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 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 https://thegirlcanwrite.net/polish-women/ 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.
- This is a particularly effective means to address hybrid challenges in a democratic way—enhancing social cohesion, presenting fewer obstacles to involvement and harnessing more international support.
- Communist leaders claimed that women in Poland obtained equal rights as a result of socialistic social processes, and used that statement to explain why there was a lack of – and no need for – feminism in Poland.
- Guidelines for lipedema treatment have been created in other countries, including Germany , the Netherlands , the United Kingdom , and the United States of America .
- The current study is the first to explore quality of life in women with lipedema in Poland, and it has a number of limitations.
Poland’s government should reverse restrictions on reproductive rights and ensure that these rights are upheld in accordance with international law, including the right to access safe abortion. It should cease attacks on women’s rights and women human rights defenders and end moves to undermine the rule of law, democracy, and human rights. This eliminated one of the few legal grounds for abortion under Poland’s highly restrictive law. Previously, over 90 percent of the approximately 1,000 legal abortions annually in Poland were on these grounds. The ruling came as Covid-19 pandemic restrictions made travel for health care prohibitively difficult and costly.
Category:Polish female given names
Evidence consistently demonstrates that laws restricting or criminalizing abortion do not eliminate it, but rather drive people to seek abortion through means that may put their mental and physical health at risk and diminish their autonomy and dignity. The United Nations Human Rights Committee has said that as part of the obligation to protect the right to life of pregnant people, states should not apply criminal sanctions against anyone undergoing abortion or medical service providers assisting them.
On the ball! Teen becomes first Polish basketball player in history to be selected for NBA’s Rising Stars Challenge
Brussels must take immediate steps against the country’s authorities and implement measures to protect women in Poland, so they can finally enjoy the same rights as those in Belgium, France or Germany. During the Cold War, women from Western Europe would travel behind the Iron Curtain to access free and legal abortion services in Poland. Stanley has spent more than ten years living in Poland, mostly based in Kraków and Bielsko-Biała. He founded Notes from Poland in 2014 as a blog dedicated to personal impressions, cultural analysis and political commentary. As of 2023, abortion in Poland is legal in cases of rape and when the woman’s life or any form of health is in jeopardy.
The exact number of illegal abortions performed is unknown, but reproductive health organizations estimate the figure is between 10 to 100 times higher. The procedure was legalized in 1956, due in part to arguments that unsafe abortions were contributing to high maternal mortality rates. Abortion became widely available in public hospitals and private clinics and was subsidized by the government if performed at a government institution. However, in November, Jarosław Kaczyński – chairman of the ruling party – blamed Poland’s low fertility rate on excessive consumption of alcohol by young women. This state of affairs created pertinent gender gaps in defense-related knowledge and skills in Polish society. In 2014 the Public Opinion Research Centre reported that only 6 percent of women recalled undergoing military training and 22 percent training in civil defense . Since coming to power in 2015, the PiS has granted more support to defence-related activities, while funnelling them into state-led channels such as its flagship project—the Territorial Defence Forces, formed in 2016.
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.
The bill is backed by Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture, an ultra-conservative, anti-choice, and anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex group. Very few abortions due to rape are approved, because the Polish government has set up so many legal roadblocks that by the time the procedure gets the green light, it’s too late, the members said. As a result, many rape victims go straight to local advocacy groups, which steer them to doctors willing to help. In Poland, a country of nearly 40 million people, only several hundred doctors are left who are still willing to perform abortions. WARSAW, Poland — Americans fearing the worst if the Supreme Court repeals Roe v. Wade could look to the Poles for tips about how to fight for abortion rights and find ways around harsh government-imposed restrictions. Outrage built up in Poland on Monday after the governing party’s leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, claimed excessive drinking by young women was to blame for the EU country’s low birthrate. Helena Lenard, Adela Preyss and Henryka Mankowna, women raised in Poland, now living in the United States, were deeply concerned for the women and children of their native county.
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.
He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, includingForeign Policy,POLITICO Europe,The IndependentandDziennik Gazeta Prawna. The new data from CBOS show that 17% of women aged 18 to 45 plan to have children in the next three or four years while 15% say they plan to do so in the longer term. Meanwhile, 68% say that either they are not planning to have children or they do not know whether they will. Only 32% of women in Poland aged between 18 and 45 say they are planning to have children, down from 41% in 2017, new data from state research agency CBOS shows.