In October 2022, a United Surveys poll for Dziennik Gazeta Prawna and RMF24 found that a narrow majority of Poles, 52%, believe that the new abortion rules, which went into force in January 2021, have made people less likely to have children. A December 2021 poll by Ipsos for OKO.press asked people why women in Poland may not want to have children. It found that the most common responses were that women were worried about work (40%) and that they cannot financially afford having children (39%). The figures come after the introduction in 2021 of a near-total ban on abortion that many believe has made women less likely to want to get find more at https://thegirlcanwrite.net/polish-women/ pregnant. Recent years have also seen a continual decline in Poland’s fertility rate, despite efforts by the government to boost the number of births. But the birthrate is again declining and Kaczynski admitted last month the program isn’t working as intended. The birthrate stood at 1.32 children per woman in 2021, according to Polish state statistics.
As of 2017, the employment rate for women aged 20–64 was 63.6%, compared to men’s rate of 78.2%. Although Poland has the image of a conservative country, often depicted as such in Western media, it actually has high numbers of professional women and women in business, and it also has one of the lowest gender pay gaps in the European Union. One of the obstacles faced by contemporary women in Poland is the anti-abortion law. Together with the figure of the “Polish Mother”, abortion restrictions are used to encourage women to have many children. The Polish Mother symbol is a stereotype strongly cemented in the Polish consciousness and which was shaped by the turbulent history of the nation. During the long occupation, the responsibility for maintaining national identity fell on mothers, whose main task was the “upbringing of children”. Despite the strict legislation and conservative political discourse, Poland has one of the lowest fertility rates in Europe.
When swaths of youth took to the streets in 2020 to protest against the Law and Justice government over its abortion ban, analysts proclaimed a social revolution was emerging in the country. Led by young women, and with gender equality at its forefront, this generational rebellion showed that paternalist norms and prior political arrangements no longer matched the ways young people actually lived their lives.
- Against the background of the European Commission’s reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact , this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards.
- So far, the government’s radical platform has not however led to a backlash against women in defense.
- Nowhere has this been more apparent than in citizens’ volunteer engagement in defence.
- It is allowed only in cases of rape, which are difficult to document, or when the life of the woman is endangered.
- The European Commission said it “will not hesitate to make use of its powers” under EU treaties to ensure application of EU law and protect people’s rights.
The purpose of the current study was to increase knowledge of the clinical characteristics, of women with lipedema in Poland, and their quality of life and its factors. Additionally, through this investigation our aim was to identify further directions for research and possible interventions. The results indicated the higher the severity of symptoms related to pain, heaviness, and swelling the lower the quality of life, and that depression severity mediated this relationship. Therefore, symptom management and addressing psychological functioning may play a role in improving quality of life in women with lipedema.
As Polish Women Flock Towards Volunteer Defense, the Left Remains Inept
Critics argued that Polish women were hesitant to have children for financial reasons as well as out of fear over abortion restrictions introduced by the PiS. Katarzyna Lubnauer, a lawmaker with the liberal Civic Coalition , called Kaczyński “out of touch” and said his comments were “nonsense insulting to women”. The end of the War and the occupations of Poland by an Oppressive Communist regime created an even greater need. Assistance was given to the Polish Veterans in Italy, the Polish Mission in Argentina, the Polish Library in Paris, and the Sikorski Institute in London.
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Anti-abortion demonstrators often use graphic imagery in their call for a total ban on abortions. In February 2017, they picketed in front of a library in Wroclaw, Poland, where activists had gathered to lecture women about pharmacological abortion options. Kaczyński’s national-conservative Law and Justice party has made raising fertility rates in Poland’s rapidly ageing society one of its flagship goals, introducing a number of social programmes designed to financially support families.
There are more than 9,000 women employed in the Polish police, composing 9.23 percent of police employees. Most Polish policewomen work in posts that are occupied by civil or administrative officers in Western countries, so it is difficult to make any comparisons. Also, the number of women recruited to work within the police has declined to approximately 100 a year. The fact that there are women in the police does not mean they are accepted by their male colleagues or superiors. The most frequent worry of female students at the Police Academy is that after graduating, they will be put behind desks and make coffee until their retirement.
Unable to be passive about the atrocities of war, they felt compelled to help in any way possible. “I am really a sincere supporter of women’s equality, but I am not a supporter of women pretending to be men, and men pretending to be women,” Kaczynski said. And once this charter enters into force, “not one more” woman in Europe will be deprived of their fundamental rights, and the future will finally hold real gender equality.
Previously, over 90 percent of the approximately 1,000 legal abortions annually performed in Poland were on this ground. The ruling came as the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions made travel for abortion care prohibitively difficult and costly. It spurred the country’s largest public protests in decades, led by women human rights defenders. Activists and women’s rights organizations report that the ruling is having a significant chilling effect as medical professionals fear repercussions even in situations where abortion remains legal. Women human rights defenders and civil society organizations advocating for the ruling to be overturned and for reform of Poland’s abortion law have faced threats of violence and several protestors have been prosecuted.
While strengthening allied defense and deterrence is rightfully supported by voters in Poland, the left can still intervene in this momentum. To break right-wing hegemony, it can advocate the rebuilding of civil defense around local citizens’ groups and work towards embedding civic, egalitarian, and democratic values in military volunteer-defense channels. In a recent survey commissioned by the Polish portal Defence24, 41 percent of women declared interest in undergoing basic military training if available. This percentage could have been much higher had respondents been questioned also about civil-defence training.
A women’s rights group in Poland on Monday urged people to demonstrate after the country’s ruling party leader claimed that Poland’s low birthrate is partly caused by young women drinking too much alcohol. Many of the recent protests are inspired by the success of the massive crowds that gathered on Oct. 3, 2016, when Poland’s parliament considered a bill that would ban abortion in all cases except when the mother’s life is threatened. The bill had strong initial support, but three days before the vote, women’s rights groups organized what is now considered to be one of the largest protests in the history of the country. Women participating in the protests — called the “black protests” or Black Monday — planned to skip work and wear all black. The approach was inspired by similar protests among Icelandic women in Oct. 1975, when an estimated 90% of women refused to work or do house chores to call out wage discrepancies and unfair employment practices in the country.
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