Do you celebrate March, 8?

In October 2019, I finished my Masters in European Studies. Going back to Ukraine was something that I wanted to do since 2017. That year, I spent 6 beautiful months in Kyiv at Taras Shevchenko University and 3 inspiring weeks as an English language teacher in Snihurivka. I’ve always wanted to experience Eastern Ukraine, Severodonetsk and working with Vostok SOS was a clear choice and a great opportunity. Rather than describing all of my tasks, I would like to share one day of my Severodonetsk life.

It was a nice snowy day when I walked to the office. On the way, thoughts about the upcoming workshop were running through my mind, arranging and structuring ideas. To be honest, it was quite a challenge going to schools and carrying out workshops on human rights. At the time, my Russian language skills were not very strong and finding the best way to communicate so that everyone gets involved was the most difficult part. However, I still enjoyed every part of this experience.

This was the last day with my class and on Sunday, it was going to be the International Women's Day, so it was the perfect opportunity to talk about women's rights. During that week, a few people had asked me about this day: 

“How do you feel about March, 8 coming from the Czech Republic where before 1989, just like in Ukraine, this day was used as an advertising campaign for the former regime rather than for women’s rights? Do you actually celebrate it?”

When I got to the class, I talked about the main issues concerning women’s rights in the Czech Republic and in Germany. Consequently, pupils were sharing their experience and knowledge on women’s rights from their Ukrainian perspective.

As a preparation for this workshop, I was going through news articles and read about four women from three cities.

There was the story of Dasha and Mila from Rovno who were kept by some men in an apartment and could not flee until police had noticed them begging for help from the apartment’s window.

There was the story of Lenka from Prague who was on her way home when a man approached her and groped her body under her dress.

And there was the story of Marie from Leipzig who was murdered after hitchhiking and getting into a stranger’s car.

“What do you think have the stories of Dasha, Mila, Lenka and Marie in common”, I asked the class at some point. In the chat room, a lot of the reactions to the news articles were quite similar. 

Why did they go to the apartment? Was she alone in the city at night? What clothes did she have on? What was the time when she was out? Why did she hitchhike on her own as a woman?

These questions are insulting the victim and they also do not target the perpetrators. The blame is placed on the victim. Thus, after a fruitful discussion and exchanging of opinions, we came to the conclusion that gender-based violence and victim blaming are transnational issues and they should be discussed regularly and openly regardless of the nationality that is written in our passports.

Coming back to the above-mentioned question on how I feel about the International Women’s Day, I think it would be sad to forget this day just because it was misused in history. On the contrary, I believe we should all make use of this day to talk about and point out women’s rights violations.

A mural painting on one of Severodonetsk buildings saying "Stop Violence Against Women".