Problemele pe care România trebuie să le adreseze pentru ca egalitatea de gen să devină o realitate
(Courtesy of Sofia Scarlat)
17-YEAR-OLD STUDENT AND GENDER EQUALITY ACTIVIST SOFIA SCARLAT WRITES ABOUT THE CONVERSATIONS SHE THINKS HER COUNTRY SHOULD BE HAVING.
Growing up in a heavily Orthodox Christian community in Romania, gender equality wasn’t something that people discussed. In schools, in government buildings, at dinner tables with families and at sleepovers with friends, I sensed the lingering, heavy presence of censorship and hesitation, which prevented us from having important discussions around gender. It was an unwritten rule that everyone seemed to understand except for me.
I spent a lot of time wondering why our society was like this. I wondered why my teacher made a game out of guessing which boy in our class the girls had put on makeup for. I wondered why no one intervened when a man pulled his girlfriend’s hair in public. I wondered why the police simply left when we called them because my neighbor’s wife had run out of her house bleeding, her husband trailing behind her. I wondered how a politician could get away with making obscene gestures to female parliamentarians on live television. I wondered about all of these things and more — and I wondered why no one was asking the same questions as me.
“In schools, in government buildings, at dinner tables with families and at sleepovers with friends, I sensed the lingering, heavy presence of censorship and hesitation, which prevented us from having important discussions around gender.”
It became clear to me that for our country to move forward, we need to start talking about gender-based violence, sexual education and more. I started Girl Up Romania, the country’s first gender equality organization for teenagers, to initiate conversations on these issues with my peers. After two years of work, here are some of the conversations I’ve realized my country should be having:
Gender-based violence is everywhere.
The first step to changing our environment is realizing that we are at fault for the inequality and injustice around us. Acknowledging our part in these issues means cutting out any of the regular excuses that circulate in the media and in daily discussions about gender-based violence. No, girls who have been sexually harassed on the street are not at fault because of their clothes or makeup. No, an assault couldn’t have been prevented if the victim went on a different street at a different time. No, the family that experienced domestic violence wasn’t “different” and “had their own issues.” No, human trafficking doesn’t only exist in poor communities with little education.
These notions pollute our conversations and prevent us from accepting the truth: that gender-based violence is everywhere and no amount of precautions that a victim can take will ever be enough to stop it. We need to intervene in our communities and prevent violence — not limit the freedoms of girls.
(Courtesy of Sofia Scarlat)
Sexual education is not a threat, it is a lifeline.
Lately there have been a lot of debates in Romania around the topic of sexual education. Our president initially signed into law a bill that would’ve offered comprehensive sex-ed in schools for all Romanian children, but a month later was quickly destroyed under the pressure of religious organizations. Critics of sex ed say it will cause children to lose their innocence, encourage them to become sexually active and confuse them with all the information. These arguments are flawed. Sexual education is about having a healthy relationship with one’s body and mind. It is about equipping yourself with the knowledge to make healthy decisions for you and tackling the stigma and myths surrounding health and sex. It also helps teach children about issues they will need to know for life, like understanding of consent, sexual abuse and sexual violence.
Women and girls must be included in decision-making spaces.
Time and time again after major cases of trafficking or assault in Romania, people in newsrooms and government institutions meet to discuss solutions — but, none of those solutions will ever be effective if women and girls are not included in these conversations in an equal manner. Only women and girls understand our experiences and only we can tell you what needs to be done so we can feel safe and supported. Yet, even I have seen so many discussions of men-only panels asking themselves: “Why does this keep happening?” Maybe if you’d listen to us you would know. Today, only 19% of our Parliament members are women, and in Romania’s representatives in the EU Parliament, only six are women out of 33 members.
Gender inequality runs rampant on the internet.
All of the issues we face in real life — like sexism, discrimination, racism and so on — do not disappear when we move into an online environment. Especially during the COVID-19 lockdown, when teenagers were on the internet more than ever, my Girl Up Romania team and I identified a rapid increase in the number of revenge pornography cases. Besides the breach of privacy and non-consensual distribution of nude photographs of underage girls by their former partners, these cases also often included other worrying aspects such as harassment, blackmail, threats, doxxing, all which are life-threatening crimes.
When talking about gender inequality, we also have to think of the ways that it has evolved. The internet has offered a new medium for such aggression to happen and we need to create new measures to protect against it.
“We must begin to talk about these issues — and they are barely scratching the surface of a society that has been built on the marginalization and discrimination of women and girls.”
Laws don’t work unless we train those who apply them.
How our legislation is implemented is a whole other conversation — and one that we desperately need to have soon. Romania is the second most corrupt EU member state. If women and girls are attacked, they are then revictimized by the judiciary system as police officers, judges and attorneys are not trained to handle cases of gender-based violence.
Recently exposed cases mention judges’ rulings that girls as young as 10 years old can consent to sexual relations with a 50+ year old man. Police officers often refuse to file reports for calls of domestic violence and especially in cases of revenge porn. Most significantly, our legislation states that domestic abusers must wear electronic bracelets to track their whereabouts after an emergency restraining order is filed by the police — but although the technology has existed since the '80s and the costs for implementing it would be low, the law that would allow police to use them has been stalled in parliament for three years.
We must begin to talk about these issues — and they are barely scratching the surface of a society that has been built on the marginalization and discrimination of women and girls. While our fellow European nations are moving forward, Eastern Europe is taking thousands of steps backwards. Other countries are discussing solutions, while we’ve yet to even acknowledge there is a problem. We must not underestimate the power that conversations and education can have on individuals, and we must start talking now, no matter how uncomfortable that is for us.
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