Rescuing Endangered Girls: The Yugoslav Experience in a Comparative View

The chapter reconstructs and analyses the activities of three voluntary female so-cieties established during the interwar years in Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana, in order to provide assistance to girls and young women. Generally, this kind of soci-eties established homes where girls “morally in danger” could be host, assisted, and educated. A second typical activity, which is put under scrutiny, are the so-called “railway missions”: female members of the societies monitored the main railway stations in order to intercept girls travelling alone. The chapter provides an overview about these activities: who were the targeted girls, who were the female activists, how were these activities conceived and structured, and which were their cultural and moral implications. Secondly, the chapter examines to what extent and in which forms public and private actors interacted in producing normative behaviour models for young girls. The assistance schemes for “endangered” girls are notably linked with gender stereotypes, middle-class morality, female eman-cipation, and modern social anxieties about motherhood, sex, and prostitution. Finally, the Yugoslav case is contextualised in a broader European framework, in order to consider its inter- and transnational features.