By the EESC Workers’ Group

Our world stands on the edge, trapped and sandwiched between old oligarchs and autocrats desperate to leave their mark on history before they disappear. Women’s rights, won with great hardship in many places, and still missing in many others, are under threat. These rights, from reproductive to political, are a good indicator of the state of human rights as a whole: those who take away the former will sooner or later abolish the latter as well.

While defending women’s rights, and human rights more broadly, is everyone’s duty, female representation is fundamental. The global stage increasingly resembles a playground full of insecure teenagers armed with nuclear weapons, while the technologies that increasingly shape how we think and interact are being designed within a troubling ‘techbro’ culture. 

AI-generated imagery and deepfakes are now widely used to create non-consensual content and enable harassment campaigns targeting women and girls online. These tools amplify forms of abuse that women have long faced on the internet, making such attacks easier and faster to produce, while proper moderation remains largely inadequate and access to justice often very limited.

This is why having women in positions of power is not just a matter of fairness (after all, women make up half the population), but also a better approach to governance and society. In an ideal world, this difference might not exist. In the real world, however, so many vital social functions, such as care, reproduction, feeding and other essential roles, have long been undervalued or ignored by a male-dominated society. So many of the key components that keep the world running are barely recognised, or are even openly treated as a burden, even in today’s society. The very fact that giving birth still disproportionately affects women’s careers and lives, and that the labour market continues to discourage it, despite its fundamental importance for society’s survival, is just one example. 

Building a better society must therefore be a collective effort – created with everyone and for everyone. This is one of our key priorities in the Workers’ Group, both within and beyond labour matters. It is also why we practice what we preach: we have Lucie Studničná as our President and we elected Marija Hanževački as EESC Vice-President, and we have finally achieved gender balance in our membership. We need every perspective in order to build a credible alternative to the outdated world of chest-thumping and muscle-flexing that is threatening to return.