The Nobel Prize winner’s exploration, from afar, of Albanian women’s lives layers upon a history of female stories, and story-telling, and a resistance that expresses itself in a kind of fierce joy.
Hoxha's regime used the language of ‘ending conservative traditions’ to justify many of its horrors, but today Albania wrestles with a complex heritage of traditional patriarchy intertwined with modern authoritarianism.
Two recent milestones in Kosovo – an official monument recognising women’s suffering during the Kosovo War, and an art installation commemorating wartime rape – shows that change may be coming to a topic long taboo in the country.
A female President and political discourse that trades in 'gender equality' can't paper over the continued corrosive effects of patriarchy in Kosovo, from property law to social taboos.
Haki Stërmilli 1936 novel If I Were a Boy portrays the contemporary problems of Albanian society that stem from a misogynistic mindset, and deserves to be (re-)read today.
In the recent Macedonian protests, as elsewhere, female protesters are treated as iconic symbols rather than as active participants
Isa Qosja’s latest film ‘Three Windows and a Hanging’ sensitively explores the taboo subject of the aftermath of war rape in Kosovo
