Women Remain a Minority Among Zagreb's Statues

The Zagreb city authorities last month turned down an opportunity to begin to rectify the gender imbalance in Zagreb's streets, where only 1.8 per cent of public spaces have female names.

They rejected a petition from a local association to name a street after one of three women, choosing another man instead.

According to research from 2006, only 14.3 per cent of public sculptures in Zagreb feature women.

Sanja Horvatincic, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Art History in Zagreb, said that some monuments featuring female revolutionaries and anti-fascists were removed in the 1990s because they were considered politically unacceptable.

"What is most appalling is that none of the monuments dedicated to women that were illegally removed or destroyed in the 1990s were restored to the public space," said Horvatincic, who co-organised a tour of women's monuments in the Croatian capital in 2014.

BIRN has taken a look at some of the statues of women that remain in Zagreb:

'Kumica Barica' - market woman

'Kumica' statue, Zagreb. Photo: Anja Vladisavljevic

For decades, citizens of Zagreb have been buying their groceries at Dolac, the largest market in the city centre. Since 1926, they have been served by hardworking and friendly sellers, kumicas, as they call them, who work outdoors in all weathers.

In n honour of the kumicas, this statue was erected in 2006 in front of Dolac market.

Woman in a window

'Window', a statue by Vera Dajht Kralj, Zagreb. Photo: Anja Vladisavljevic

Hidden away on a terrace in a part of Zagreb that is usually crowded with tourists stands a sculpture of a 'lady of the night' waiting for a client, made by Croatian...