News

by Ardita ZEQIRI and Mary KELLY
13 November 2024

History is usually written by the victors, and they were all men!

Gender disparity is painfully obvious in many post-conflict societies across the world where it is difficult to find acknowledgment of the role of women in peacebuilding. Kosovo and Northern Ireland are good examples, where there is a distinct absence of statues to commemorate female figures in our respective histories.

In Northern Ireland, there is a statue of Queen Victoria prominently on display in the front grounds of Belfast City Hall. Unveiled in 1903, it took until 2024 for any other females to join her: Mary Ann McCracken and Winifred Carney.

McCracken was a supporter of the United Irishmen, a group co-founded by her brother, Henry Joy McCracken, who was later executed for his role in the failed rebellion against British rule in Ireland, in 1798.

She campaigned all her life against poverty and was a passionate opponent of slavery, even refusing to eat sugar as it was a product of the slave trade and West Indies plantations.

Up to her late 80s, she would stand at Belfast docks where she warned emigrants bound for the United States about the evils of slavery. She died in 1866, aged 96.

Norma Sinte, chairwoman of the Mary Ann McCracken Foundation, said that the statue was a long overdue recognition of McCracken’s legacy and her championing of social justice.

The foundation was set up in 2019 to continue her work promoting education, equality and addressing disadvantage, with bursaries helping pupils at 12 primary and secondary schools to access further and higher education.

“It’s a fitting tribute to Mary Ann and will undoubtedly raise awareness of her life and legacy,” she said.

Winifred Carney was a campaigner for women’s suffrage, a trade unionist, and a republican dedicated to ending British rule in Ireland. She was a friend of James Connolly, one of the leaders of the 1916 Rising, who was executed by the British.

She became disillusioned with the republican party, Sinn Fein, and later went on to join the Northern Ireland Labour Party in 1924.

Feminist historian, Dr Margaret Ward, described Carney as a woman of many parts:

“She was the first woman to enter the GPO (General Post Office) during the Easter Rising and the first woman in Belfast to stand in a General Election.

“By her marriage to former Ulster Volunteer Force member and Somme veteran, George McBride, she demonstrated her commitment to building a non-sectarian society, based on the principles of equality and respect.”

More than a decade ago, Dr Ward wrote a booklet, “Celebrating Belfast Women”, which covered the many women who had played a vital role in the city’s history, but had been overlooked by civic authorities:

“The more we see women, the more we realise the contribution women have made to our past and continue to do so in our present. McCracken with her focus on social and economic justice, anti-slavery and Carney, fighting for women and for the working class in a new Ireland.”

Overlooking women’s contributions

Kosovo, like Northern Ireland, grapples with the underrepresentation of women’s achievements in various fields, in a historical narrative that overlooks their vital roles.

In Kosovo, as a token of appreciation for women’s contribution in society, a statue with the face of a woman has been placed in the Dardania neighbourhood park in the capital, Pristina. However, for many, its meaning remains a mystery, as there is no description of what it represents.

Funded by the Municipality of Pristina, the statue — unveiled on 8 March 2022, on International Women’s Day — gives the impression of a woman in suffering rather than embodying pride or glory, as male figures typically do.

Of the 71 statues, 552 lapidaries, 96 busts, and 87 memorials across the country, only 2 statues, 4 lapidaries, 2 busts, and no memorials are dedicated to women, according to data from the Agency for the Management of Monuments and Memorials of Kosovo.

Even these monuments are primarily for women who were soldiers or martyrs of the war, with little recognition of women’s contributions in other fields.

Arjeta Miftari, a sculptor who has exhibited her work worldwide, believes that the fact that women from other fields are overlooked is due to inadequate people in institutions:

“If cultural institutions had adequate people and valued contributions, they should make proposals to build statues for living individuals also, who have made contributions throughout time.”

Among the few women honoured with statues are the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Catholic Saint Mother Teresa, Olympic gold medal-winning judoka Majlinda Kelmendi, and early 20th-century Albanian rebel leader Shote Galica.

