The daughter who gave up her inheritance: Ethnography of women’s inheritance rights and their application in contemporary Macedonian context

Abstract

This text examines the experiences of several women ethnologists / anthropologists in regard to women’s inheritance rights and the traditional practices used in contemporary context in Macedonia. Women’s inheritance rights and traditional norms, which, according to the ideal model, recommend that a woman cannot be an heir of immovable property, are among the main associations of patriarchy on the Balkans. The women interlocutors in this research consistently hold on to the thesis that the term “patriarchy” is inadequate for describing in general terms the status of women in the radically divided periods of the traditional past or the contemporary context. Therefore, this situation entails a great methodological challenge in the context of the research theme, when the experiences from the everyday life of the researchers seem to contradict their theses in regard to patriarchy.