2002 Reports

Advancing Women's Political Rights in Bosnia-Herzegovina

Domi,Tanya L.

At the height of nationalism prior to the 1992 percentage of women elected to public office had fallen to an all-time low. In this period, the traditional role of women was repeatedly reinforced through the ethnocentric lens of state-controlled mass media, which distorted their roles in family, faith and work. By 1990 in Bosnia, women holding elected office represented a mere one percent of parliamentary bodies. In the first election following the Dayton Peace Agreement in September 1996, women's participation fell below two percent, with the women’s party not securing a single seat in any of the three parliamentary bodies conceived by Dayton.