by Natalie Nenandic
KARETA is the first independent, nonpolitically affiliated feminist newspaper in Yugoslavia. It is a quarterly which comes out of Zagreb, the capital of the westem republic of Croatia. It was named under the title of a poem by the late Croatian feminist poet Yelena Zuppa.
The radical feminist group KARETA was formed in the spring of 1990 in the aftermath of democratic elections in Croatia and Slovenia when it became clear that it would no longer be illegal to form a feminist newspaper outside the institution of the state. The group received a small startup grant from The Global Fund for Women.
KARETA is run by a collective which includes poets, journalists, sociologists, ethnologists, and economists-lesbian and heterosexual. In Slovenia there is also a recently formed feminist group called Lilit and a lesbian and gay newspaper called Revolver.
As the first feminist newspaper in Yugoslavia, KARETA is directed toward all women who want to engage in feminist discussions about women's new political status. Its aims are to raise women's consciousness and to stimulate further development of feminism by politicizing women's lives. KARETA covers discussions on issues such as male violence against women, women's legal status, sexual violence, women's reproductive rights,pornography, rape, prostitution, and women's work status.
KARETA prints interviews with international feminists and reviews of feminist texts in order to encourage publishers to translate foreign feminist literature.
The first issue included: a reprint of an anti-war article first published in 1917 in the Zagreb feminist periodical "Women's World," a call for an anti-war demonstration, a report on the first Parliament of the Women of Croatia, which was in part organized by KARETA, an article on how the economy excludes women, an article on women's legal status, advertisements for donations for the SOS battered women's shelter, feminist poetry and interviews with feminist filmmakers, news from international feminism, and feminist studies at Stanford.
KARETA's next issues will cover major themes of abortion, pornography and prostitution. In addition to insisting on the right to abortion, KARETA is placing pressure on the new government to invest in contraception and to politicize rape and incest
KARETA is also politicizing pornography and increasing violence against women and will print information and evidence of women being coerced into pornography. KARETA is also encouraging Che formation of feminist institutions, such as rape crisis centers (Zagreb already has a battered women's hotline number in effect for over three years), feminist bookstores, feminist historical archives, women's presses, and feminist studies programs by printing articles about such institutions abroad.
In addition to coming out with a feminist newspaper, KARETA is trying to raise money to form a badly needed feminist library/reading room so that scarce resources can be shared. The group would like to request the international feminist community to assist them in their library/reading room project by donating new and used books, pamphlets, photocopies, journals, newspapers and advice on how to run the library.
This article was compiled by the KARETA collective-Asja Armanda, Katarina Vidovic, Durda Miklauzic, Katja Gattin and Zorica Spoljar.
For more information, write: KARETA, 44 Zagorska,41000Zagreb, Yugoslavia.
Source: Off our backs, July 1991,
page 10. 2423 18th St, NW, 2nd
floor, WashingtonD.C. 20009, USA.
Tel. (202) 234-8072.