Branka Bogdan, "The New Yugoslav Woman: Reproductive Regulation in Socialist Yugoslavia" (Indiana UP, 2025)

Summary

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Podcast Summary:

New Books Network – Interview with Branka Bogdan
Episode: “The New Yugoslav Woman: Reproductive Regulation in Socialist Yugoslavia”
Host: Jenna Pittman
Guest: Branka Bogdan
Date: September 30, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode features historian Branka Bogdan discussing her new book, The New Yugoslav Woman: Reproductive Regulation in Socialist Yugoslavia (Indiana University Press, 2025). Bogdan explores how reproductive policies in socialist Yugoslavia were shaped by ideological, political, and social forces from 1945 to 1989. Through a mix of archival sources and oral histories, she examines the complex realities behind the image of Yugoslavia as a progressive champion of women's rights and the tension between state rhetoric and everyday experiences.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal and Intellectual Motivation for the Book

[03:03] Branka Bogdan:

• Bogdan was born in Sombor, Yugoslavia. Her upbringing in a female-dominated household and later move to New Zealand shaped her comparative perspective on women’s reproductive health.
• She recalls hearing two narratives: Yugoslavia as a progressive nation supporting women, and stories of moral judgment and difficulty accessing reproductive services.
• The book is rooted both in personal history and scholarly inquiry:

  “I wanted to probe further and see how these two sets of stories could coexist and what kind of environment produced them.” – Branka Bogdan [05:31]

2. Methodological Approach

[07:30] Branka Bogdan:

• Comprehensive coverage: addresses sex education, contraception, pregnancy, abortion, maternal/infant health, demographics, and child-rearing from 1945-1989.
• Uses diverse sources: health pamphlets, ethnographic studies, state media, scientific articles, international archives, and especially oral histories.
• The federal government was both decentralized and centralized, resulting in uneven enforcement and experience of policies.
• Reproductive regulation was both a tool for health “and a powerful political tool, shaping citizens’ lives...while boosting Yugoslavia’s standing abroad.”

3. Oral Histories: Bringing Depth and Humanity

[12:09] Branka Bogdan:

• Many participants agreed to share personal, intimate stories due to a sense of shared heritage.
• Snowballed approach: no public call for participants, rather building connections through personal recommendations.
• Oral histories provide real lived experience behind policy, medicine, and statistics.
• Addresses memory, the passage of time, and how women remember socialism post-1990.

  “My approach was definitely rooted in a desire to hear women’s stories and to allow their voices to be heard.” – Branka Bogdan [13:56]

4. Yugoslavia’s Unique Position in the Cold War World

[19:01] Branka Bogdan:

• Yugoslavia’s self-image as a “unique” socialist nation, distinguishing itself from both the Eastern Bloc and the West.
• Split with Stalin in 1953 and close ties with the West.
• The state’s gender equality ambitions did not always translate to meaningful implementation.
• Yugoslavia as a bridge between Global North/South, illustrated through the Non-Aligned Movement and international reproductive health projects.

5. Geopolitics and Global Networks in Reproductive Health

[22:23] Branka Bogdan:

• Yugoslavia’s participation in the Non-Aligned Movement and use of international collaboration (e.g., IUD clinical trials).
• Desire to be seen as a “developed leader of the developing world.”
• Example: development and international clinical testing of IUDs—addressing both medical and demographic goals.

6. Gender, Modernity, and the “New Yugoslav Woman”

[27:18] Branka Bogdan:

• The “New Yugoslav Woman” as both a state-driven ideal and a participant in shaping her own image.
• Expected to be healthy, employed, politically active, fashionable, and a “model” domestic worker and mother.
• This idealized figure exposes the gap between policy and reality:

  “She carried the weight of it all. She was expected to run the home, work outside it, somehow build this brand new state at the same time.” – Branka Bogdan [29:22]

• Women also enjoyed aspects of modernity, fashion, and connection to global trends, despite the pressures.

7. The Role of State Media and Information

[30:44] Branka Bogdan:

• State-local magazines and papers dominated content, filtered most messages to women through the state’s perspective.
• Some foreign media trickled in, but the state was the main information gatekeeper.

8. The Socialist Welfare State: Structures & Ambitions

[32:05] Branka Bogdan:

• Heavy focus on the welfare system and public health infrastructure as tools for unifying a war-ravaged, largely rural country.
• Aims included fulfilling promises of gender equality, enfranchisement, and welfare for women.
• The state borrowed from interwar models and international sources while trying to rapidly modernize post-WWII.

