The most recent elections for members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, held on November 7, will be remembered for the unprecedented number of elected women.
Out of 33 candidates for new corresponding members, 22 were elected, and among them 12 are women.
All 17 proposed candidates met the criteria for regular members of SANU, among them three women, who were corresponding members until now.
All proposed candidates for foreign members were elected, including one woman.
The biggest surprise
The most surprising thing is that three women were admitted to the Department of Language and Literature as corresponding members, led by the writer Milena Marković.
Let us remind you that the member of the aforementioned Department, Matija Bećković, commenting in 2015 on the fact that there are only 160 women among 15 academics, said that "there are no women even in the national football team. And why do you think tennis is divided into men's and women's? Simply, it turns out that men are more gifted and capable of some things. You don't get into the Academy through a relationship, the criteria have to be met, and now, the more and better men meet them, that's just the real and current state of affairs."
Three years ago, there was not a single woman among the new members. Responding to the then Deputy Prime Minister Zorana Mihajlović's criticism regarding such an election, the Executive Board of SANU announced that "it considers such an outcome of the election to be extremely unsatisfactory."
It was the first public sign of a thaw in SANU's attitude towards women.
New members
The twelve new women corresponding members of SANU are: Magdalena Đorđević and Mirjana Ivanović (Department of Mathematics, Physics and Geo-Sciences), Vesna Mišković Stanković (Department of Technical Sciences of SANU), Gordana Kocić (Department of Medical Sciences of SANU), Milena Marković, Marta Bjeletić and Gorana Raičević (Department of Languages and Literature, SANU), Mirjana Rašević and Snežana Smederevac (Department of Social Sciences, SANU), Vesna Bikić (Department of Historical Sciences, SANU), Aleksandra Vrebalov and Vida Ognjenović (Department of Art, SANU).
So far, Tatjana Simić (Department of Medical Sciences, SANU), Mira Radojević (Department of Historical Sciences, SANU) and Jelena Jovanović (Department of Arts) have been accepted as regular members of SANU.
Among the foreign members of SANU as of yesterday is Vesna Garović, in the Department of Medical Sciences.
We don't want women in the Academy!
She was the first woman admitted to SANA Isidora Sekulić. It was proposed in 1939 by Bogdan Popović, a literary critic and essayist. He believed that Isidori Sekulić has a place among academics because her work represents a turning point in our literature. Bogdan Popović was an authority and his opinion on Isidore's work was not disputed, but the academics did not like to admit a woman to their membership.
She was elected by a narrow majority, and only as a corresponding member.
"I am a humble, gray figure, no better than others; I don't like the badges and the procession going forward. Therefore, the Academy caused me great confusion," she wrote in a letter to the writer and philosopher Vasa Stajić.
In November 1950, she was elected a regular member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. She commented: "Some people are now telling me: You became a member of the Academy under the communists!" They say, but they don't know or won't know that before entering the Academy I was rejected three times! (....) I remember the first time before the war I was suggested by the esthetician Bogdan Popović. If only you knew how bitterly respected academics at that time beat their fists on the table during the session and shouted: We don't want women in the Academy! However, I am proud to be the first woman in the Serbian Academy to break the ice there."
