CROATIAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE - WOMEN'S WAR EXPERIENCES

As direct or indirect participants, women have felt the full burden of the Croatian War of Independence. In the minority as soldiers, women experienced war as wives, mothers, refugees, prisoners, support, or engaged in providing relief. The role of women in the war is often marginalized and reduced to the passive category of civilians. Using semi-structured interview, within qualitative methodological approach, the main aim of this paper is to discover and understand experiences, perceptions and roles of women in the war. The research was conducted in 2011, in Split-Dalmatia County. The sample was selected according to the research objectives, using chain referral sampling. Used method yielded eight informants. The data were analyzed descriptively. Results show that the perception of war is primarily shaped by the psychological principle and then by the historical and political factors. Negative emotions arise from a comprehensive destruction of war. Women experienced war as a destructive and disintegrating, having severe consequences on the individual and social environment. In this meaning war causes dramatic changes in family life as well as it appears as a mechanism of isolation and exclusion. In addition, war has integrative meaning as a motive for the solidarity and cooperation in providing assistance. Women at war have a wide range of roles and activities. In the individual and social chaos of war, they try to return balance as well as to reconstruct their and lives of others. The burden of personal war experience appears as an important determinant of reconciliation. Lived experiences of war, with the burden of their consequences, continue even in the peacetime and after more than a decade and half they are so intensive that overcome religious beliefs. Adapted from the source document.