9. Technologies of Fertility Control & Family Planning

[35:56] Branka Bogdan:

• Abortion was the primary method of fertility control for much of the mid-20th century, leading the state to diversify birth control options.
• Family planning was positioned as a way to space births, improve health, and further equality—but access was uneven.
• Urban-rural and class divides limited the effectiveness of policy.
• While education improved, supply issues (e.g., intermittent access to pills, low-quality condoms) undermined implementation.

  “Women were quite educated in terms of the facts of contraception... but they hadn't used it themselves or they hadn't used it continuously.” – Branka Bogdan [40:08]

10. Policy vs. Practice: Everyday Navigation of Institutions

[42:22] Branka Bogdan:

• State policies often failed to match real-life conditions.
• Example: Breastfeeding breaks were legally required, but logistical obstacles undermined their practicality due to lack of childcare.

  “The state couldn’t put all of those laws into practice...when we pose historical questions that have a basis in gender, we begin to understand the lived experiences of people.” – Branka Bogdan [43:20]

11. Post-Socialist Transformations

[45:26] Branka Bogdan:

• Each successor state from Yugoslavia has taken a different approach based on religion, politics, and economics; women’s rights sometimes deprioritized.
• Women’s activism remains strong, and voices continue shaping identity and legitimacy—despite conservative and religious pushback.

12. Next Steps in Research

[47:05] Branka Bogdan:

• Bogdan is moving to a co-authored project about the Auckland Steroid Trial—a clinical study about premature births in New Zealand.
• The project tracks the global impact of clinical trials from the 1960s–present.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the duality of Yugoslav women’s experiences:

  “As a child, I always remembered having hearing a lot of stories about Yugoslavia as a very progressive and advanced nation... At the same time, I was also hearing stories about women who were being harshly judged about their sex lives, about using contraception, about accessing abortion...” – Branka Bogdan [04:12]

• On the centrality of state ambition:

  “The socialist welfare system and the biomedical health care system combined... to unite the country and its people into one Yugoslavia.” – Branka Bogdan [32:16]

• On the tension between visions and realities:

  “There are definitely unique factors, but Yugoslavia also was one case, one example of how nations navigated this very changing world post World War II and then into the Cold War as well.” – Branka Bogdan [21:23]

• On women’s activism today:

  “What I think matters most is that women’s activism is very much alive and loud in this region...their voices definitely appear in cultural debate and political debate and academic debate.” – Branka Bogdan [46:25]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Host/Guest Introductions & Personal Context: [01:36]–[05:31]
• Methodology & Oral Histories: [07:30]–[16:02]
• Yugoslavia’s Unique Political/Cultural Position: [19:01]–[22:23]
• Geopolitics (“East-West” and “North-South”), IUD Trials: [22:23]–[26:41]
• The “New Yugoslav Woman” as Socialist Ideal: [27:18]–[30:23]
• State Media and Information: [30:44]–[31:22]
• Socialist Welfare Structures: [32:05]–[34:52]
• Family Planning & Technology in Practice: [35:56]–[41:54]
• Policy vs. Practice, Gender in Institutions: [42:22]–[44:28]
• Post-Socialist Change & Activism: [45:26]–[46:51]
• Bogdan’s Future Projects: [47:05]–[49:39]

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Conclusion

This episode offers a nuanced exploration of reproductive health, gender roles, and socialist state-building in Yugoslavia as both a domestic and international project. Branka Bogdan bridges archival rigor with compelling oral history, revealing complex interactions between ideals and realities and foregrounding women's voices throughout. The discussion is rich for scholars of Eastern Europe, gender studies, social policy, and global Cold War history.

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Transcript

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[Marshall Poe]

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[Jenna Pittman]

Hello everybody and welcome back to the New Books Network. I'm your host, Jenna Pittman. Today we'll be talking to Branka Bogdan about her new book, the New Yugoslav Woman Reproductive Regulation in Socialist Yugoslavia, published by Indiana University Press in September of 2025. Branka utilizes her experience as a social and cultural historian of gender, medicine and science, as well as her expertise in oral history, interviewing and analysis to her study in the New Yugoslav Woman. The New Yugoslav Woman Reproductive Regulation in Socialist Yugoslavia provides a social and cultural history of how Yugoslav Communists use reproductive regulation to build a platform of socialism through self management and to position the country as a conduct between the global north and South. Branka, I'm so excited to have you here. Today and chat with you. Thanks so much for joining us.

[Branka Bogdan]

Thank you so much for having me, Jenna. I am really excited to be talking about this book. It's been a long, long time coming, and I'm just really thrilled to be here. So thank you.

