"İstanbul Convention is our life guarantee."
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A very small part of the parliamentary activities such as general assembly sessions and press briefings over a month was concerned with women's rights, shows a report by the Women's Platform for Equality (EŞİK).
Only one law proposal and 10 motions were submitted about women's rights, according to the report covering the period between October 16 and November 15.
Women's rights were not discussed at parties' weekly group meetings other than a meeting of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) that was dedicated to this issue.
Here are other highlights of the report:
- Only nine out of 96 lawmakers who spoke at the general assemblies used the word "woman".
At group meetings, the HDP talked about women for 37 minutes, the CHP talked about for 15 seconds and the İYİ (Good) Party talked about for six seconds.
HDP Co-Chair mentioned the EŞİK in the group meeting and said they would fight for women together.
İYİ Party Chair Meral Akşener told her parliamentary group that "Let's discuss our women who were subjected to violence, killed and our children who were harassed, raped."
- Only eight of the 836 parliamentary questions and two of the motions for parliamentary inquiries were about women.
- Women's problems were discussed in only three of the 90 press conferences at the parliament.
- Only nine of the 96 lawmakers talked about women in their speeches at the nine long general assembly sessions.
- The parliamentary speaker did not say anything about women or the İstanbul Convention against violence on women.
- In one day, the word "woman" was spoken 111 times in a motion for a parliamentary inquiry, which was eventually rejected.
- Apart from that, only three MPs took the floor to speak about women's issues.
- Only one out of 54 law proposals was about women's rights. It was submitted by CHP Adana deputy Müzeyyen Şevkin and was about providing benefits for women who were raised in an orphanage and do not have any income. (EMK/VK)
