Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
In the Czech Republic, the legal definition of rape requires the threat of violence. Campaigners say it is failing victims
“I felt so lost when I heard the court verdict; as if the fact that he raped me was somehow not enough,” said Jana Novak.
Novak, from Prague, pressed charges against her (...)
While terminating a pregnancy is legal in Croatia, access to abortion is becoming increasingly challenging.
Zagreb, Croatia – Zorana did not expect the call to come so soon.
Two weeks earlier, she had signed up online to be a Brave Sister and was still considering the level of involvement she (...)
On March 8th, 2021, International Women’s Day, I drew a lightning bolt on my mask in red lipstick, put a thermos in my backpack, and went out into the street to demand my rights. That day, instead of receiving the traditional Women’s Day gifts—a patriarchal carnation and pair of stockings—I stood (...)
The coronavirus pandemic brought pressure on working people all over the world, and especially the more vulnerable – people with disabilities, mothers of young children, low-wage and cash-in-hand workers. Women, too, belong to this more vulnerable category. Female workers and public servants had (...)
8 March 2021 is taking place in the context of a global crisis in the system that particularly affects women. The jobs that they occupy overwhelmingly, particularly in the care sector but also in the public services, have often been in the front line in the face of the Covid crisis19. And as (...)
New research from anti-extremism charities reveals ‘unexpected patterns’ of opinions towards feminism across Europe
Few would consider Italy – known for its ‘macho’ politics and far-Right leaders promoting ‘traditional’ gender roles – as a hotspot for feminist values in Europe. But a new survey, (...)
Note from LeftEast Editors: We share the Essential Strike Manifesto by E.A.S.T. (Essential Autonomous Struggles Transnational), a network composed mostly of women, migrants, workers and activists born out of the struggles on social reproduction triggered by the pandemic crisis of Covid-19. (...)
From Catholic fundamentalism to the far right, a diverse and loosely connected network of anti-gender movements is growing in the country and creating new challenges.
In 2004, Spain witnessed some of the earliest mass demonstrations in Europe against the same-sex marriage law, which passed (...)
“Gender” has become a highly contentious word in Bulgarian. After a carefully staged moral panic around the ratification of the Istanbul Convention in 2018, it has been appropriated as a term of abuse by politicians and other actors. This has served not only to undermine women’s and LGBTQ rights. (...)
In Poland, something has been broken, something has overflowed. It is the end of’ a certain compromise in Poland. It is not a question of a “compromise on abortion”, because there never was one, but of a much broader systemic compromise : the Grand Compromise between the state and the Church on (...)
Poland has been gripped in recent weeks by a massive strike movement led by women in response to an attempted constitutional ban on abortion. rs21 spoke with several feminist activists in Polish union Inicjatywa Pracownicza about the movement.
rs21: What was the political situation in the (...)
About 100,000 people take to the streets of Warsaw to oppose tightened abortion law
About one hundred thousand protesters took to the streets of the Polish capital, Warsaw, on Friday, in the largest demonstration of popular anger directed against Poland’s ruling rightwing Law and Justice party (...)
Note from LeftEast editors: This text first appeared on the Transnational Social Strike Platform website. It is co-authored by members of the LevFem and Transnational Social Strike Platform collectives. The text reflects key issues discussed during a June 28, 2020 online webinar coordinated by (...)
Polls before Sunday’s elections show women under 30 typically much more liberal than men
Out on the campaign trail before Poland’s parliamentary elections, Jolanta Banach, a leftwing candidate, has noticed a recurring pattern. “There’s a young couple out for a walk with a pushchair, and I approach (...)
Politicians brace for protests over plan to end discrimination over fertility treatments
The French parliament on Tuesday begin a heated debate over Emmanuel Macron’s first major social reform: a law to end discrimination over women’s reproductive rights by allowing lesbian couples and single (...)
Demonstrations across the country come after 19 women were killed by their partners
Protesters took to the streets of more than 250 towns and cities across Spain on Friday night to declare a “feminist emergency” after a series of high-profile rape cases and a summer in which 19 women were (...)
On the 26th of July, Alexandra Măceșanu, aged 15, was declared missing. The teenage girl had been kidnapped 3 days prior from nearby the city of Caracal, in the south of Romania, held against her will and raped by 65-year-old Gheorghe Dincă. Dincă confessed not only to her murder, but also to that (...)
Women are being placed in private properties, where they are forced to pay €250 a week for a shared room, and hand over 50% of what they make from clients
Crime is almost always one step ahead of the law, because a law has to be broken before police can act. And in the seedy underworld of (...)
“But what do they want?” was the question since the first Feminist Conference in June 2018 held in Lausanne and its call for a Women*’s / Feminist strike to be held a year later. On the 14th of June 2019, exactly 28 years after the first-ever women*’s strike in Switzerland, more than half a million (...)
Jürgen Rudloff’s chain of ‘wellness spas’ sold sex as a health service for men. But his business model was fatally flawed – as his trial for aiding and abetting trafficking revealed
Until his dramatic fall from grace, Jürgen Rudloff was the self-proclaimed “brothel king” of Germany. Owner of a chain (...)
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