[Jenna Pittman]

Yeah, yeah, of course. That's what we love to hear. So knowing that it's been kind of a long process getting to this point and having it in print, I wonder if you could begin just by telling us a little bit about yourself and kind of your process in writing the New Yugoslav Woman and what really inspired you to do this study.

[Branka Bogdan]

Absolutely. So I was born in Songbur in Voivodina Province in Serbia, which borders Croatia and Hungary. So when I was born there, it was Yugoslavia, which it no longer is. I grew up with three older sisters, with my parents, Branka and Tommy's love, and my maternal grandmother, Cyrila. So there were quite a few women in my household. So we Conversations about women's health were abundant. So I had a great childhood growing up in this beautiful city. Of course, the Yugoslav wars took place. We moved to New Zealand, and that's where I live now. As a migrant living in New Zealand, I was always sort of comparing what my experiences were like in New Zealand compared to what they might have been like in Yugoslavia. Obviously, as I was younger, that happened quite a bit. But when I grew older, I had more sort of intellectual questions or social or cultural questions about what differences or similarities there might be between the two places. So, for example, I still find it incredibly strange that it's warm at Christmas time here, as I'm sure a lot of the North American listeners would as well. Well, so as a child, I always remembered having hearing a lot of stories about Yugoslavia as a very progressive and advanced nation, especially in the immediate post World War II World. I also heard a lot of stories about how beloved Tito was and how much women and families especially benefited from the state in various ways. So I heard this a lot. This was ever present. And then when I grew up, you know, into adulthood, I heard more stories about the socialist welfare system, advancements in healthcare and medicine. My mother is a doctor and she practiced in Sombor. So that was another reason that we, you know, health was always sort of top of the conversation. And that particularly women's reproductive health was always very advanced and very progressive. And so at the same time, I was also hearing stories about women who were being harshly judged about their sex lives, about using contraception, about accessing abortion, and even when they were giving birth to their children. So I wanted to probe further and see how these two sets of stories could coexist and what kind of environment produced them. So when I say it's a long time coming, it really is, you know, part of my own personal history there.

[Jenna Pittman]

Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely fascinating. And I think that's such an interesting perspective that you bring to this study, kind of focusing on your own experience, seeing these juxtapositions. I'm sure on one hand hearing about how great the socialist welfare state was in healthcare and reproductive health for women, but then also just kind of this dated, I'm sure, kind of judgments and everything that kind of surrounds women's choices and the choices that women make in their reproductive health. So I think that's definitely very interesting. Funnily right. When we met, before we started recording, I was talking about my historiography that I've been writing, and it's all about socialist welfare in the gdr. And so I'd just gotten into the reproductive in women's health and family planning and all of that. So I am very. In all of the themes that are in this book. So it's a very good timing for me to be reading it.

[Branka Bogdan]

But yeah, absolutely amazing. That's going to be fascinating historiography, you.

[Jenna Pittman]

Know, to me it is. And that's all that matters. So. Yep. But yeah, so this book, kind of getting back to it, how do you approach the history of reproductive regulation from this span that you cover, really from Post World War II until the late 1980s, 1990, kind of what's your methodology argument and yeah, your structure here?

[Branka Bogdan]

So I wanted to talk a little bit first about the methodology and then I'll sort of talk. Speak to the argument a little bit. But so in terms of reproductive regulation, I wanted to talk about many different aspects of reproductive health. So I wanted to approach sex education, contraception, pregnancy, abortion, antenatal care, birth, maternal and infant health, population and demography, as well as child rearing. So there's a huge amount to cover there. And I really wanted to give justice to and to sort of honor the breadth of experience that women. That women go through in terms of reproductive health. So the book approaches these topics during that time period, 1945 to 1989, which is a time of great social, cultural, political change. And therefore, the book speaks to the ethnomedical healing methods practiced in villages and communities across Yugoslavia and then as well as the state endorsed biomedical healthcare methods and infrastruct structure that went along with those. So it allows me to look at these topics from a variety of different perspectives. And I think at the core of it, it also acknowledges that private practice really matched state ambitions to a T. The source material is varied. There are health pamphlets, ethnographic accounts, women's fashion magazines and state socialist newspapers and magazines, conference materials, Clin study research journal publications, all those sorts of things, as well as clinical studies. And then I also did the oral history interviews. I also used international archives to gain a sense of Yugoslavia's position in the international scientific world. And so by combining these archives and sources and methodologies, I was able to present this narrative from the state level, obviously at a more local level, in certain parts, an international level, and then as a personal level as well. When it came to the oral histories and all through this, throughout the socialist era, Yugoslav state claimed that progressive laws, free health care, domestic sex education, contraceptive technologies proved its commitment to gender equality. And that image of a modern egalitarian state definitely still lingers in the country's post socialist memory. In reality, though, the federal government was both fragmented and centralized, decentralized in its political structure, yet united in its overarching party vision. So this raises a bigger question then. Were its efforts to regulate reproduction really about equality? Or were they about something else? And could the two of those coexist? Community leaders were deeply worried about different aspects of health and wellbeing after World War II. They were worried about infant and maternal health falling and uneven fertility rates, lack of medical services and specialists, and the widespread reliance on abortion and the absence of contraception. To them, these problems weren't just personal. They threatened the future of the nation itself. And scientists and clinicians stepped in to develop new technologies and teach people safer ways to space births. But health concerns were certainly not the only driver, right? Reproductive regulation also served as a powerful political tool, shaping citizens lives at home while boosting Yugoslavia's standing abroad. That's sort of the crux of the argument.

