EWL News

International Women’s Day 2018

Posted on 12 March 2018 |

[Brussels, 13 March 2018] Last week we celebrated International Women’s Day 2018 (8 March), where women all over the world took to the streets for equality!

Here is the message we sent out to mark the day:
“We believe, as a society, every day we have the power to make change happen! Every day we have to shift the power dynamics that cause conflict, exploitation and systematic violence against women. Every day we want those with political and economic power to lift the voices of those without to create a better world for all women and girls.

Every day women across Europe take it to the street to reclaim their power and agency. This has led to concrete changes: This week a court ruling in Ireland means they have moved even closer to the upcoming Referendum on women’s rights to reproductive choice. This is the result of years of activism from women and mirrors similar movements for reproductive rights, against sexual harassment and for equal pay in Poland, Croatia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and beyond.

We are half the population, we are the future, every day.”

Activities
In Brussels our Secretariat supported lots of different activities such as a hackathon to make women more visible on Wikipedia together with the Swedish Permanent Representation, talking feminism with environmental activists, meetings with members and partners such as the Feminist Forum and marching for equality. We also handed over the Woman in Power award to Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy together with the European Movement International.

Across Europe our members led the charge with a huge variety of events and celebrations. These included a conference in France relating to Women and Growth Initiatives (more information here), more focus on finance with CESI calling for greater gender parity, street actions in Belgium (which made the cover of the Huffington Post coverage of Women’s Day!) and a press conference calling for greater supports for single mothers, in Ireland women took to the streets to mark progress towards greater reproductive health supports (more information in Euronews), in Croatia there were calls for better women’s labour rights and women in Spain participated in a massive strike action to protest unfair wages and domestic violence.

This is only a brief selection of activities – to get an idea of the huge variety of protests, events and celebrations check out our members’ list on Twitter here!