Woman and the European Social Forum -Athens 2006

With the motto WE CAN CHANGE EUROPE CHANGE THE WORLD, the IVth European Social Forum has been the continuity of the dynamics of social forums, initiated in Florence in 2002.

According to the organizers, 30.000 persons took part in Athens, proceeding from diverse European countries, from the Atlantic Ocean up to the Urals. In the Forum 278 political debates have covered 17 topics: agriculture, democracy and fundamental rights, discrimination, racism and extreme right, social rights, public services and social protection; education, culture and mass media; environment; war and peace; feminist alternative; Europe inside the liberal globalization; labour ; migrations in Europe; where goes the European Union?; economic politics in Europe; politics of safety and repression; precariousness, poverty and exclusion; strategy of the movement and urban politics.

Among the political debates, about 20 seminars treated topics from a perspective of gender, as violence of gender, the paper of woman in the democratic processes, feminization of  poverty, woman and war, the application of the Bolkestein Directive and its consequences on woman, the campaign against women's traffic and prostitution, sexual rights and acceptance of  lesbianism, a Feminist Europe, a necessary feminist  movement to change society, the need of another possible world for the women of Europe...

Speakers from the European Left Party and of EL_ FEM (group of women of the EL) participated in large parts in these seminars.

Among them, Maite Mola, responsible for the CPE in the EL and Federal Secretary of the Woman of the CPE, who intervened in the seminar " Women and the Bolkestein Directive ", and others as Imma Barbarossa and Elletra Deiana from the PRC, Christina Reymann from the PDS, Soula Panaretou and Litsa Doudoumi from Synaspismos or Laurence Cohen from the PCF, among many others that took part in different seminars.

In the frame of the Forum, the women's Assembly was realized on May 6. Its aim was of making concrete the recoveries and alternatives arisen from the debate in order that they constitute the base of a new project of society, for another possible Europe.

During the women's Assembly two important points were reached:

1-The elaboration of a manifest, with two ideas, the first one to change Europe and the second the summary of the seminars.
2-A proposal of agenda, which includes acts to European level, where we all gather.

Some of the exposed proposal gathered from the different seminars were:

- Day for the next October for women mobilization against the Bolkestein Directive.
- Declaration of the Assembly that expresses its opposition to the Bolkestein Directive, for meaning an assault that will increase in important form the inequality for women and in counterpart, our exigency for public services of quality, since the women will be victims of its privatization.
- On November 25, 2006, to create a European Platform of demands in opposition to gender violence, calling the same day rolls of press, to do common actions in the whole Europe.

To elaborate a text under the motto of "A feminist, egalitarian and lay Europe" that meditates:
· Neither no religion nor religious structure must be supported by the state.
· No to religious education in the public school centres.
· Proposal of an antisexist law, in opposition to sexism.
· Support the lay associations that fight for all sexual rights.

- Information campaign to vulnerable women in times of war of their rights, gathered in resolutions 13 and 25 (peace negotiations). And to avoid women's traffic in wars.

- Campaign in opposition to precariousness of women, in consequence of: 
· The increase of feminine unemployment and wage and labour precariousness that women suffer in Europe.
Demands:
· same rights of access to  work for immigrant Women in Europe  .
Proposals:
· Assure minimal salary for all (proposal of the Women's World March in Marseilles).

- Support to the campaign in opposition to women's traffic on the World Cup in Germany.
- European day on the social Europe (in defence of the public systems).
- Before the proposal to take as a base the Spanish law on "gender violence" to create a European law, coming from a commission, the comrades of the CPE differ and ask to intervene, and after insisting and with the support of other women we could express our position, in that we cannot base on a law that limits itself to domestic violence, which includes the violence to children and elders.

A law that does not include violence of gender in its broad aspects, which has deficits: the proof being in the number of women who continue being murdered today in our country. The Swedish law is much more progressive, in for example, that it also includes as violence gender Prostitution. We must base ourselves on a better law, which is really a law in opposition to the VIOLENCE OF GENDER. Our project is to transform society and not only of reforming it, for it we are communist and believe that another project of society is possible ".

The EL (Party of the European Left) had a stand in the enclosure of the FORUM, in which we did a meeting with representatives of the PCF, PRC, Synaspismos, PDS, and CPE, where attended the signatory of this article, and where we made concrete our presence in the Demonstration on the 6th at 3 p.m.
Finally the demonstration was multitudinous and our presence was very important. The EL was a political European reference in the frame of the Forum what was visualized also in the demonstration. It is a shame there was an excessive presence of the state security forces, and constant provocation and aggression of the police and military forces that were throwing constant teargases spoiling what really was a pacific demonstration.

*Maite Mola, Member Executive Board EL and Secretariat Woman CPE.