Features of the Position of Bosnia And Herzegovina’s Woman in Two Public Spheres (Politics and Academic Community) In the First Decades of the Third Millennium

This paper presents two spheres of public engagement of women in the contemporary society of Bosniaand Herzegovina (BiH): politics and the academic community. An insight into the first sphere, thepolitical one, provides an introductory, succinct overview of the development of societal roles andpositions of women during the period of Jugloslawia (1945-1992). Afterward, it focuses on the currentposition of women in another public sphere, the academic community. The applied method was a test(questionnaire). The first challenge was to determine the exact number of women engaged in the teachingprocess at the chosen public university in BiH (University of Zenica) since it was not possible to obtaindata through the official internet websites or from the relevant published documents. According to theseofficial documents, the total number of employees based on contracts for full-time or piece-workengagements in 2017 was 520. But, these documents did not contain data on the number of men andwomen who are engaged as teachers. Based on data available on the internet websites of faculties ofthis University, there were 65 women engaged as teachers; all were full-time employees since thesewebsites did not present persons engaged as teachers on other legal bases. Results confirmed, whilewomen were not taking the managing positions, men were undoubtedly dominant in higher educationinstitutions managing positions. Although women fairly successfully graduate from all three universitystudy cycles, afterward they face the so-called „glass ceiling“, disabling them or making it very hard toofficially enter the education institutions as employees, which limits any future advancement. Womenwho managed to become faculty members were very often faced with gender-based stigmatization and/orsegregation. Further analyses should establish why women, as employees of HEIs, hesitate and declineto accept managing positions. Also, it is necessary to enhance the higher education institution’smethodology of reporting, for HEIs to provide clear data on the number of women engaged in theteaching process, and data on their status (assistants or senior assistants, and assistant, associate or fullprofessors). When a total number of women employed as teaching, administrative and technical staff inan HEI is given, the actual state of gender equality in any of the mentioned three segments is presented.The importance of women’s participation in politics becomes also clear in this point since it is extremelyimportant to have political awareness and readiness for solving problems and creating relevant policiesfor the above issues.