International Panel on Gender Equality with Songül Mutluer

The fight for women's rights is not over (by any means). For years, the champions of gender equality have been passing the relay baton to new generations of feminists to continue this struggle. At the PES congress in Amsterdam (16-18 October), a packed panel featured nine of the people who now hold such a relay baton. Among them was Songül Mutluer, currently MP for GroenLinks/PvdA and a candidate again. She has in recent years become a standard-bearer in the fight against femicide and received a long applause from the enthusiastic PES audience for that.

A key call from the panel was for men to be good allies - aka ally mentioned. It is in very small things: for instance, Lilianne Ploumen said that a man should never leave fetching coffee to a woman during a meeting, but should stand up himself. And in very big things, like shaping rules on how many women should sit on the board of an institution, as president of the European Economic and Social Committee Oliver Röpke added. A crucial difference men also make when they speak out when misogynistic or downright dangerous things are said by other men.

The session, organised by PES Women, the CEE Gender Network and GroenLinks/PvdA, was led by FMS director Kido Koenig. In addition to the participants mentioned above, there were also Spanish MEP Lina Gálvez, Daniela Koleva of the North Macedonian SDSM, president of the Young European Socialists João Martins Pereira and Anna Bomhof of the Red Women (among whom, by the way, there are also men - those are just real allies). The session was kicked off by Zita Gurmai of PES Women and closed by Daša Šilović of the CEE Gender Network.

Highlight of the session was that the audience was surprised by the comeback of the Dolle Mina's, represented by Laura Adriani and Charlotte Koster, who performed the classic Boss in Own Belly-slogan still showed fighting spirit - with jerseys pulled up. The fight is back, and the relay batons are in good hands!