Between Scylla and Charybdis of Women’s Representation in Serbia: Alternative Representational Claims of Elected and Non-elected Representatives

There have never been more women representatives in Serbia: be in the national and local parliaments with the new quota of 40% be it in the new government that has 11 out 24 female ministers, and it is run by an openly lesbian PM. The so-called semi-female government from 2020 has been announced by the president of the Serbian Progressive Party and of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, as an omnipotent and omnipresent representative, years before it has actually been formed: during his presidential campaign in 2017 he insisted that women are more capable and should be more represented in some future government, that women are voting rationally and responsibly, being oriented toward future and prosperity and desiring stability that his party brings about. This promotion of gender equality went hand in hand with anti-gender ideology discourse articulated either by him or his coalition partners and promotion of pro-procreation discourses following the footsteps of Hungarian and Polish populists, with the result that for years Serbia has not succeeded to adopt new Gender Equality Law because of the opposition of conservative and populist movements enforced by the Serbian Orthodox Church. As there is a populist leader with the most female but subservient government and parliament ever, there is a need to analyze the aim of this seemingly contradictory strategy and question what does this exploitation of a few feminist topics such as representation of women do to feminist movement in the country. We argue that this instrumentalist strategy is both femonationalist (in a way defined by Sara Farris) and homonationalist (defined by Jasbir Puar) with a new layer, namely the real enemy is ethnically alike though politically othered leader or member of the opposition, stigmatized as violent, criminal, misogynist, etc. Internationally, gender equality (solid descriptive representation of women and LGBT+) serves as a marker of Europeanness aiming to compensate for a bad state of democracy, lack of political pluralism and violation of human, women’s and LGBT+ rights, while internally it is a sign of progressiveness aiming to counter attack or co-opt opposition parties and civil society. We question the effects of such descriptive representation of women on feminist mobilization and broader demands concerning social injustices towards the women. We look at this tension by juxtaposing alternative representative claims - of those coming from the president as “the ultimate representative” and women ministers and parliamentarians, who rarely if ever speak about women’s or LGBT+ interests, and of those non-elected representatives from grassroot women’s and LGBT+ organizations whose voices are rarely heard in mainstream media and politics. We will examine these alternative representational claims to see if there are any references to an activity performed on behalf of the represented by two groups of claim-makers, and also to determine mutual relationship of these claims. Our methodology is based on semi-structured interviews, critical discourse analysis of political speeches of key representatives and women activists, and participant observation.