most funds aside for school (508 dinars), the boycott of state health institutions in Kosovo raises their medical expenses  to 982 dinars for prescriptions and 571 dinars for doctor’s expenses.

A Woman's Daily Schedule

The greatest amount of time is spent either in her role as a worker or a housewife (more than eight hours) 2.3 hours are spent on the children, and 1.7 hours on rest, recreation, and watching television. Less than an hour is spent on reading, personal hygiene and cosmetics. A third of the women receive no help in their household chores. This is the case with 44.4% of women in Montenegro, and central Serbia without Belgrade (37.3%). A third of the women receive help from every member in the household with house chores (the case in Vojvodina). Only 1.5% have a maid from time to time, while 0.5% have one regularly.

Most household tasks are routine for women. 57.9% of the women regularly cook, 16.8% do so from time to time and 5% don’t plan on it. As many as 80.3% of women often plan on cleaning up the apartment, and 62.7% budget time for children. If a woman has only one child, 3.5 hours are spent on child care. Women with no children typically have more time for themselves, cultural activities, and personal hygiene.

In the workplace, the majority feel equal to their male coworkers in terms of earnings and work hours, and many feel advantaged on issues like vacations and time off for illness. They are least satisfied with advancement, which is consistent with the low figure of women in managerial positions.

57.1% of the women said that they wouldn’t work if they didn’t have to, which is consistent with the long economic crisis, long hours, and low wages. While 35.9% are satisfied with their job, but still wouldn’t work if they didn’t have to, 21.3% don’t like their present job. Kosovo is again, a completely different story. The majority of the women like their jobs, and would work even if they didn’t have to. Such a position can only be explained by treatment from a traditional patriarchal family at home.

Mom, Dad, and the Kids

In 56.8% of the cases, mothers mainly take care of the children. Only in 2.2% of the cases is the father the chief caretaker. In 22.5% of the households, children are left alone to look after themselves. Daily child care is provided in only in 5.9% of the cases. Grandparents are involved in the care of 11.9% of the children. Only a small number (0.6%) pays for a baby-sitter. It is interesting to note that 22% of women in Kosovo consider taking care of children to be a big problem. In this region, 76.5% of the women perform this duty. Women’s economic activity is particularly low, where women are principally housewives. Only in 6.3% of the cases, do children stay home alone.

The statistics do show that something is changing in the Balkans: despite a strong family organization of responsibilities where the mother is solely responsible for the children (mainly in Kosovo), roughly two thirds of the families have father participation as well.

 Who Cares for the Children, and Who Makes the Decisions

In 36.9% of the cases, mothers take care of the children, and the father only in 1.6% of the cases. The responsibility falls on both in 66.75 percent of the cases. These are average time periods on duties spent by both parents:

Mother Father

Food and clothing  40.3 min 5.5 min
Bathing and putting children to sleep 27.4 min 4.9 min
Play time   40.3 min 23.6 min
Reading to the children  17.9 min 8.1 min
Talking and socializing  99.0 min 64.1 min
Help with homework  32.6 min 19.6 min
 
Children in Yugoslavia nevertheless have a great deal of attention spent on them. The father spends approximately half the time that the mother spends with her children, and feeding, changing, and bathing the children seems to be a responsibility which exclusively belongs to the mother. The average time spent by the father on such duties is 10 minutes, while the mother needs 67.7 minutes of her time. The care seems to be relatively equally spread for both parents, but the workload is on the mother.
The greatest worry parents have is for the future of their children. This is confirmed by 81.1% of mothers, and in Kosovo, as many as 91.4%. Almost 80% of the women worry about their child’s health, followed by nutrition and education for the children.

The role of children seems to be to help their mother at times. It is claimed by 63.5% of women that their children help them when they go shopping, 57.25 use their children’s help around the house. A quarter receive help from their children while cooking and taking care of their younger siblings. Almost a fifth claim that children perform tasks which earn them money. The frequency of cases are highest in Belgrade at 21.1%. Tradition continues, where in Montenegro and Kosovo, only half as many children have chores of any kind.