Motherhood and Women’s Day in Albania

Ersejla Murati

There are countries in transition and people in difficult living conditions everywhere in the world, as we are all awared of in an important day: Women’s Day. But women in Albania have a crucial and distinctive history of emancipation. It has showed to the world the incredible reality of single albanian women for their whole lives, in order to raise their sisters and brothers in deep villages, in a rough climate, poverty and lack of schools. They were women converted to men only in their looks and clothes, making men jobs, drinking alcohool and discussing with men in the men’s room.

There were wives violated by their husbands, who were the absolute leaders of the family and their word was law; no one could defend woman’s rights, because of the fact that she was married and with this it was accepted that all her rights were in his hands. These wives couldn’t work, couldn’t study, should raise children, make the houseworks and wash by hand the clothes and everything. This kind of relation remembers me of the patron and the slave.

The following “epoch” was that of the women in the socialism system, turned dictatorship, from the 1945- 1991. Women were kind of more emancipated, studying mainly in the artcrafts previously occupied by men and working in the various industries of the time. They were turned “manish” again, because the feminin aspect was highly judged in a critical way and the “water and soap” beauty dominated. Women had to be the same with each- other, without aspirations of their own: the party (the commities built in every city) used to decide for them: where to study, where to work, even who to marry and where to live. This woman was again pressed and with no choices.

With the coming of democracy, starts the new “epoch” of the real emancipation: women are having more rights and finally deciding for themselves.

Women’s Day: facts and data

Women’s Day in Albania has always been a celebrating day, nothing to compare with other parts of the world. Only this year, 2012, a protest was held in front of the albanian Parliament. The peacefull protest was organized by an NGO which advocates for rights of women in Albania. Having a woman as the head of the parliament, albanian women in the protest with their moto “Celebration or protest?” aimed to raise awareness on cases of domestic violence, equal rights for women and other rights, to enable women empowerment in this country.

During the dictatorship, the 8 of March was celebrated as the mother’s day, while with the falling of the old regime and the new democratic system the day was reterned into its original meaning: the day of women. Nevertheless, 30% of the population still remebers this das as Mother’s Day, while the other 70% have adopted the real meaning of it. Most of the population gives presents to women on this day, in the percentage of 85%; at the other hand, 10 % say they never buy presents for this day, while the other 5 % admit they don’t like to celebrate on conditional occasions like this one. According to a convey among people of different ages and sexes conducted from one of the albanian magazines, the 8 of March is not an important day recently for age group of over 20, while for the more younger women, aged from 15- 20, this day still cares a special importance. 38 % of the interviewed people say it’s just a day in the calendar, 54 % say they celebrate this day in a way or another, while only 8 % say they feel like this day is an obligation to rembember someone special, like a mother, sister or friend. The way albanian people celebrate Women’s Day is varing from place to place and from age to age. So, there is a romantic group of people, 15% of the interviewed people, that say they would prefer a romantic dinner or lunch and flowers. 45% prefer to buy or take for present an accesory or clothes, while 30 % say they buy anything they can at the last moment, without thinking it over too much. What it is to be underlined, the fact that there are more and more women to organize the celebration of this day and to buy presents to other women (mothers, sisters and friends) more than men to women.