“Without us everything (the world) stops!” Women’s March, 8 March 2025; Photo: Mašina.

The project itself was initiated by women philosophers who never received feminist education during their formal education. It represents a response to centuries of neglect regarding women’s contributions to philosophical thought, as well as the need to offer schools content that reflects contemporary social issues—such as gender equality, marginalisation, and the systemic invisibility of certain groups in the philosophical canon.

The project is led by Jana Krstić, a PhD student in philosophy whom we interviewed. The team includes Jelena Joksimović, Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology, Natalija Petrović, Master of Philosophy, Saška Stanković, philosophy teacher, and Bojana Vuletić, political scientist.

Why is it important to introduce themes of gender equality, feminist deconstruction, and intersectionality into Serbian school curricula?

The crisis in Serbia’s educational system has been in the public eye for some time. After the trajic shooting incident at the “Vladislav Ribnikar” Primary School two years ago,[1] this crisis surfaced in daily politics. Despite all the protests then, and today’s blockades and strikes by education workers, there have been virtually no changes to the education system. In fact, there have been no changes to the education system for decades, although the world we live in has changed dramatically.

Our education system needs serious reform. Research by KOMS shows that nearly two-thirds of young people do not believe they have gained relevant knowledge and skills that would prepare them for later life after completing secondary school.

When we talk about philosophy as a subject, according to the current curriculum (Official Gazette of RS 4/2020), the main goal is to develop critical thinking. However, many of the topics on which students should sharpen their critical minds are not current, leaving students unprepared to critically observe reality. The oppression of certain social groups, the history of marginalisation based on gender, class, skin colour, sexuality, and the like, as well as gender roles that do not leave much freedom for individuals in a patriarchal society, are integral parts of our everyday life.

If we aim to develop critical thinking, we cannot and must not omit all these interpretations of reality from the canon. The questions of what it means to be a woman/man and how women/men should behave and what they should do today are answered by parents, schools, media, the work environment, peers... Thus, the entire society constructs our identity by telling us what we are and what we are not, while the task of philosophy is to teach us to critically examine all of this.

The reason I mentioned here is general and closely related to the goals of philosophy as a school subject. The second enormous problem is the omission of all women philosophers from the canon. Theories that have contributed to the development of philosophical thought that originated from women are not addressed in school. The problem of omitting women from the history of philosophy is not just philosophical—it is political and educational as well. Political, because it determines whose voices are given power and credibility: for centuries, women’s voices have been suppressed, so the struggle to give them their deserved place is part of the broader struggle for gender equality.

Educational, because the message to students is clear if during their schooling they only learn about the achievements of men. We implicitly tell girls that philosophy is not for them, and we tell boys that women have contributed less to the intellectual history of the world—which is both harmful and untrue. Introducing a gender perspective into philosophy teaching is not a mere “whim” of modern times, but a necessary correction of injustice and a step towards education that will be fair for all.

Jana Krstić; Photo: private archive

What are students deprived of, and what is currently being presented to them in philosophy lessons in schools? What values are currently in focus?

Although almost all female names are omitted from textbooks, and feminist theory is either not mentioned or remains reduced to two or three sentences (two out of more than 10 accredited textbooks mention that this theory exists and leave it at that), “theories about women” are not absent. Namely, many philosophers had misogynistic views, so some textbooks mention Nietzsche’s famous sentence “Are you going to women? Do not forget the whip” or Kant’s views on the inferiority of the female mind compared to the male. Why are these theories worthy enough for the canon, but gender equality as a perspective is not?

As our initiative has already been published in many media outlets in southern Serbia, we have already received many comments about how “we are trying to indoctrinate”. However, I consider indoctrination to be presenting one side and completely omitting the other. Our initiative does not ask for anything to be removed from the curriculum, but only for the other perspective to be added, thereby achieving the pluralism necessary for critical consideration and conclusion. I actually don’t think that Nietzsche’s aforementioned sentence should be omitted, because it helps us understand to what extent women were oppressed and how violence against women was normalised or, in Nietzsche’s case, understood as a positive value.

Gender equality theory is not the only one towards which the school is not fair. For example, the Institute for Textbooks’ philosophy textbook states that “no one has yet said how we can determine what is and is not a human right” (which is far from accurate), so this concept “leaves a wide field for manipulation”. Furthermore, the authors state that “advocates of human rights distance themselves from any ideology, but on the other hand, those same people are ready to bomb those who, according to their free assessment, violate (undefined) human rights”. I consider such biased textbook writing very dangerous, because a person who has read only one book is indeed more dangerous than one who has read none.

The complete absence of another perspective leads to dogmatism, kills critical thinking, and teaches us to easily accept one perspective as fact and thus fall into a multitude of logical errors. All of this is completely contrary to the goals of the philosophy subject as stated in the curriculum.

How can the wider public get involved in this initiative and support it?

First of all, it is important to recognise and accept that one half of humanity has been excluded from the history of human thought and that we must include them. My dream is that one day we will say, “Can you believe that women were once excluded from history in schools?” just as today we say, “Can you believe that women were once forbidden to wear trousers?”

After recognising that women are excluded, we need to act. The good thing about the curriculum is that it leaves teachers free to design their own approaches to teaching. So we can start teaching these theories without waiting for the Institute for Education Improvement to agree to include them in the curriculum. On the other hand, the bad thing is that education workers do not have dignified salaries, their basic needs are not met, nor do they have sufficient resources available in teaching to be able to deal with self-initiated inclusion of feminism in teaching. That’s why, after conducting experimental classes in schools, we prepared and edited materials for them.

In the next month, a monograph will be published that will contain, of course, theoretical frameworks and all the conclusions of our research, but an important part of that monograph will consist of detailed lesson plans accompanied by materials. The monograph itself will be free and available to everyone, so education workers will be able to use these ready-made materials. It was very important to us to adapt our initiative to the crisis in the education system, and not to burden teaching staff with our proposal, but rather to do the opposite. After all, the ethics of care is one of the most important principles of FER philosophy, so we have acted in accordance with these values in our approach.

You will be able to read more about all of this soon, so I invite you to follow the Centre for Girls organisation on social media where you will also be able to download the entire monograph. Also, after the monograph is published, we will hold a series of panel discussions in several cities in Serbia, mainly in southern Serbia and Belgrade, where we will be able to consider solutions to these problems together. Because only together can we make our society more equal!

Jana Krstić was interviewed by Anastazija Govedarica Antanasijević