The government has been humiliating and discriminating the women in Macedonia for an entire decade! CIVIL – Center for Freedom congratulated all the women in Macedonia on International Women’s Day – March 8, reminding that the struggle for women’s’ equality is far from over.
CIVIL is warning on the increasingly deteriorating state of human rights and freedoms of women in the country, on the constant discrimination and abuse of women at all levels.
Women in Macedonia still do not have the right to choose, many of them wait for a decision from the “head of the family” on who to vote for.
CIVIL notes insufficient and inefficient legal and judicial protection of women victims of violence. Statistics show a huge number of cases of women victims of violence, and a diametrically opposed number of cases of punishments for those carrying out the violence.
No less troubling are the data on the economic inequality of women. CIVIL has warned several times that women are discriminated and harassed at the work, especially female workers in textile fabrics who work in substandard conditions for a degrading salary, and often even without a salary.
The fact that women are a subject of stereotypes and prejudgments, even in textbooks from which children learn, is a good enough indicator as to the extent to which the struggle for equality has (not) reached. A society in which domestic violence is accepted as a tradition, where single mothers are considered to be a society’s mistake, where phrases such as “you drive like a woman”, “you talk like a woman”, “she was asking for it” are generally accepted, is not a healthy society that fights for women’s rights.
Furthermore, despite legal and other standards that call for fair representation, women are not sufficiently represented in the management of the institutions and of Parliament. Even in places where they are represented in a sufficient percentage, it is done artificially, that is, it depends on the party eligibility or ineligibility of the women.
The majority of society is still guided by the maxim that a women’s primary place is in the home/kitchen. The policies of the outgoing government are even more stressing her “role” as a reproductive device. The legal regulation of abortion is also in this context, at the expense of the women in the country, reducing their right to choose. On the account of such policies, women in the country are put in a risky position, given the fact that 35 municipalities in the country did not have a primary care gynecologist!
We remind parents and teachers that March 8 is more than just a day when children need to compete on who will bring a more expensive and more valuable gift to their female teachers. The struggle for human rights begins at home!
CIVIL recommends all citizens in Macedonia to fight strongly and loudly against such conditions in society! There are many solidary people in the country, primarily from among the lines of civil society organizations.
It is high time for women’s dignity to be restored and for all of us, in solidarity, to fight for maximum respect for the rights of women in Macedonia!
