Joint Press Release by the Global Young Greens (GYG) and the Federation of Young European Greens (FYEG) on occasion of the International Women’s Day
The observance of International Women’s Day by the Federation of Young European Greens and the Global Young Greens aims to affirm the need to continue with practical advocacy and relentless efforts to ensure that the rights of women are upheld and that the gains made are not taken away. The commonality of gendered disadvantage, discrimination, difference, violence, inequality are matters both of global and of local justice.
Women in most modern societies are represented in all its spheres, from being politicians, employees and employers, to being mothers, partners. On the other hand, they are trafficked and sold, raped inside and outside marriage, abused, presented naked or half-naked in the mass media and consumer products of all kinds. Women are still most affected by poverty and unemployment, by still not having equal acess to education and ownership followed by the constant pay gap and abuse of women’s labor. There is no reasonable argument to tolerate the permanent questioning of women’s voices, their sexual and reproductive rights and freedoms any longer!
In areas of conflict, women are especially targetted as victims of violence, predominantly by the use of rape and abuse as a weapon of war by armed forces.
History proves that women hold major contributions in working towards peace, but when different parties are initiating negotiations, women are left out. Post-conflict reconstruction processes are based on male interests mostly and lack support for the women whose outstanding sufferings are simply not recognised.
As long as women’s interests are thrown to the periphery, half of the world’s population will suffer further injustices due to gender. Our societies are evidently shaped by the patriarchal matrice of values present in every sphere of our lifes and visible in our laws and intra human reactions, which deny women a voice and permit violence against femininity. It is urgent to acknowledge women as equal members of society. Not only by legal regulations, but by a human understanding of respect for every person.
End the victimisation and degradation of women NOW! See the person, not the gender!
