Adrift on the Periphery: The Alternative Development of Hungarian Women’s Organizations in Interwar Transylvania

Bokor, Zsuzsa (2025) Adrift on the Periphery: The Alternative Development of Hungarian Women’s Organizations in Interwar Transylvania. HUNGARIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW: NEW SERIES OF ACTA HISTORICA ACADEMIAE SCIENTIARIUM HUNGARICAE, 14 (3). pp. 402-442. ISSN 2063-8647

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Abstract

This study explores the interwar history of Hungarian women’s organizations in Transylvania, focusing on the complex interplay between gender, ethnicity, and politics in the aftermath of the Treaty of Trianon. It examines the foundation and evolution of the Central Secretariat of the Hungarian Minority Women of Romania (RMKNKT) and its affiliated religious and social associations, analyzing how Transylvanian Hungarian women developed alternative, hybrid models of emancipation that blended traditional gender roles with modern political activism. Through discussion of archival sources from transnational perspectives, the essay traces how Hungarian women in Romania adapted to exclusion from national and international women’s organizations by reconfiguring their activism along ethnoreligious lines. It devotes particular attention to so-called “railway mission” programs designed to protect women, who were compelled to move among various locations in the country to pursue work, illustrating how these initiatives became vehicles for ethnic self-defense and identity construction. The study reveals that Hungarian women’s activism in interwar Romania cannot simply be categorized as conservative or progressive. Instead, it operated in a liminal space shaped by the constraints of minority status, the failures of multicultural inclusion, and opportunistic engagement with both international and religious networks. This essay contributes to the redefinition of minority women’s political subjectivity and highlights how social work and community care were understood in ethnic frameworks.

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