AKEL on International Women´s Day
AKEL C.C. Press Office, 7th March 2016, Nicosia
On the occasion of 8th March AKEL addresses a warm, militant greeting to all the women of Cyprus. We address a heartfelt greeting to every woman, every working woman, unemployed woman, mother, young farmer, intellectual and retired woman pensioner. We also convey a warm greeting to the hundreds migrant women in Cyprus.
The struggle for parity and equal rights continues to this day to be timely. Besides, the real meaning of March 8th is to be found in the struggle for social and labour rights, for gender equality, for peace and social justice; in the struggle to eliminate all forms of discrimination and oppression that women face today at the work place, in education and with regards their participation in political and social life.
The insistence on neoliberal austerity leads steadily and with intensity to growing inequality. Labour relations are being reversed to mediaeval times. The welfare state is being dismantled and deadlocks are surfacing everywhere. In these conditions, working women are suffering twice as much. Unemployment and poverty disproportionately affects them, given that they are subjected to double exploitation and oppression, both as women workers and as women. At the same time, women´s economic dependence, in conjunction with the social degradation that is taking place, is leading to a wave of negative phenomena such as violence against women.
As AKEL, we assure that we will stand on the side of women and support the women’s movement and its demands. We shall stand on their side in their struggle to defend fundamental labour rights, social pensions and the welfare state in general; in their struggle to support the National Mechanism for Women’s Rights and first and foremost the programs and mechanisms promoting gender equality, for the implementation of the Charter for gender equality in local self-government and the speeding up of the implementation of the National Cancer Treatment Strategy.
