The Women Who Have Changed This Place: Romania‘s Feminists and Their Interest in Education
The Women Who Have Changed This Place: Romania‘s Feminists and Their Interest in Education

Summary/Abstract: This article investigates the tradition of women whose role in the evolution of the education system advanced the cause of women in Romania. They include pioneering feminists Maria Rosetti, Queen Marie of Romania and Alexandrina Cantacuzino, who concerned themselves with the situation of women and ethnic minorities, but also, more recently, educationists such as Mihaela Miroiu, Laura Grünberg and many others, who contributed to setting up women‘s and gender studies departments and shaping the field in the late twentieth century. I propose that not only are cosmopolitanism, cultural exchanges and journeys the catalysts of progress and innovation, but, contingently, they also result in the – sometimes unproblematic, sometimes strategic – adoption of ideas and terminologies that may not reflect the situation on the ground, but whose appropriation itself reveals deeply engrained cultural habits and has the potential to engender change. Far from experiencing a post-feminist stage or an anti-feminist backlash, I argue, the evolution of Romanian feminism is best described in contextual and comparative terms.

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