[Jenna Pittman]

Yeah, thank you for kind of sharing that and giving a. Giving a really good overview, honestly, of kind of your argument here and your approach. I think your perspective or your approach in using oral histories is really helpful with this study, and I think it works really well here. So would you mind kind of talking a little bit about how your approach and use of these oral histories shaped the study?

[Branka Bogdan]

Absolutely. And I absolutely loved conducting the oral histories. And they hold a special place in my heart, for sure. I just also wanted to take a moment just to acknowledge the many people that invited me into their homes and that talked to me both formally and informally throughout this project, they really are incredible. And I'm so privileged to have been able to speak to them about their very intimate, private lives. Right. So many of the participants agreed to talk to me about these very intimate moments in their lives purely because, you know, I was born in Yugoslavia or my family was known in certain communities, or because they felt this sort of affinity because of our shared heritage. So what I wanted to do was I wanted to hear their stories, and I wanted to treat them with respect. And I also really wanted to take the time to reflect on the factors that brought us together. So I didn't make any public calls for participants. I simply started talking to people who were, you know, who would then talk to me, and then they'd mention that someone else might be interested in talking, and then they'd want to be involved. And it snowballed from there. But, you know, many people didn't want to be involved as well, and that was absolutely fine. And. But I did get a lot of positive feedback, and a lot of people did want to share their experiences and their reflections. So that was really amazing. And, you know, our commonalities and our differences definitely shaped the conversations that we had. The fact that I was, you know, at the time, I was living in Australia doing my PhD, and so I was flying back to Europe to do these interviews, and I had been living in New Zealand, and they were curious. They wanted to know what it was like to be living overseas, what it was like to be traveling, what it was like to be studying all of those things. So those conversations shaped what we did, too. And so I had. Once the interviews were done, I had multiple goals for how I was going to utilize them. In the first instance, my approach was definitely rooted in a desire to hear women's stories and to allow their voices to be heard. And so at different points, there are quite long chunks where I sort of uneditate. There are unedited versions translated, obviously, that I like to feature in different chapters. I also wanted to flesh out and add depth to the clinical and scientific aspects of the narrative because you don't sort of get the personal insight or the anecdotes that come along with clinical studies when they're published. So I wanted to imbue them with some depth from the were there at the time. So with talking to the professionals and the. Woolerman also allowed me to bring into the account an analysis of memory formation. And I wanted to think about how memory operates within the context of oral histories and the ways that participants remembered the socialist past was, of course, filtered through a variety of different lenses, their own perspectives remember their own perspectives and experiences and their life journeys, the Yugoslav wars, the fall of socialism, and many, many other factors. So it was really, really important to me to reflect on those as I analyze the oral histories thematically as well.

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[Branka Bogdan]

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[Branka Bogdan]

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[Jenna Pittman]

And I think kind of that point that you mentioned about using the oral histories to kind of put this human or this real experience behind kind of this very medical, very, I don't know, it otherwise could be kind of stripped of personhood. And I think that's really where those oral histories come in and do so much work in kind of shaping this, this narrative and again putting, putting like a real human experience and kind of, I don't know, I mean just bringing the actual experiences of women into this book and not just women as this like abstract or this like this historical subject group that you're looking at, but these real people with real experiences and kind of bringing those perspectives in is very, very useful here. So Yugoslavia has a really interesting history, especially in this period that you're covering. And I wonder if you might just be able to talk a little bit about what makes Yugoslavia's political, economic, social condition so unique in the period from kind of 1945-89 that makes this just particularly interesting to study and kind of, I don't know, like in its own realm, in a way.

