R38: Solidarity for the End of Violence Against Women and the Liberation of Women in Asia

Currently, the government is attacking the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family in South Korea. Last year, Korea's gender pay gap stood at 31.5 percent, far above the OECD average (11.7 percent), but the government is trying to abolish public organizations and budgets that have helped promote women's human rights and expand women's public participation by denying "structural gender discrimination." Four years have passed since abortion was ruled unconstitutional, but the institutional vacuum remains and women's right to reproduce and self-determination is being undermined. Sexual violence against women, such as the reversal of the law on rape, has been neglected and the enactment of a comprehensive anti-discrimination law has still been delayed despite the support of the majority of the public. Sexual minority women are not guaranteed family formation rights and suffer discrimination and infringement in society as a whole.

Violence against women is rampant throughout Asia. Last year, in Iran, a 22-year-old woman named Mahsa Amini was arrested by police for not wearing a hijab properly and died unjustly. In Iran, women's human rights have been severely restricted, including forcing them to wear hijabs. The death of Mahsa Amini sparked outrage among women who were moaning at the crackdown, and throughout Iran women rose, shouting "Women, Life, Freedom!" This led to the resistance of many citizens as well as women, and the strike of workers.

But the violence didn't stop. The Iranian government has carried out executions and brutal repression of protesters, and sexual violence has been committed against female protesters. The same is true of Myanmar. Myanmar's military is committing sexual and other anti-human rights acts against women imprisoned for civil disobedience protests. Myanmar's minority Rohingya refugee women are also threatened with extreme sexual violence such as kidnapping and rape.

Violence among minorities, including women and non-binary, is serious even in the face of a climate crisis that causes droughts, floods, landslides, and rising sea levels throughout Asia. Exposed to inequality and lack of resources, they suffer from sexual violence and threats to their lives. Sexual violence and exploitation experienced by migrant women occur in a form of overlapping discrimination.

Violence against women is based on long-standing discrimination, oppression, and economic and political inequality. The role of women in the family has been fixed, and women have taken on the role of reproduction, and women's sex is commercialized and exploited in capitalist society.

Women's resistance to this violence is taking place in a variety of powerful forms throughout Asia. Women form networks to help and care for each other, form cooperatives to create better living conditions, and politically empower them to create various social changes. These women's actions play a major role in advancing democracy in society.

We must act together in strong solidarity so that women who want to demand rights and acquire resources of life against violence are exposed to violence again, and the ecological environment and community, which are the basis of women's lives, are not destroyed.

Ending violence against women requires a political, economic, and institutional basis on which women can take political opportunities and gain power. Greens around the world will share the experiences and policies of feminist green politics based on gender justice and promote the revitalization of these politics across borders.