1995-2005: REVIEW OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE BEIJING PLATFORM FOR ACTION BY THE EUROPEAN UNION, REPORT BY THE EUROPEAN WOMEN’S LOBBY

Translation and publication by the Bulgarian Women’s Lobby, Sofia 2005

This report focuses on reviewing the progress made by the European Union institutions in implementing the 12 areas of concern of the Beijing Platform for Action since 1995. Major changes have taken place at the global level as well as within the European Union during the reporting period, which had an impact on European policies on equality between women and men.

The translation and editing in Bulgarian are done by the Coordination Committee of the Bulgarian Women’s Lobby.

The Bulgarian edition is financed by the Center of Women’s Studies and Policies.

WOMEN FROM THE CENTRAL BALKANS DURING THE OTTOMAN DOMINATION (XV-XIVV century)

Author: Olga Todorova

Gutenberg Publishing House, Sofia 2004, with the financial support of CWSP

The work, presented here, is the first attempt of its kind to produce an all-round study of the status of women belonging to the two major confessional communities,Christian and Muslim, that inhabited the territory of present-day Bulgaria with its adjacent lands during the first three centuries of Ottoman domination. It is based on a variety of sources, including a considerable number of unpublished Ottoman-Turkish archive materials – above all documents from kadi sicils of the towns of Sofia, Ruse and Vidin, dating from the middle of the 16th to the end of the 17th C., as well as from some waqf and ikвyet registers, fetva collections, etc. Data from published Ottoman, Western and domestic documents have also been drawn upon. The quantitative analysis, characteristic of social and economic studies, is made here within the legal framework, or rather – frameworks, valid for that time – which shaped the status of women,such as Sheria (Islamic religious law), Ottoman secular and Christian canon law, Bulgarian and Turkish customary law. Besides, in most such studies till now emphasis was laid on the opposition by gender, while here it rests also on comparison by confession.

For the first time considerable place is allotted to the status of both Christian women and women newly-converted to Islam.

Summary in English: Todorova_Summary.pdf (81.75 Kb)