The Success of the Demands of Women and Feminists and the Power of Antifeminism in Slovene Territory before the Second World War

The present paper examines the dialectical relationship between the women’s and feminist movements in the Slovene lands during the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and in the aftermath of the First World War, as well as the antifeminist responses that emerged in both the media landscape and in structural political measures. The establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes brought about significant political and cultural transformations alongside rapid modernization, which led to a redefinition of antifeminist discourse and the introduction of new state policies aimed at restricting the participation of women in public life. While earlier opposition to women’s emancipation was often grounded in moral arguments, this gradually gave way to pseudoscientific frameworks such as (racial) anthropology and eugenics, with medicine increasingly becoming the dominant lens through which resistance to gender equality was articulated. The article pays particular attention to how the Great Depression and the demographic crisis influenced the debates surrounding women’s suffrage, access to the labor market, and most notably, reproductive rights. Additionally, special emphasis is placed on how these issues intersected with contemporary constructions of motherhood—an aspect frequently overlooked in existing scholarship on the topic.