World News | WOMEN'S DAY Protesters on International Women's Day Demand Equal Rights, End to Discrimination, Sexual Violence
by PTI · LatestLYIstanbul, Mar 8 (AP) Women took to the streets of cities across Europe, Africa, South America and elsewhere to mark International Women's Day with demands for ending inequality and gender-based violence.
On the Asian side of Turkiye's biggest city Istanbul, a rally in Kadikoy saw members of dozens of women's groups listen to speeches, dance and sing in the spring sunshine. The colourful protest was overseen by a large police presence, including officers in riot gear and a water cannon truck.
The government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared 2025 the Year of the Family. Protestors pushed back against the idea of women's role being confined to marriage and motherhood, carrying banners reading “Family will not bind us to life” and “We will not be sacrificed to the family.”
Critics have accused the government of overseeing restrictions on women's rights and not doing enough to tackle violence against women.
Erdogan in 2021 withdrew Turkiye from a European treaty, dubbed the Istanbul Convention, that protects women from domestic violence. Turkiye's We Will Stop Femicides Platform says 394 women were killed by men in 2024.
“There is bullying at work, pressure from husbands and fathers at home and pressure from patriarchal society. We demand that this pressure be reduced even further,” Yaz Gulgun, 52, said.
Women across Europe and Africa march against discrimination
In many other European countries, women also protested against violence, for better access to gender-specific health care, equal pay and other issues in which they don't get the same treatment as men.
In Poland, activists opened a centre across from the parliament building in Warsaw where women can go to have abortions with pills, either alone or with other women.
Opening the centre on International Women's Day across from the legislature was a symbolic challenge to authorities in the traditionally Roman Catholic nation, which has one of Europe's most restrictive abortion laws.
From Athens to Madrid, Paris, Munich, Zurich and Belgrade and in many more cities across the continent, women marched to demand an end to treatment as second-class citizens in society, politics, family and at work.
In Madrid, protesters held up big hand-drawn pictures depicting Gisele Pélicot, the woman who was drugged by her now ex-husband in France over the course of a decade so that she could be raped by dozens of men while unconscious. Pélicot has become a symbol for women all over Europe in the fight against sexual violence.
In the Nigerian capital of Lagos, thousands of women gathered at the Mobolaji Johnson Stadium, dancing and signing and celebrating their womanhood. Many were dressed in purple — the traditional colour of the women's liberation movement.
In Russia, the women's day celebrations had a more official tone, with honour guard soldiers presenting yellow tulips to girls and women during a celebration in St. Petersburg.
Germany's president warns of backlash against progress already made
In Berlin, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier called for stronger efforts to achieve equality and warned against tendencies to roll back progress already made.
“Globally, we are seeing populist parties trying to create the impression that equality is something like a fixed idea of progressive forces,” he said. He gave an example of " large tech companies that have long prided themselves on their modernity and are now, at the behest of a new American administration, setting up diversity programmes and raving about a new masculine energy' in companies and society.”
Marchers in South America denounce femicides
In South America, some of the marches were organised by groups protesting the killings of women known as femicides.
Hundreds of women in Ecuador marched through the streets of Quito to steady drumbeats and held signs that opposed violence and the “patriarchal system.”
“Justice for our daughters!” some demonstrators yelled in support of women slain in recent years.
In Bolivia, thousands of women began marching late Friday, with some scrawling graffiti on the walls of courthouses demanding that their rights be respected and denouncing impunity in femicides, with less than half of those cases reaching a sentencing. (AP)
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