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Women took to the streets of cities across Europe, Africa and elsewhere to mark International Women’s Day with demands for ending inequality and gender-based violence.
On the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city Istanbul, a rally in Kadiköy saw members of dozens of women’s groups listen to speeches, dance and sing in the spring sunshine. The colorful protest was overseen by a large police presence, including officers in riot gear and a water cannon truck.
The government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared 2025 the Year of the Family. Protesters pushed back against the idea of women’s role being confined to marriage and motherhood, carrying banners reading “Family will not bind us to life” and “We will not be sacrificed to the family.”
Critics have accused the government of overseeing restrictions on women’s rights and not doing enough to tackle violence against women.
The Turkish president in 2021 withdrew his country from a European treaty, dubbed the Istanbul Convention, that protects women from domestic violence. Turkey’s “We Will Stop Femicides” platform says 394 women were killed by men in 2024.
“There is bullying at work, pressure from husbands and fathers at home and pressure from patriarchal society. We demand that this pressure be reduced even further,” Yaz Gulgun, 52, said.
In many other European countries, women also protested against violence, for better access to gender-specific healthcare, equal pay and other issues in which they don’t get the same treatment as men.
In Poland, activists opened a center across from the parliament building in Warsaw where women can go to have abortions with pills, either alone or with other women.
Opening the center on International Women’s Day across from the legislature was a symbolic challenge to authorities in the traditionally Roman Catholic nation, which has one of Europe’s most restrictive abortion laws.
From Athens to Madrid, Paris, Munich, Zurich and Belgrade, and in many more cities across the continent, women marched to demand an end to treatment as second-class citizens in society, politics, family and at work.
In Madrid, protesters held up big hand-drawn pictures depicting Gisèle Pelicot, the woman who was drugged by her now ex-husband in France over the course of a decade so that she could be raped by dozens of men while unconscious. Pelicot has become a symbol for women all over Europe in the fight against sexual violence.
In the Nigerian capital of Lagos, thousands of women gathered at the Mobolaji Johnson stadium, dancing and signing and celebrating their womanhood. Many were dressed in purple – the traditional color of the women’s liberation movement.
In Russia, the women’s day celebrations had a more official tone, with honor guard soldiers presenting yellow tulips to girls and women during a celebration in St Petersburg.
In Berlin, the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, called for stronger efforts to achieve equality and warned against tendencies to roll back progress already made.
