Congratulations on March 8, International Women's Day, which has been officially celebrated by the United Nations since 1975. March 8 is a day of struggle for women’s equality and is aimed at understanding the challenges in the process of achieving gender equality.
Over the years, important steps have been taken to achieve gender equality in Georgia. However, women’s low participation in the decision-making process, unequal economic participation, realization of reproductive health and rights, prevention of violence against women and domestic violence, early marriage, prevention of and adequate response to sexual harassment remain problematic.

The main topic of this year’s International Women's Day is to speed up the achievement of gender equality, which will improve access to resources, provide equal opportunities and promote women's empowerment. Gender equality is hampered by the low level of women's political and economic participation in Georgia, which has not changed substantially over the years. According to the global gender inequality index, Georgia ranked 119th in terms of women's political participation and women's representation in the parliament among 149 countries.

I hope Georgia will take significant steps to achieve gender equality. Inter alia, discussions should be resumed about the introduction of gender quota system, since the existing barriers significantly hinder the implementation of systemic changes and fail to ensure the protection of women's rights, freedoms and opportunities on the basis of the equality principle.

Hashtags:
#women’sday2019
#speedupequality
#protectequality
#careaboutequality