Kosovo’s capital, Pristina, is also home to the Heroinat (Heroines) monument alongside a park, which commemorates 20,000 wartime victims of sexual violence.

However, there is no official data on how many women served in the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) during the 1998-1999 war.

Arjeta Miftari, noted that the situation is similar in other parts of the region:

“I don’t think there has been any real increase in awareness to recognize women’s contributions, as the right women are not in the right positions to demand this.”

Vesna Stajic, an activist for Serbian women’s rights in Kosovo, and the director of the first shelter for Serbian women, Women’s Inclusive Center in Artana/Novo Brdo, stated that considering the number of monuments honouring the contributions of women in Kosovo, it seems as “we lack significant names in Kosovo’s recent history”:

“As if women have not made a visible contribution to positive change in Kosovo.”

Stajic emphasised that Kosovan society still lives in the past, by politicians who base voter support on poor interethnic relations and past conflicts.

Stajic recalled that in then Mitrovica — a city now divided into a predominantly Serbian northern part and an Albanian southern part — there once stood a bust of the partisan Silvira Tomazini in front of a gymnasium named after her, which, after 1999, was renamed “Frang Bardhi” and it is located in the southern part of the city.

Born in 1913 to Italian-Slovenian parents, Tomazini was actively involved in communist movements against the Nazis. Initially, she became a member of the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia and later joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.

Tomazini worked as a German language teacher at one of the secondary schools in Mitrovica starting in 1940. She was killed by Nazi forces in 1942.

After 1999, with the end of the war in Kosovo, many monuments and symbols from the socialist era, including her bust, were removed or replaced with new ones.

Commemorating contemporary female figures

Kosovo’s recent history, since the war ended in June 1999, has produced many women who have put the country on the map. These include globally famous artists like Dua Lipa, Rita Ora, and Era Istrefi, as well as Olympic medallists. However, the only woman among them with a statue is Majlinda Kelmendi.

Kosovo has, on some occasions, recognized the contributions of foreign women. For example, a bust of Madeleine Albright, the former US Secretary of State during the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia, can be found in Kosovo’s capital.

Additionally, a primary school in Fushe Kosove municipality near Pristina, is named after Laura Scotti, an Italian humanitarian who died in a United Nations plane crash in northern Kosovo in November 1999 while delivering humanitarian aid. Scotti had contributed to building that school, which is why it was named in her honour.

Increasing awareness for women’s contributions

Apart from the lack of monuments, the Agency for Memorial Management states that there is a growing trend for more recognition of women’s’ role in society:

“There is a growing trend of awareness and demands from civil society for more monuments that recognize the role of women in Kosovo’s history and struggle.”

Vesna Stajic further added that the most neglected are the women activists in civil society, “those who selflessly dedicate their free time to support positive social changes, which are often slow and barely visible in the short term but provide a solid foundation for long-term transformation”.

Up at Stormont, seat of government in Northern Ireland, there are two women at the head of the power-sharing Executive, Michelle O’Neill of Sinn Fein, the party pledged to a united Ireland, is first minister and Emma Little-Pengelly of the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party, is deputy first minister.

But the Mo Mowlam Playpark is the only remembrance of a woman politician there. It was named after a former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the British Labour politician, Marjorie “Mo” Mowlam, who had arranged for the children’s playground to be built.

Her portrait, by John Keane, hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London. Perhaps someday, her tireless contribution to peace in Northern Ireland will be marked by a statue in the grounds of Stormont.

The historical narrative often sidelines women’s contributions, particularly in post-conflict societies like Kosovo and Northern Ireland, where statues and memorials honouring female figures are insufficient.

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This article is part of a series co-authored by Kosovo and Northern Ireland participants in a peace journalism project, Reporting on a Troubled Past, initiated and organised by the Association of Journalists of Kosovo in partnership with Shared Future News, with funding from the British Embassy Pristina. The facts presented and views expressed are those of the authors and editorially independent of any funder.