A case study of retraditionalization and clericalization of the Croatian society: “feminist threat” at the governing position of a higher education institution

Abstract

A case-study from a governing position of a higher education institution in Croatia will seek to demonstrate processes of dynamics of governance, manipulation and patriarchal power relations towards professional and feminist engagement and resistance to the authoritarian imposition of patriarchal norms and expectations by personal case study with autoethnography method. This is a case of professional and personal working experience in the top-administration of a higher education institution in Croatia, where was expressed a whole range of manifold forms and abuses of power, public insults and defamations in an attempt to maintain the patriarchal power system, value system etc, further imposing a more rigid form of patriarchy, even more “cemented”. In this process various actors, individuals, groups, institutions, various social influential groups have been involved. We shall examine especially repressive approach in an attempt to eliminate one person from her workplace in a higher education institution who was labelled as a secular and “feminist threat” who publicly expressed her opinion on the perspective of a non-transparent hidden and later attempted networking of incompatible types of institutions with different religious versus scientific principles, values and legal foundations as well as patriarchy interests.