Women in the partisans. The Yugoslav National Liberation Movement claimed 6,000,000 civilian supporters; its two million women formed the Antifascist Front of Women (AFŽ), in which the revolutionary coexisted with the traditional. The AFŽ managed schools, hospitals and even local governments.
About 100,000 women served with 600,000 men in Tito’s Yugoslav National Liberation Army. It stressed its dedication to women’s rights and gender equality and used the imagery of traditional folklore heroines to attract and legitimize the partizanka. After the war women were relegated to traditional gender roles, but Yugoslavia is unique as its historians paid extensive attention to women’s roles in the resistance, until the country broke up in the 1990s.
