Milica
Andjelic

1
When I was little, my dream was something completely different. Admittedly, it was still creative, but quite different from what I do today. I dreamed of becoming a hairdresser. I wanted to be one because I often went to the hair salon with my grandmother. The women who came there — housewives, dishevelled, each with their own different stories, family stories that were both difficult and beautiful — would leave the salon smiling.
2
Even before I started school, my grandmother looked after me, and I regularly went with her to the market and everywhere she went. She went to the hairdresser twice a month, and I simply noticed it. Women would arrive exhausted and in a bad mood, then they would unburden themselves a little with the other women, talk to each other, give each other advice. Then a new hairstyle — so it was fascinating to me how they looked when they came in and how they actually looked when they left. Do you remember those old hairdryer hoods? I thought it was some kind of magic machine for fixing your mood. In reality, it was simply one woman extending a hand to another, helping her, giving advice, while also doing her hair and making her look nice. Probably some celebration or event was waiting for them the next day, or there was some reason they had come. So it was truly fascinating to me.
3
The beginning was extremely difficult. When I started appearing at meetings of winemakers and vineyard owners in Bosnia and Herzegovina — I can call it that — there were unpleasant situations. Men would say things like it was bad luck for a woman to enter the cellar. They had those kinds of remarks. By nature, I am not a confrontational person, and they accepted me very quickly. Today, I am their equal.
4
At the same moment, we are working, racking wine, doing something and racking wine, while thinking whether the child has gone to school, whether they have eaten, whether they bathed last night. We somehow work on multiple levels at the same time, and these are some of the essential differences between women and men in every job, not just in winemaking.
5
I really don’t feel any difference now, although at the beginning it was really hard. First of all, it was uncomfortable for me. In 2011, I enrolled in sommelier school. I walked into a room where 20 men were sitting, two male instructors, and me. I didn’t know anyone. Today I know all of them. They are now my friends, my colleagues. We stay in touch privately as well, and of course, we collaborate on business. So yes, it was hard. It wasn’t easy.
6
The situation today is completely different, but men still dominate in the business sphere, in politics, and in public life. We have moved forward. We have come a long way from where we were 50, 30, or 20 years ago in that sense. I think a woman just needs to feel freedom. She shouldn’t be forced to do anything she shouldn’t do. She should be given the conditions to do what she wants to do, to achieve her ambitions.
7
Because we know that 90 percent of property, of any assets, is registered in the name of a man. And that brings us to a big problem, because women have no basis on which to get financial loans from banks or any other institutions that provide support. There is still a lot that needs to change.
8
I know many women who had brilliant visions, ideas, and business plans –- everything – but they simply didn’t have support because they had nothing tangible in their own name. No car, no apartment, no land — nothing. Everything was in the name of their brother, father, or husband.
9
Strong women of the Balkans are strong for many reasons. We can start from the historical aspect, where they were left alone, fought against hunger, remained without family, without husbands, without children. The moment a woman in the Balkans was brought to the point where there was no one else and she had to do it herself — that gave birth to strength in her.
10
It matters to us — we women who work, who try, who fight in the real world, we don’t live in any unreal world, we fight in reality — and it matters to us when someone recognises our work, our effort, our moving forward.