[Branka Bogdan]

It is a particularly interesting case study for many reasons, some of which sort of highlight how unique it was and how unlike other countries it was at the time. And some of those reasons that the case study is interesting is that actually was very in line with how other nations operated at the time as well. So it created the Yugoslav state, created an image of uniqueness, that it was the only kind of socialist nation that was progressive in the way that it was. And so it built the scaffolding of propaganda that was very positive and that was very unique at the time. So Yugoslavia suffered tremendously during World War II. And that's. That's just absolute fact. The socialist, socialist state had a strong desire to rebuild the infrastructure and population, create its own brand of socialism, and to give women a chance to participate in political life, in public life as well as work life, and to give them a sense of equality. Right. So that's the whole socialist gender equality that the. The system was built on. However, the laws that actually gave women more rights at work, parental leave, access to maternity services and childcare, they didn't necessarily translate into reality. It didn't mean that the state was able or willing to invest meaningfully into those services that would realize those liberalizing intentions. And this was very much the case across Europe at the time. But there were some really unique factors about Yugoslavia that really came through and that were really interesting. It's particularly close relationship to the west, especially during the early decades. It split with Stalin in 1953. So all of those factors make it a very interesting narrative. And I think what's important to realize is that there are definitely unique factors, but that Yugoslavia also was one case, one example of how nations navigated this very changing world post World War II and then into the Cold War as well.

[Jenna Pittman]

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's really what you kind of hit on there, the geopolitical position of Yugoslavia. And it kind of being this point of contention and kind of being somewhere in the middle between the west, quote, unquote, in the Soviet socialist world. And I think that's kind of something that this book does, really interesting is how it positions Yugoslavia between this east and west, kind of back and forth and kind of, I don't know, It's a little bit petty sometimes the way that Yugoslavia is kind of pulled on both sides, but then also Yugoslavia between the global north and global south in these kind of Cold War relations. Would you mind talking about that a little bit?

[Branka Bogdan]

No, of course. So yeah, absolutely. Yugoslavia is sort of always seen as this midpoint somewhere in the middle, never really on one or the other in both this global north, global south conversation, as well as the east and the West. So Yugoslavia had far reaching foreign ambitions. The Non Aligned Movement, which was formed in the 1950s, had Yugoslavia as one of its founding members. And it was formed as a way of, for nations who, you know, nations of the newly decolonized global south, along with other nations like Yugoslavia, to sort of sidestep the tensions that the Cold War brought about. So over time the state and its leadership wanted to be seen as a developed leader of the developing world and it wanted to do so through politics, culture, medicine, science, all of those aspect. I use the example, I use several examples in the book of how this happened. But one of the key factors was Yugoslavia's focus on intrauterine devices, IUDs and how it developed new prototypes with help from overseas researchers. And then how it participated in these huge multi site clinical trials of various forms of IUDs which also studied not only the medical, the clinical aspects of IUD insertion and how it operated within a woman's body, but also the demographic aspects of who utilized contraception, who knew about contraception, who was willing to access medical assistance to gain contraceptive advice. For example, which regions were women more likely to come from if they were going to be accessing medical help for contraceptive purposes. So there were all of these different entangled aspects of their geopolitical position. They also participated quite a lot in, in the development of these larger concepts of human rights, of what human rights was. And so they participated in these big international conferences in the 1970s and those things that were very important in their international positioning. Yep, that's probably enough.

[Jenna Pittman]

That's is also interesting and I'm kind of thinking of kind of where this lies and things that I've read kind of pertaining to similar things, this international kind of like women's reproductive health and women's rights movement that's going on. And I don't know, I'm like my brain is firing of kind of all of the related works here and kind of where this book is situated. So I think it's really great, kind of seeing how this builds and kind of not builds from, but kind of is in conversation with a lot of other scholarship, but is doing this really innovative kind of approach, in my opinion?

[Branka Bogdan]

Well, it's the largest scholarship on things like family planning and, like, what was family planning and what is population control and how do they differ? How do they speak to each other? How do they operate around the world? Yugoslavia was definitely a part of that larger conversation. And then, you know, their. Their contributions of IUDs, of different methodologies in abortion care, all of those factors were part of this very large global conversation about the movement of people, about the growth of certain populations, the decline of certain populations. And those are all kind of familiar themes that the scholarship has really already established. And this book definitely speaks to that.

[Jenna Pittman]

Yeah, absolutely. Gender is obviously such a important aspect of this book. So, yeah, I guess I kind of just wanted to ask a question about how studying gender in Yugoslavia, kind of this figure of the new Yugoslav woman, that. This kind of character of modernity that emerges kind of early on in this period that you're studying how that helps us understand tensions of everyday socialist life more kind of broadly looking at society and women's position in Yugoslavia.

