A week of women

Since it was International Women's day on Thursday the 8th of March, there have been some fun events organized in Brussels.

There was a whole day seminar on Equality in the workplace, but since it cost some 400 pounds, I didn't attend. Instead I went to some interesting, fun and free ones.

The Vagina Monologues were performed by MEPs in the Parliament on Tuesday evening and the woman who had written them, Eve Ensler, was also present. Quite brave of the MEPs to stand on stage and read the monologues, amongst them Sirpa Pietikäinen who pulled of hers with dedication and really put her soul into the text. The V-day project is about ending violence against women and next year on Valentine's day they have their biggest campaign yet, One Million Rising - which urges people to go out and dance to stop the violence that a billion women and girls experience.

Then on Wednesday there was a screening of the movie Made in Dagenham at one of the auditoriums in the EP. The movie was super good, funny, sad, educational and entertaining. I put it in the same category with the Help and Calendar Girls and recommend to see it. It's about the 187 female workers in the Ford factory in Dagenham, who strike until the whole factory closes since there are no leather seats left, for equal pay for women. The fact that it is based on a true events and characters makes it all the more interesting.

On then the actual Women's day, there was a large scale seminar in the hemicycle of the EP, and the president of the European Parliament Martin Schultz opened the seminar. Commissioner Viviane Reding also gave a speech there along with experts, feminists and members of national parliaments. I learned a lot and have tormented some of my friends with statistics of pay gaps in different European countries (ex. Finland over 20%, Italy 5,5% since so few women work, Estonia over 30% and the average is 17%) and how men usually earn more without tertiary degrees than women who actually have obtained university degrees.

Here's a funny video (only one minute long) made by the commission, that get's the message across quite well in my opinion. http://www.youtube.com/user/EUJustice?feature=guide