Nowoczesna Announces Further Celebrations of Women's Suffrage Centennial

"As we know, we are celebrating the centennial of women being granted suffrage. However, this year we don't want to just talk about how great it was historically, or how happy we are that we have these rights. We won't be cutting ribbons, but we want to talk about our everyday lives, the problems Polish women face daily, at home, at work, in the Sejm, in local governments – which of our rights are not being respected or are being limited. We want to discuss this both in the Sejm and across Poland. We want to submit draft laws, write interpellations, and meet in every city, municipality, and county, wherever you, the public, invite us, so that we can discuss women's issues. These topics range from contraception, sex education, IVF, the right to abortion, but also include issues of conscientious objection, labor law, pensions, and entrepreneurship," said Monika Rosa from Nowoczesna at a press conference.

"We will also return to the laws that we, as Nowoczesna, submitted last year, which specifically concern women's rights. The first law we will resubmit concerns amendments to the Penal Code, which aim to extend protection based on discrimination due to sex and gender identity. We will also submit a law that was rejected last year by the votes of PiS and Kukiz’15, concerning 'blind lawsuits,' meaning the possibility of combating hate speech, a phenomenon we are increasingly encountering in the virtual space. As Nowoczesna, we also submitted a law on conscious parenthood, authored by Joanna Schmidt, and I hope that in the near future PiS will decide to put this law to a first, second, and third reading, and I hope there will be an opportunity to simply talk about women's rights – in the centennial of women's rights being won," added Joanna Scheuring-Wielgus.

The next meeting in the "Nowoczesna Kobieta" (Modern Woman) series will take place in Piotrków Trybunalski on February 17. The party will also submit a draft law on economic violence to the Sejm.