International Women’s Day marked on the streets, in the courts
PARIS: People around the world marked International Women’s Day Friday with protests and celebrations. Some countries marked the day by voting on — or confirming — groundbreaking legislation, while the failure of others to pass reforms on key issues such as abortion rights was the focus of some of Friday’s protests. Here is a round-up of some of the demonstrations.
AFGHANISTAN: Small groups of women staged rare demonstrations in private spaces, after a crackdown by Taleban authorities forced activists off the streets. A handful of women in several provinces gathered to demand restrictions on jobs, travel and education be lifted, said activists from the Purple Saturdays group.
PAKISTAN: Hundreds of women rallied in major cities to highlight street harassment, bonded labor and the lack of female representation in parliament. “We face all sorts of violence: physical, sexual, cultural violence where women are exchanged to settle disputes, child marriages, rape, harassment in the workplace, on the streets,” said Farzana Bari, lead organizer of the Islamabad event.
SPAIN: Tens of thousands of women marched in Barcelona, Madrid and other cities, many dressed in purple, the color associated with women’s rights. According to police estimates, 40,000 women marched in Barcelona alone, with around 30,000 in the streets of Madrid on Friday evening.
ITALY: Thousands of people marched in Rome and Milan calling for an end to violence against women following a number of high-profile cases of young women murdered by their boyfriends.
Holding banners, dancing and chanting slogans, at least 10,000 people gathered in the Italian capital at the Circo Massimo, an ancient Roman racing ground, according to police.
IRAN: Jailed Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi called for an end to “gender apartheid”, which “not only amplifies discrimination and oppression against women but also fortifies the authority of religious and authoritarian regimes”.
She denounced the regimes in Iran and Afghanistan for having “systematically ... orchestrated conditions of suppression, domination, tyranny (and) discrimination against women”.
JAPAN: Six couples marked International Women’s Day by filing a case suing the government for the right to use different surnames after marriage. Under laws in place since the 19th century, married couples must choose the husband’s or the wife’s name, and about 95 percent take the man’s, according to the plaintiffs’ lawyers.
BRITAIN: Protesters in London dressed as characters from “The Handmaid’s Tale”, Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel about a future in which women have been reduced to chattel. They held placards calling for women’s rights in Iran. A separate demonstration in the capital’s Parliament Square highlighted the plight of women in Afghanistan, and called for the right of girls to go to school.
FRANCE: President Emmanuel Macron presided over a ceremony enshrining the right to abortion into the French constitution, the first country to make such a move. “We will not rest until this promise is held everywhere in the world,” he said.