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Gender equality campaign, launched on 8 March by French Embassy in Bucharest
The French Embassy in Romania is launching a communication campaign on Monday aimed at increasing awareness of gender equality, according to a press release sent on Monday.
The campaign, which will start on 8 March and end on 25 November - International Day for the Elimination of Violence on Women, will give the floor to personalities from different fields of activity, from politics and media to civil society and sport, to discuss what gender equality means at the moment.
"To me, equality means access, without barriers, without discrimination, to everything society proposes to men and women," France's Ambassador to Romania Laurence Auer said in the first message of this campaign, published on the diplomatic mission's Facebook page.
Each message in favour of this case will be promoted on the website and social networks of the French Embassy in Romania.
The campaign takes place on the margins of the Equality Generation / Generation Egalite.
În this context, Senate President Anca Dragu said that the number of abused women has increased in the pandemic, therefore measures must be taken at the level of public policies.
"During the pandemic we see a worrying increase in the number of abused women. Domestic violence is a very serious problem in Romania. (...) A study by the Faculty of Medicine shows that in the first three months of the pandemic, in 2020, the number of women who arrived with polytraumas at the hospital is four times higher than before the pandemic. These figures worry us. (...) This is an alarm signal that something needs to be don at the public policy level," Anca Dragu told a debate on "Woman's transformation, from social inclusion to leadership," organised by the French Institute.
According to the President of the Senate, public policies mean awareness, a continuous effort to bring up the issue of gender difference, violence against women, to create mentalities.
"We need state institutions to act, civil society, NGOs, we need the law, but it somehow comes in the end. We can write an article of law, 'From tomorrow women are equal to men', but it cannot be applied, we have to create a whole mechanism," explained Anca Dragu.
According to her, women were more affected than men in the pandemic from other points of view as well. Anca Dragu mentioned that more than 80% of the doctors and nurses in Romania are women, and they "carried the burden" of the pandemic.
She specified that Romania ranks 26th out of 28 in the EU in terms of the gender equality index.
"The gender equality index places us in a not very honorable place, in 26th place out of 28 EU member states. We are better at issues related to the pay gap between women and men, here we have a difference of only 3%, but I looked a little deeper into these figures and it is a little misleading situation, because we have the public sector dominant there, where we have a lot of women and as such somehow blur these figures, but if we look at specific areas, like the political one, then the gender difference is very accentuated," said Anca Dragu.
(source photo: https://www.facebook.com/France.Romania/posts/4211853015492506)