Date: 2022
Type: Thesis
Women and politics in the Romanian Legionary Movement
Florence : European University Institute, 2022, EUI PhD theses, Department of History and Civilization
AXINIA, Anca Diana, Women and politics in the Romanian Legionary Movement, Florence : European University Institute, 2022, EUI PhD theses, Department of History and Civilization - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/73796
Retrieved from Cadmus, EUI Research Repository
This thesis examines women’s participation in the Legionary Movement or Iron Guard, a far-right, anti-Semitic movement active in interwar Romania. Over four chapters, I analyze how the participation of women changed over time, the different forms this participation took, and how these different forms shaped and redefined political relations within the movement. The first chapter focuses on women’s participation in the student activism that characterized Romanian universities throughout the interwar period. University politics played a major role in the origins, development, and self-image of the Legionary Movement. The chapter follows the evolution of the movement’s use of university politics through the lens of increasing female participation. The second chapter is entirely devoted to the exploration of family relations in the Legionary Movement’s ideology and experience. In the third chapter, I analyze the open support or sympathy for the Legionary Movement held among the intellectual elites of Bucharest, the aristocracy, and, finally, among some feminist circles. Gender and class dynamics are inseparable in the analysis of the political beliefs and activity of the women protagonists of this chapter, whose support of or sympathy for the Legion complicates the notion of membership and opens different perspectives on the intersection of gender and class within the movement. Finally, the fourth chapter explores the adoption and adaptation by some legionary women and, especially, by the more formal feminine section, of violence as a form of political action. What emerges from this study is the experimental nature of women’s participation, the constant redefinition of its forms and limits. Moving in an ideological framework designed for them by men, women found their space(s) of agency at the interplay of discourse and practice, through the opportunities for political action offered by the complexity of lived experience.
Additional information:
Defence date: 13 January 2022; Examining Board: Professor Laura L. Downs, (European University Institute); Professor Pieter M. Judson, European University Institute); Professor Irina Livezeanu, (University of Pittsburgh); Professor Kevin Passmore, (University of Cardiff)
Cadmus permanent link: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/73796
Full-text via DOI: 10.2870/17522
Series/Number: EUI PhD theses; Department of History and Civilization
Publisher: European University Institute
LC Subject Heading: Women -- Political activity -- Romania -- History -- 20th century; Romania -- Politics and government -- 1914-1944