Report International Women's Day
A feminist movement in 1980s Italy. ©Universo femminile

A fight that's far from over

Exactly 100 years after its launch, International Women's Day offers an occasion for reflection on the role of feminism and the campaign for the liberation of women, whose evolving objectives no longer command the consensus they enjoyed in previous decades. The European press reports:

Published on 8 March 2010 at 17:37
A feminist movement in 1980s Italy. ©Universo femminile

"Exactly one century ago, women from 17 countries meeting in Copenhagen decided to establish a day for the celebration of women everywhere in the world," which became International Women's Day (IWD) explains Evenimentul Zilei. The Romanian daily goes on to wonder if "one hundred years later, delegates who attended the 1910 conference would be content with the progress made in the field of women's rights," and concludes that they would have little reason to be satisfied. Of course, women now have the right to vote, but they are still under represented in national parliaments. In the United Kingdom for example, "women only account for 20% of MPs," which prompts Evenimentul Zilei to remark that at this rate "feminists will have to wait until 2200 for gender parity in politics."

In Le Monde, feminist researchers Rose-Marie Lagrave and Juliette Rennes argue that success in the reduction of social divides linked "to class, skin colour and sexual orientation" should encourage the feminist movement and the campaign for parity to focus on age-based discrimination. The question of age "remains one of the multiple inequalities that is rarely discussed by women and feminists. Over the last 40 years, most of the main feminist campaigns have focused on issues relating to fertility and employment: equality in the workplace, the liberation of women's bodies, and freedom of choice with regard to pregnancy."

A part-time Dutch problem

In the columns of Dutch daily Trouw, Queen's commissioner and former minister Karla Peijs points out that discrimination is largely a function of socio-economic status and criticises the feminist movement for its excessive focus on "glass ceilings" that hinder women in high-profile careers: the balancing of work and family commitments is much easier for senior managers than it is for women further down the corporate ladder. Executives are paid to achieve objectives, while secretaries are paid by the hour.

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According to Peijs, more attention should be paid to the plight of women in modest jobs and part-time work (75% of working women in the Netherlands): particularly with regard to "the backward education system in the Netherlands," which obliges parents to stay at home to feed their children when they return home for lunch in the middle of the day.

Worse than religious fanaticism

The young women in the Parisian suburbs, who relate their everyday lives in BondyBlog, believe that "executive mom" and "feminist" role models are no longer appropriate in today's world. Interviewed in Le Monde, they assert that "feminists no longer encourage us to dream of a better world. Theirs is a backward-looking, negative agenda, which always stigmatises men as the selfish holders of power," complains Faïza, aged 26.

"Today feminism is worse than religious fanaticism. It is almost an extremist doctrine," agrees Widad, age 24, who notes that "a man who dares to contradict the dogma imposed by feminist orthodoxy will be immediately dubbed a 'macho', while women traitors, who don't agree with feminist concepts are automatically dismissed as 'submissives'".

Towards an end to 'male servitude'?

In Germany, Tageszeitung (TAZ) reports on increasing hostility to feminism in the press in recent years. It began in 2007 with a Spiegel attack on "the authoritarian teaching of gender which aimed 'to transform little boys into critics of their sex'". This was followed by a Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung campaign against "the logic adopted by the feminist lobby," which places loyal feminists in key jobs in a bid to bring about "a sex change in politics."

The weekly Focus has been accused of regularly referring to men as the "weakened sex," which TAZ believes will pave the way for a new civil rights movement. These publications are clearly sympathetic to the "men against feminism movement," which the Berlin daily reports has launched a number of initiatives to cancel measures designed to raise the status of women. These include a campaign by the Young Liberals party, which "demands an end to 'male' servitude, the scrapping of German laws on gender, as well as a number of UN resolutions and several passages in European treaties which establish quotas for women."

European Union

Tackling gender-based violence

At a meeting on 8 March, European employment and social affairs ministers will take "a first step" towards the creation of a European observatory on gender-based violence, reports El Periódico. The project launched "on initiative of the Spanish EU Presidency" will break new ground, even if it has yet to "result in the creation of a specific body," points out the Barcelona daily. It will include provision for the definition and monitoring of "common indicators" by two existing institutions, the European Institute for Gender Equality and the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, and a single European "helpline" to provide assistance and information to the victims of this type of violence. However, the newspaper notes that a plan to ensure that barring orders "are valid in all the countries" of the EU has been derailed by legal issues over how it can be applied in various national jurisdictions.

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