SLAVLJE ŽENA / CELEBRATING WOMEN
of 1915, when she participated in the defence of Belgrade as a bomb- er. It was on the Drina that she was decorated with her first Karađorđe Star with Swords. She spent the final days of her life residing in a small apartment in Belgrade’s Braće Jerković neighbour- hood that she’d received from the state. She was 84 years old when she died. It was only 40 years after her death that the remains of this Serbi- an heroine were transferred, with the highest military and state honours, from her family tomb to the Alley of the Greats at the New Cemetery. And so it was that, at least symboli- cally, the only woman to receive the French Croix de Guerre with Golden Palm military decoration was hon- oured for her epic deeds. She was recently included on the list of the 10 greatest female combatants of all time, which was compiled by famous American website Listverse. DRAGA LJOČIĆ Born into the house of a rich mer- chant in Šabac on 28 th February 1855, at the age of seven she was confronted by the poverty that had hit her once prominent family, and after complet- ing primary school she departed her hometown and went to study in Bel- grade, at the Women’s High School. Despite unfavourable material con- ditions, at the age of 17 she opted to step away from the framework of the then modest education reserved for young girls and to head to Zurich. In
1872 she became the first girl from Serbia to study medicine at the Uni- versity of Zurich. She halted her stud- ies in 1876 in order to help in the war effort in the best way she could – as a medical assistant. She returned to university having earned the rank of lieutenant. She graduated in 1879 and thus became the first woman to bring Serbia a diploma as a doctor of medicine, surgery and eye diseases, as well as being only the fourth woman to earn a doctorate in that field any- where in Europe. ISIDORA SEKULIĆ Born in the Bačka village of Mošorin near the town of Titel on 16 th February 1877, Isidora was inter- ested in pedagogy in her childhood. She studied first in Sombor and later in Budapest, where she studied math- ematics and the natural sciences. She worked as a mathematics teacher in Pančevo, Šabac and Belgrade, before obtaining her doctorate in Germany in 1922. She spent the periods of the 1915 and 1941 occupations in Serbia, living in seclusion, only to become more actively engaged in public life at the end of World War II. She was selected to be a regular member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences in 1950, as the first female academic. She was considered the most edu- cated and intelligent Serbian woman during her lifetime. She spoke multi- ple languages and was familiar with many cultures, and apart from litera- ture, her field of interest also extend- ed to music and painting, which she wrote about as a top specialist. The work that would bring her repute on the literary scene of the time was pub- lished in 1913 under the title Saput- nici [Companions]. JELISAVETA NAČIĆ Born on 31 st December 1878, Jelisaveta was predisposed to the technical sciences from her early edu- cation. She used the funding that the girls of the time set aside for marriage to make her dream come true. She wanted to become an architect and succeeded, becoming the first female architect in Serbia at the age of 22, but also the first woman employed in
MARTA JORGOVIĆ (oko 1742 – oko 1780) prva je devojka u Srbiji sa završe- nom srednjom školom. Završila je prvu srpsku gimnaziju u Novom Sadu koju su do tada, a i mnogo decenija nakon nje, pohađali isključivo mladići. Prema arhiv- skim podacima, nijedna devojka se čak i decenijama posle Marte nije upisala u srednju školu.
MITRA MITROVIĆ (1912–2001) bi- la je prva ministarka u istoriji Srbije (od 1945. do 1949), spisateljica, učesnica Narodnooslobodilačke borbe tokom Drugog svetskog rata. Borila se za rod- nu ravnopravnost i bolji položaj žene u društvu. Učestvovala je u osnivanju Antifašističkog fronta žena Jugoslavije. MARTA JORGOVIĆ (C.1742-C.1780) was the first girl in Serbia to complete secondary school. She graduated from the first Serbian high school in Novi Sad, which until then - and for many subse- quent decades - was attended exclu- sively by young men. According to ar- chival data, not a single girl enrolled in high school for many decades even after Marta’s success. MITRA MITROVIĆ (1912-2001) was the first woman to be a government minis- ter in the history of Serbia (from 1945 to 1949). She was also a writer and a par- ticipant in the National Liberation Strug- gle during World War II. She fought for gender equality and the better position of women in society. She participated in the establishing of the Women’s An- ti-Fascist Front of Yugoslavia.
JELISAVETA NAČIĆ
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