[Branka Bogdan]

I wanted to write this book in a way that, at least in part, offered a variety of perspectives within the Yugoslav state at the time. Obviously, that's going to be impossible in some respects, but the new Yugoslav woman, the figure of the new Yugoslav woman is a really great way to enter that narrative because she allows us to think about both what the state wanted women to understand and do and be, and what she herself may have experienced or may have wanted to participate in, or different ways that she wanted to operate in that space. So I wanted to apply that idea of the idealized female figure into Yugoslavia because. To demonstrate how the state envisioned her and how women's socialist organizations created and utilized her image as well, and how she might have operated within that newly established political landscape in the second half of the 20th century. You know, she was an idealized figure, right? She's a really neat package for all of the stuff that the state needed from her. They wanted her to remain in good health in her reproductive years, participate in professional employment and politics. They never wanted her to neglect her home duties, of course, and they wanted her to bear children and keep the home running smoothly, all the while dressing in the latest fashions. You know, some of the magazines have all these dress patterns at the back or, you know, lots of fashion advertisements or, you know, just general pictures of how women are dressing around the world. So, you know, that was something that the woman with the new Yugoslav woman was meant to be participating in this larger conversation about fashion trends, about, you know, recipes of the world and experimenting with different cuisines. So again, very idealized situation. So what's also really great about her is that she really shows up the cracks between what the state promised and what life actually looked like. Right. She carried the weight of it all. She was expected to run the home, work outside it, somehow build this brand new state at the same time. And, you know, those factors didn't always translate well into the domestic realm or not fully or not in the same idealized way. I do have to say, of course, this was not all one sided. Women definitely participated in, you know, forming this image, propagating this image. Women also enjoyed, you know, they enjoyed flipping through the magazines. They liked being able to see what other people ate and wore and you know, what, what might have been available to them in terms of dress patterns and all that sort of stuff. They also really enjoyed hearing news from the Soviet lands and from further afield as well.

[Jenna Pittman]

Yeah, that's very well said and very interesting. I guess now I'm trying to remember and it's the end of my day here, so I'm not firing on all cylinders. Did the state control the media, these magazines and these forms that women were engaging with and kind of like keeping up on pop culture with?

[Branka Bogdan]

Yes, they did. They did. There were state socialist magazines that were sort of specifically targeted to women and they had, you know, sort of a state, local, regional and, you know, so you'd get very localized newspapers that would be much more targeted to the local population. And then you'd kind of have these larger magazines as well. There were some things that came in from the foreign media as well, a few fashion magazines and things, but for them, for the most part, everything was sort of state filtered through the state.

[Jenna Pittman]

Sure. Well, thank you for that, I guess. So back to kind of the bigger scope of this study. Why is it so central to provide some sort of description of the Yugoslavian socialist welfare state kind of at large? You spend a little bit of legwork really establishing and making sure that your readers kind of understand these healthcare structures, policy, family planning, childcare, all of these aspects, and making sure that that's really clear before really diving into the super heavy nuances of this history. So would you mind kind of speaking to why those structures are so important to understand?

[Branka Bogdan]

Absolutely. So I think that I did a lot of the legwork on these aspects because the state did a lot of legwork. And so I felt like I needed to really cover this in a lot of depth. Like I said, the state was ambitious in foreign policy, but they were also incredibly ambitious domestically too. They wanted to unify the country, a country that, like I said before, was completely devastated by war. They also more specifically wanted to unify the peasantry. Yugoslavia was 70% rural at the in 1945 and for a long time after. So the socialist welfare system and the biomedical health care system combined to do just that, to unite the country and its people into one Yugoslavia. And underlying this larger ambition was the fact that many of these ideas actually came from their interwar predecessors, like the Institute of Public Health, led by Andrea Stamper, for example, and as well as models from other countries. And another important goal for the state at the time was to honour the promises that they made to their wartime female supporters regarding gender equality. They wanted to lift women up via legal channels to offer them things like enfranchisement work and inheritance rights, as well as divorce, things like that. So the first two chapters really do grapple with this larger idea of Yugoslavia breaking from its Soviet ally, establishing its own self management style of socialism. And this was an incredibly complex and challenging time. And I guess that's why the focus is quite heavy there. On the one hand, they had to deal with huge population and material loss. They had incredible illness, disease, starvation was rife across the country at the end of World War II. And on the other hand, they had some really powerful ambitions to create ideological, political, social and cultural change. And they wanted to do it fairly fast. You know, they were. They weren't moving slowly. They had their big plans.

