he chapter aims to asses the evolving social situation of women in Southeastern Europe, former Yugoslavia and Slovenia after 1991, with particular emphasis on legislation, the representation of women in political and administrative office, other measures of equality (and inequalitity) between women and men such as health care and reproductive rights and discrimination of sexual minorities. While socialism was an obviously flawed system the authors showed that the change to a free- market system and democracy brought its own challenges. There is a limited understanding of democracy which can be seen in the state's attitude to women and sexual minirities, especially in the areas of family legislation, labour and reproductive rights.
F.02 Acquisition of new scientific knowledge
COBISS.SI-ID: 33354077This chapter builds on data collected in research on the everyday lives of gay men and lesbians in Slovenia, focusing on the families of origin and family relations. It pays special attention to the process of coming out and its consequences for further relationships among family members. It concentrates on the process of negotiating new family relations after coming out. The authors introduce the concepts of transparent closet and family closet to describe a situation in which family members are informed about a child's homosexuality but refuse to accept the consequences of their child's coming out. All of this holds important consequences for gay men and lesbians and their family members.
F.02 Acquisition of new scientific knowledge
COBISS.SI-ID: 56547682The chapter compares contemporary student protests of the decade from 2000 to 2010 with the student uprisings of the 1960s and 1970s, with special emphasis on the changes in the countries in transition, particularly in Slovenia. The main thesis developed in the chapter is that today, students’ social criticism is not only expressed differently, but also evaluated differently in society, especially due to the changed relations between society and youth. In Slovenia the position of young people has transformed from that of a symbolic representative of societal change in socialist times to an ordinary age group in contemporary times, with no particular societal importance – it has even been reduced to a marginal group. Since the late 1990s, students in the European Union (EU) and in Slovenia have focused not on bringing about change in society but on improving their own position in society and in universities. We believe that the main reasons for this are the weakened position of youth in modern societies and the new conditions of growing up, which foster the disengagement of young people from the public space and favour one’s private space.
F.02 Acquisition of new scientific knowledge
COBISS.SI-ID: 33406301The lecture was made for doctoral students at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. We have tackled the problem from two perspectives: possibilities that are offered for connecting, exchanging of experiences and researching by on-line tools and possibilities that are offered by actual travel to foreign countries. Internationalisation, which is made by traveling, enables experiences that are not bound just to the research we do but also provokes us on personal level. It enables cultural and personal experience, acceptance of the Otherness that is closely connected with how we perceive scientific problem and how we interpret it. Although on-line tools can contribute a lot to practicalities of our research, but they cannot replace personal old-fashion travel.
B.05 Guest lecturer at an institute/university
COBISS.SI-ID: 4340325Like all other areas of intellectual activity, science depends on historical circumstances, ideological beliefs and prevailing norms. Dominant discourses, valuations and perceptions related to gender differences in a certain society and culture influence scientific studies and scientific practice. The creation of conditions for gender equality in scientific work is a key component of the internal democratisation of science. The analysis has identified and articulated the reasons that it is useful for science if more people and more different perspectives are involved in the scientific community. It turns out that scientific research becomes more objective when unquestioned prejudices and biased evaluations are put in the spotlight. The same is true for the covert political and economic pressures on scientists. While analysing systemic/structural, epistemic and methodological problems in actual mainstream considerations of the status and opportunities of women in science, we are actually asking and examining where the obstacles are that do not allow women to participate fully in the work of scientific communities. We are also asking how we should fight gender inequalities and discriminatory practices in science and we find out that this is indeed very difficult. Namely, fighting against prejudice in science is something entirely different than, for instance, in politics or economics. In science we encounter the belief that there is no bias or prejudice, only scientific theories developed by science itself. The illustrated data are usually hidden from public view and criticism because they are understood as a matter of course. It is about covert forms of discrimination in science, which are reflected in the covert value assumptions about the role of women in science, in criteria for scientific work and scientific promotion, in the importance of respective scientific disciplines, in excellence in science. By questioning gender equality in science, we are reaching deeper than simply into the organisation of scientific and research activities, scientific and academic institutions. We begin to tackle many blind spots in the established views on science. The absence of reflection on equal opportunities in science brings at least two dangers with it. The first is the risk that many social and individual investments in human capital are lost if a large part of these investments do not materialise in a productive way. The other danger is a decline in the efforts for the equality of men and women in all spheres of life, which is one of the important goals of modern democracies and the development of societies. The above-mentioned problematics and the thematic topoi are tackled in the present monograph. A special attention in the monograph is paid to analysing the impact of the current financial and economic crisis – in particular, the disproportionate austerity measures in the field of higher education and research activities – on the disproportionately larger share of women employed in precarious occupations.
C.01 Editorial board of a foreign/international collection of papers/book
COBISS.SI-ID: 1550733