Soraya Post and the other feminist candidates were
compelled to run after tiring of women's rights and equality being shunned.
Caroline De Haas
– May 23, 2014
This weekend it looks
likely that the first MEP to represent a feminist party
will be elected to the European parliament – Soraya Post of the Swedish
Feminist Initiative. The elections are also the first time that French candidates
who are specifically feminist have stood for the European parliament, on a list
I set up: Féministes pour une Europe Solidaire (Feminists for a United Europe).
The rise of feminist candidates
in Sweden, France
and Germany has prompted questions about
why they are standing, and why feminist MEPs might be necessary in Europe.
In France in
recent years feminist activists, both women and men, have chosen various
strategies to put feminism at the heart of the political agenda – protesting
against the political parties at public events, or getting involved with
organisations on the left. The reason large numbers of activists have decided
to bite the bullet and get involved in the European elections is to respond to
two pressing problems: women's rights and a social crisis.
When it comes to women's rights, people across
Europe have looked on in astonishment as Spain
has moved backwards on women's rights to
control their own bodies. Put simply, the conservative
government is planning to ban abortion except in cases of rape or where there
is a danger to the mother. What have the European institutions had to say?
Nothing. Stony silence, as if the right to abortion was not the cornerstone on
which all other women's rights are built. Without the freedom to control our
own bodies, it is impossible to imagine women achieving equality in
professional or political life, or within the family.
The Spanish decision on abortion underlines the
fact that, while Europe has made progress towards
equality, we have not yet won. To take another example, one European woman in three
has been the victim of some form of physical or sexual abuse. One in three!
The social position of women in Europe
is also a pressing issue. Austerity policies that hit Europeans are an economic
aberration as well as a human rights disaster – and they affect women in
particular. This is true when member states decide to freeze public sector salaries, as in France,
or reduce the number of public sector
employees, as in the UK.
"But that affects everyone," I hear you say. True. But in Europe
almost 70% of public sector workers are women. When you freeze public sector
salaries you primarily affect women. And you slow progress towards equality,
which wasn't that fast in the first place.
The feminist candidates who have
run in this election have had enough of watching from the sidelines. They have
decided to insist that equality between the sexes is a policy matter in its own
right, just as important as other social or ecological matters. When we talk
about equality between women and men, we have to look at it from the point of
view of the most vulnerable and least privileged. And as such, we cannot accept
economic or social policies that leave so many European citizens – both women
and men – behind.
Candidates for Féministes pour
une Europe Solidaire have pulled the emergency cord. We want the right to
abortion to be incorporated into the European charter of fundamental rights so
that member states, particularly Poland,
Ireland and Malta,
have to guarantee women's freedom to control their own bodies. We are also
calling for the appointment of a European commissioner responsible for gender
equality, to make sure women's rights are not overlooked when European policy
is formed.
Feminist lists and feminist
parties are an opportunity to inspire dozens of women and men who have never
taken the plunge before to engage politically. Good luck to Soraya Post, and
here's to the rise of a new feminist voice in Europe.