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[Jenna Pittman]

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[Branka Bogdan]

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[Jenna Pittman]

Yeah, thank you for that. That's really interesting. And kind of the structures that you lay out in those first couple chapters really do, really do justice to kind of the middle of this book a little bit where you start talking about fertility control technology, those IUD studies and research that was being done in those fields, as well as sex education and family planning. I wonder if you might be able to speak just a little bit to the idea of family planning introducing or like maybe the destigmata destigmatization of fertility control technology and kind of that whole history there of kind of putting a little bit more education and technology into allowing women to not have as many kids so that they can be this active socialist woman outside of the home. This also modern, cosmopolitan, and also mother and caretaker within the home and balancing all of these things.

[Branka Bogdan]

Those were really important factors for state scientists, for gynecologists, abortion was basically the only way that women were controlling and spacing their births around the middle of the 20th century. It was really the only thing that they had on hand, the only tool that they could always rely on. And the state recognized that this was causing a national problem, a problem for the entire country, because births weren't following the trends that they wanted them to, but also because women's personal reproductive health was at risk as well, because women weren't accessing medical clinics for these services, they were self aborting or they were going to different practitioners who perhaps weren't using hygienic tools and all of those sorts of factors. And so this was something that was really important for the state to address at the time. And packaging this up as family planning as a way to not, not stop women from having children so that they could participate politically and outside of the home. But it was a way to allow them to space their births, to get control over their own fertility in a way that they deemed medically safe and socially and culturally safe and effective as well. And so, you know, it served reproductive health and technology and methodology that came from the research that scientists did in the mid 20th century really served a lot of different purposes at the time. It allowed women to get a little bit of control over their reproductive health. It allowed the state to have a feeling like they were allowing women equal rights to men and that their experiences would be similar to those of men. But also it allowed the state to entangle itself within a larger global conversation about family planning and population control. The reality was that contraception wasn't always readily available. There were gaps in who could access what and where. A lot of the contraceptives were held at urban hospitals or clinics. So, you know, peasant women could not come into cities readily to be able to access these services and then to be able to continue accessing the services, you know, to get continued care and information and education. And in terms of sex education, you know, women had lots of access to pamphlets and to information and things like that. And the idea was that women could be educated on these things, on these aspects, and that they could apply those to their home and to their personal use lives. Again, because the contraception wasn't so readily available and distributed evenly. And in some cases it wasn't very effective. You know, some of the earlier condoms weren't very good and sometimes they'd get a shipment of pills, but they wouldn't get a repeat shipment. So they couldn't sort of continue that level of care. And you know, so I think on the face of things, women were quite educated when I. In terms of the facts of contraception and the facts of family planning. I speak about this in the final chapter a lot that women were really able to talk to me about.

[Jenna Pittman]

The.

[Branka Bogdan]

Facts of, you know, the oral contraceptive pill. Is this effective? This is how you use it. This is what happens when these are some of the side effects, all of those sorts of things. But they hadn't used it themselves or they hadn't used it continuously over their adult lives themselves, all those sorts of factors. So there was all these paradoxes and all of these uneven experiences across all of the sources.

[Jenna Pittman]

Yeah, that's very interesting. And that's interesting because it feels like something that needs to be consistent and you kind of need to be informed on these things. So I can kind of understand how that comes through in the book of some of these frustrations. Like you're told that this is a solution and then it's not, or you're told, take this every day and then you just don't have it for a period of time. I mean, I'm sure that that comes up in memory of like, yeah, it's cool if it's there and it works, but it might not.

[Branka Bogdan]

And this was frustrating for physicians. This was frustrating for physicians and gynecologists, you know, for researchers themselves as well as for women and families. So this was a frustration in terms of what the system could offer. They were at the mercy of international non government organizations and health organizations who were supplying some of these goods and resources. And they also wanted to be a self sufficient, self reliant nation. So they wanted to create everything domestically. So that was a really big factor for them in terms of how they operated in this space of contraception, sex education.

[Jenna Pittman]

Yeah, absolutely. I feel like that brings me to a question that I find myself asking so often, which is kind of how this book translates or speaks to study of gender in Eastern European socialism a little bit more broadly, but also kind of helps further our understanding of how citizens, and in this case specifically women, navigated or existed within these state institutions and organizations.

