This paper focuses on Jews as subjects in the struggle for women’s emancipation in Habsburg Galicia from a (post)colonial perspective. The Polish feminist and writer Maria Janion proposed the thesis that Poland should be perceived as a colonizing and colonial country in terms of its eastern neighbours, and also in relation to its Jewish population. She argues that this relationship, after Said’s postcolonial theory, can be also described in gender constructions. Janion’s theoretical construct serves as a prism to examine the relationship between Polish and Jewish women in the associations of women within the women’s movement; the perception of the female Jews from the perspective of Polish feminists; and the Jewish national movement at the beginning of the 20th Century in Austrian Galicia from the women’s historical perspective. Following Janion’s thesis, on the one hand the way Polish feminists acting in Galicia focused Jews in the medial course should be clarified, as should the extent to which growing antisemitism led to changes in the women’s associations. On the other hand, light needs to be shed on the relationship of the Zionists to the Jewish Women’s associations on the basis of discursive inscriptions within the Galician Jewish national press, reflecting the changes in Jewish women’s associations.

Th e 19th-century dispute over the Austro-Hungarian border in the Polish Tatra Mountains ended with an international arbitration award in 1902 in Graz. It is widely regarded as a success for the defenders of integrity of the Polish lands under partitions. Th e article examines the indications that the conciliation tribunal did not resolve the dispute on its own, but issued a judgment merely implementing a confi dential agreement between the Austrian and Hungarian governments on this matter.