Turkey: The struggles and commitments for women's equality

Hurriyet Daily News

Equality for women a distant goal in the world

Women take to the streets worldwide to mark the 100th International Women's Day, with protests against gender discrimination and ‘femicide’ in its various forms around the world. Despite major progress over the last 100 years, ‘the hopes of equality expressed on that first International Women's Day are a long way from being realized'


Egyptian women demanding equal rights on the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day were shoved by men who said they should go home where they belong. Congolese women asked their government to protect them from systematic rapes, and in Turkey thousands took the streets to denounce honor crimes and violence against women in the country.

But the centennial anniversary of the day established by socialist women to promote better working conditions, the right to vote and hold public office, and equality with men, also was marked Tuesday by festivities including dancing in the street in South Korea's capital and a 10-kilometer run by some 8,000 women in Mexico City.

Speaking at U.N. headquarters in New York, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recalled that 100 years ago "gender equality was a largely radical idea." While progress since then should be celebrated, he said, "We must also remember that - in too many countries and in too many societies - women remain second-class citizens, denied their fundamental rights, deprived of legitimate opportunity."

Their second-class status was evident in Cairo's now famous Tahrir Square, which protesters who succeeded in ousting President Hosni Mubarak on Feb. 11 used as their base. Hundreds of women - some in headscarves and flowing robes, others in jeans - who marched to the square to celebrate the anniversary, demand equality and an end to sexual harassment were soon outnumbered by men who chased them out. "They said that our role was to stay home and raise presidents, not to run for president," said Farida Helmy, a 24-year-old journalist.

Hundreds of women demonstrated in Ivory Coast to condemn the shooting of seven women at a rally last week demanding that strongman Laurent Gbagbo quit the presidency after losing elections.

In Congo's capital, Kinshasa, the president's wife, Olive Kabila, joined the march against rape, which has long been used as a weapon of war in the country. At least 8,300 rapes were reported in 2009 but aid workers say the true toll is much higher.

In Croatia's capital, Zagreb, and the Adriatic port of Rijeka, protesters marking International Women's Day demanded jobs and called for the government to resign. In Gaza, hundreds of Palestinian women called for an end to the Israeli occupation and the rift between Hamas, which controls Gaza, and Fatah, which controls the West Bank.

And in Turkey, thousands of women took the streets to denounce honor crimes and violence against women in the country. "Don't turn our wedding dresses into shrouds," they chanted. A woman deemed to have brought shame on her family perhaps because she was raped or eloped with a boyfriend to avoid an arranged marriage can be the victim of an honor killing by a male family member.

In Greece, where the economic crisis has thrown disproportionately more women out of work, feminists staged a flash mob dubbed "Three Minutes Without Women" in a central square of Athens.

Meanwhile in Guatemala, where a culture of impunity saw nearly 700 women killed last year alone, the head of a commission on "femicide" called for a specific statute on the killing of women. In Peru, at least 123 women were killed in 2010 by their partners or former partners, authorities said. Cambodian women were unable to mark the day publicly, as authorities banned a rally amid growing concern about a crackdown on freedom of expression in the country.

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said women must be included in any process of democratic reform in the Middle East.

"In the coming months and years, the women in Egypt and Tunisia and other nations have just as much right as the men to remake their governments - to make them responsive, accountable, transparent," she told the audience that included First Lady Michelle Obama and the female president of Kyrgyzstan and prime minister of Australia.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, the first woman to lead the giant South American country, said eradicating poverty is her top goal, and can be achieved through policies designed to help women and children.

Former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, who now heads the new U.N. agency to promote women's rights, said the pioneering women who launched the annual commemoration would probably look at the world today "with a mixture of pride and disappointment."

Over one million women and men took to the streets in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland on what was originally called International Working Women's Day on March 19, 1911 to demand an end to discrimination.

The day became popular in Eastern Europe, Russia and the former Soviet bloc, and eventually spread around the globe. In some regions, it lost its political flavor and became an occasion for men to express their love for women with candy and flowers while in other regions, women's struggle for human rights and political and social equality remained the focus.

In 1975, during International Women's Year, the United Nations began celebrating March 8 as International Women's Day. Two years later the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution proclaiming a day for women's rights and international peace.

Despite major progress over the last 100 years, "the hopes of equality expressed on that first International Women's Day are a long way from being realized," said Bachelet.

Girls are still less likely to be in school than boys, almost two-thirds of illiterate adults are women, and every 90 seconds a woman dies in pregnancy or due to childbirth-related complications despite the knowledge and resources to make births safe, she said. Women also continue to earn less than men for the same work and have unequal inheritance rights and access to land.

Despite some high-profile advances, Bachelet said, only 28 women are heads of state or government and just 8 percent are peace negotiators. Last week, the Inter-Parliamentary reported that while the number of women in legislatures reached an all-time high of 19.1 percent in 2010, "the target of gender balance in politics is still a distant one."

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