[Branka Bogdan]

I think when you study gender in any context, but you know, especially in terms of socialism in East Europe. It underlines the differences between policy and practice. You know, what's on paper and what really exists in the real world. I offer multiple examples of this in the book. One that always stands out to me is the application of certain laws in real life. So, for example, women were allowed to take breastfeeding breaks. Right. So every new legislation in the early 1950s allowed them to take breaks every three and a half hours that they were limited to two hours, including travel to and from her baby, and traveling to and from babies who might have been with an older family member or a relative or a neighbor for breastfeeding two or three times throughout the day would essentially mean that. That women could be away from work for four to six hours in the working day. Right. So as new mothers were limited to shorter shifts as well, they were not permitted to work in the evenings or work overtime. This didn't really equate to a workable solution. And this was then compounded by the lack of childcare services that would allow them to have their babies closer to them. And so I feel like the intention was very good. And the laws, they were modeled on Soviet laws, and there were attempts to create these institutions that allowed these laws to trickle through, but the state couldn't put all of those laws into practice. And so I think when we pose historical questions that have a basis in gender, we begin to understand them, the lived experiences of people that operate within institutions or within organizations and within broader society.

[Jenna Pittman]

Yeah. Thank you for that. Yeah. And I think it's a theme that comes up, I always find myself asking some variation of, you know, all of these studies, this book, as well as so many that it's in conversation with start to kind of speak to how people are existing within these broader organizations of kind of society. And I don't know, it's always fascinating to me, so I know it's not really a direct focus of the new Yugoslav woman, but it does come up in your conclusion and kind of how you wrap up this book. I think some listeners might be interested to know what has changed in Yugoslavia since the fall of socialism in Eastern Europe, specifically in regard to gender, women's rights, reproductive regulation, socioeconomic mobility, reproductive healthcare, family planning, all of the topics of this book, so many topics.

[Branka Bogdan]

All of the post Yugoslav nations, nation states have taken different approaches to women's health and family planning and women's rights, all of those factors. And so some of those changes are because of religious influences that were sort of really ramped up after. After the fall of socialism and others because of conservative turns in recent politics. Some are because of economic factors whereby women's rights are generally knocked lower down on the list of priorities and as are those of other marginalized populations. What I think matters most is that women's activism is very much alive and loud in this region. Their voices definitely appear in cultural debate and political debate and academic debate via, you know, grassroots groups, as well as through individual advocacy. And they continue to shape national identity and political legitimacy. So I think that's what, what is really key for me as a takeaway of recent history and those in that area, that women's voices are still very much front and center.

[Jenna Pittman]

Yeah, thank you for that. That's so fascinating. And I kind of want to kind of, I don't know, pick your brain. What are you working on next and kind of what are the next steps after this book?

[Branka Bogdan]

So I'm going to be celebrating the book in the next few months.

[Jenna Pittman]

I'm very happy to do that.

[Branka Bogdan]

And I've been really lucky to be a part of a few different projects since the completion of the book. And one of the main things that I'm working on right now is a co written, co authored book with two colleagues here in New Zealand. So Charlotte Greenhouse of Waikato University, which is in Hamilton, and Tatiana Bo Kleesh from Auckland. And so it's a new book about the history of a clinical trial and its follow ups in New Zealand. And the trial is called the Auckland Steroid Trial. It ran from 1969 to 1974, the original study, and then there were follow ups in as recently as last year. So the trial originally was led by neonatologist Ross Howey and obstetrician turned researcher Graham Liggins. And. And after Liggins was experimenting on animals in California and New Zealand, the two came together and tested whether giving corticosteroid hormones to women in premature labor could speed up fetal lung development and improve newborn survival. So in the 1960s and before that, babies born prematurely were likely to have a lot of underdeveloped lungs. Sorry. And as a result, they would suffer from a variety of different ailments and, you know, sometimes they would die as well. So this was a really big question to answer. And they were trying to see if this particular drug test would actually do make the required changes. So the original trial was highly successful. And the babies born during the study were then studied again at 4 and 6 years old, then at 30 years old and just most recently when they were 50. And the trial had global impact and was repeated in many countries and its treatment protocol is still in use today. So that that's sort of where we're just wrapping up the book at the moment. That's what I've been working on for a while.

[Jenna Pittman]

Yeah. That's fascinating. Yeah. And I'm sure that has to have such an interesting global history kind of on the science and tech and how these developments can really have such a far reaching impact. So fascinating. Thank you. So for our listeners, Branka Bogdan's the New Yugoslav Woman Reproductive Regulation in Socialist Yugoslavia, published really recently, just this week by Indiana University Press, is available now. Branka, thank you so much again for being here today. I really enjoyed chatting with you.

[Branka Bogdan]

Thank you so much, Jenna. It's been an absolute pleasure.