The exhibition “Rights of Women in the Cultural Heritage of Serbia” was opened in the “Svetozar Marković” University Library in the presence of the Ambassador of Great Britain, Edward Ferguson, and the Commissioner for the Protection of Equality, Brankica Janković. At the exhibition, a part of about 200 digitally represented works posted on the portal http://pravazena.unilib.rs/, which speak about women’s creativity from 1867 to 1973, was shown.

This exhibition shows girls and women that their gender cannot and must not determine the scope of their achievements, but they can dream much more, Janković said at the opening, and emphasized that culture is one of the most important fields where women’s equality can be achieved. Janković added that the exhibition is an opportunity to see the whole wealth of topics that pervaded Serbian society and related to women’s rights in numerous areas, such as the military and culture, and pointed out that even today, the question is why we have not achieved full gender equality, although there is visible progress.

Ambassador of Great Britain, Edward Ferguson, pointed out that as a proud feminist, he sincerely wants Serbia and Great Britain to achieve full equality between women and men as soon as possible. He referred to famous British women like Elsie Inglis, who came to Serbia and founded 14 hospitals and saved the lives of countless soldiers, and Flora Sandes, who, thanks to the Serbian army, became the only British women soldier in the First World War. With several decorations, she reached the rank of captain.

At the opening, the anthems of Serbia and Great Britain were symbolically played with bagpipes, an instrument that connects the two countries, and the Director of the University Library, Aleksandar Jerkov, welcomed the participants and emphasized that the exhibition aims to show that the fight for women’s rights is not a passing fashion, a desire of financiers or a whim, as well as the fact that for more than 150 years there have been women’s voices fighting for rights and equality in Serbia.

The “Svetozar Marković” University Library realized the exhibition in cooperation with the Office of the Commissioner for the Protection of Equality and the Embassy of the United Kingdom.

As part of the exhibition, a book from the collection of the University Library is displayed in a digital display case, namely, the first edition of the translation of John Stuart Mill’s book “The Subjection of Women” into Serbian, which was published in Belgrade at the State Printing House in 1871, just two years after its publication in Britain.

At http://pravazena.unilib.rs/, you can find articles from Serbia’s historical newspapers, downloaded from the region’s largest digital library pretraživa.srb, which contains more than 1.2 million pages.