Some depressing home truths on International Womens' Day

The alarming rise in violence against women is a major global emergency. World leaders should recognise and treat it as such.

Sexually violent crimes against women, including rape and torture, are proliferating in conflict zones like Ukraine, Gaza, Congo, and Sudan. 

There is gender apartheid in Afghanistan, and institutional discrimination against women in Iran. Women refugees face rape and detention as they try and enter Fortress Europe.

Violence, physical and verbal, against women also happens at home and when women navigate digital spaces.

Tackling these and other egregious crimes should be an EU priority. They cannot be tackled by EU Commission roadmaps and strategies alone. 

EU leaders, including commission president Ursula von der Leyen, must task their representatives to take a strong and determined stand on this global crisis at next week’s UN Commission on the Status of Women.

Inside the EU

At home in Europe, there must be a more determined effort to enforce the Istanbul Convention, the first legally-binding international instrument on preventing and combating violence against women and girls.

EU countries, including Bulgaria, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia and Slovakia and the Czech Republic, which are still holding back their ratification should be asked to hurry up and give the green light.

The EU Commission itself must either reverse its recent and sudden decision to withdraw an important proposal for an anti-discrimination directive — originally tabled in 2008 but blocked by Germany, the Czech Republic and Italy — or table a new legally binding initiative as quickly as possible.

It cannot continue to be business as usual. 

The fact that violence against women as well as the more general rollback in women’s rights are still not treated as a global emergency speaks volumes about just how little attention leaders — including women in power — are currently paying to issues of equality. 

Women’s rights were recognized as human rights in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in 1995. There have been other attempts to fast track gender equality, including through the Sustainable Development Goals.

Global movements like #MeToo and #TimesUp helped bring attention to women’s struggle to break free of patriarchal strangleholds. 

There has been some progress in some parts of the world, in some sectors over the last 30 years. Yet many of the gains are patchy and fragile. 

Most women reading this column will have their own personal story to tell about encountering 'glass ceilings' of discrimination, bias and prejudice — and also of 'sticky floors' which prevent so many of us from even attempting to climb up the ladder.

Too often, however, although sexual violence is increasingly being used as a weapon of war, torture, intimidation and humiliation, it is overlooked and sidelined in global discussions 

As of October 2024, over 600 million women and girls were affected by war, a 50-percent increase from the prior decade.

As a result, warns Antonio Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, “generational gains in women’s rights hang in the balance around the world.” 

The actual figures are probably higher. Countless women and girls suffer in silence. Many cases of sexual violence go unreported due to fear of retaliation, social stigma, and lack of access to reporting mechanisms. 

But it is not just in war that women are in danger.  

The 'hidden crisis' of domestic violence means that one-in-three women globally has experienced physical or sexual violence in her lifetime, often at the hands of an intimate partner. 

This number alone should be enough to galvanise global action 

Unprosecuted crimes in the home

But once again reports of domestic abuse are often ignored and rape cases go unprosecuted as domestic abuse, sexual violence, and femicide are often still dismissed as private matters rather than systemic injustices requiring government intervention. 

Digital spaces are new arenas for violence against women. Cyber bullying, online harassment, and digital stalking are growing concerns that disproportionately affect women and girls. 

Such violence may be “hidden” from public view or online interactions but it erodes democracy and destabilizes societies by fostering fear, silencing voices, and reinforcing systemic inequalities. 

Societies that tolerate or fail to address gender-based violence ending up normalising oppression and undermining the rule of law. The economic costs of such violence are also staggering. 

Gender-based violence costs the €366bn annually, with the largest expenses stemming from physical and emotional impacts, criminal justice services and lost economic output. 

Let’s not kid ourselves: none of this is 'inevitable' or just bad luck.

Under the guise of 'family values' — and encouraged by US president Donald Trump’s frontal onslaught on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives — Europe’s far-right leaders are attacking women’s rights in multiple ways. 

Italy’s government is promoting so-called 'traditional' family models, Hungary has enacted laws curbing LGBT+ rights, and Poland restricts access to abortions.

The dangerous message being sent out is that violence against women is tolerable or even deserved.

Going forward, the fight for equality must be collective, unwavering and universal. It cannot be selective and Eurocentric. 

It must welcome men and include all women, regardless of race, religion, class, ability, or identity and it must be deeply intersectional, thereby recognizing that oppression is multifaceted and justice must leave no one behind. 

On this International Women’s Day (Saturday, 8 March) we should promise to work harder to create a true “Union of Equality” and demand that our leaders do so as well.