Non-governmental organisations and civic activists today submitted an initiative to the Municipality of Rožaje, the Municipal Assembly of Rožaje and the Council for Proposing Names of Settlements, Streets, Squares and Institutions, calling for a street in the town to be named after Professor Hedija Heda Fetahović, the first woman from Rožaje to obtain a university degree.
We expect unanimous support for this initiative from councillors, through which Rožaje would pay well-deserved tribute to an educator who spent decades teaching generations of young people. History and the culture of remembrance have long kept women on the margins, and it is time to begin correcting that injustice, at least in part, through public space as well.
Hedija Fetahović was born in Rožaje in 1942. She lost her father at an early age, after which her paternal uncle took responsibility for her and her brother and ensured their education. She graduated from the Secondary Teacher Training School in Novi Pazar, after which she began working at the “Mustafa Pećanin” Primary School in her hometown, teaching a class of as many as 58 pupils. She later graduated in Slavic Studies from the Faculty of Philology in Priština, becoming the first woman from Rožaje to obtain a university degree. Until the end of her life, she worked as a Russian language teacher at the “30 Septembar” Gymnasium in Rožaje.
Her colleague, Professor Naza Fetahović, wrote that Heda “possessed an exceptionally broad culture, a strong pedagogical sense and a deep commitment to school education and the moral upbringing of pupils, as well as to shaping well-rounded young people”, and that she “regarded working with children as a pleasure rather than an obligation”. Her emancipatory influence is also recalled by her former pupil Munevera Sutović, who wrote in a text published on the portal that, for girls in Rožaje, Heda was a woman who had “already broken down the wall behind which girls were raised solely and exclusively for marriage and family” and had “opened the doors to a world that until then had belonged only to men”. This is why, Sutović notes, Heda should be remembered and why we should “say her name aloud every time we think something is impossible for us”.
Heda’s significance lies not only in the fact that she was the first. More importantly, through her knowledge, work and personal example, she showed other girls that education opens up space for freedom, choice and a more equal place in society. Her pupils went on to become doctors, lawyers, architects, health and social workers, businesspeople and other members of the community, carrying forward the knowledge and values on which she firmly insisted.
The public space of every town speaks about whom we remember, which values we uphold and whose contribution we consider important enough to pass on to future generations. That is why women who transformed their communities must become more visible in the names of streets, squares and other public spaces.
According to data from 2021, only 40 streets in Montenegro bore the names of women, accounting for 1.7% of all street names, while more than 700 were named after men. In northern Montenegro, only two streets bear women’s names – Milka Bajić Poderegin in Pljevlja and Lenka Jurišević in Bijelo Polje. It would therefore carry particular symbolic significance if the first woman after whom a street in Rožaje is named were precisely the first woman from that town to obtain a university degree. Women who played educational and emancipatory roles in their communities deserve a place in the culture of remembrance, and Heda Fetahović is undoubtedly one of them.
Given that Professor Fetahović passed away in 2004, the time requirement prescribed by Article 9 of the Law on Memorials for naming a street after her has also been met.
We call on the councillors of the Municipal Assembly of Rožaje to unanimously support this initiative. Naming a street after Heda Fetahović would be a tribute to an exceptional educator, but also a lasting message to new generations of girls that knowledge can push back the boundaries imposed on them by society.
Centre for Civic Education (CCE)
Centre for Women’s and Peace Education ANIMA
Dina Bajramspahić, civic activist
Jovana Marović, civic activist
Paula Petričević, civic activist