Simultaneously, she is the first athlete to hold the world record in all five swimming styles putting her at the top of the international list of women’s record-holding swimmers. The European Commission should define minimum standards and clear indicators that specifically target Roma women and girls, and use its political influence to make Hungary and other member states adopt these.
- Despite living in a predominantly Roman Catholic country, Hungarian women have retained much of their traditional culture and values.
- The recommended age of first BSE was rightly recognized in 38.8% and 51.2% by laywomen and screening attendees, respectively (Fig.1).
- However, instead of acknowledging the fact that racism and systematic oppression has an equal or even much greater role in the removal of Roma children from their homes, the strategy puts the emphasis on the responsibility of Roma parents and their mistreatment of children.
- It argued that gendered factors such as women taking care of the whole household, raising children, and being under pressure to marry are common in Roma culture and traditions.
- In the case of the Roma, this share is 81 percent on average in the surveyed countries while in Hungary it is 98 percent.
When it comes to the employment situation of Roma women, the HNSIS put a special emphasis on providing equality programs and measures to close the gap between Roma women and the rest of the Hungarian population. Here too, it stressed that cultural factors can negatively affect the employment rates of Roma women. But it made no reference to any scientific literature on these cultural factors, a signal that this was a weak point in the strategy. The strategy seemingly did not intend to address how different factors, such as racism and mental and physical health, were intertwined with each other, which would be crucial for improving the Roma’s situation in Hungary. On the positive side, the strategy identified the necessity to invest in Roma women with young children and to support their reintegration into the labor market. For this, “integration support” would be provided by the state adult education institutions to those who participate in labor-market training courses.
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A gender perspective or intersectional approach is completely missing from the rest of the objectives. While Roma women and girls are mentioned here and there in the strategic framework, there is a lack of discussion on how intersectionality and gender https://thegirlcanwrite.net/hungarian-women/ equality should be addressed in national strategies. The European Commission has attempted to highlight these issues, but how to address them is missing, which makes the new document quite weak when it comes to addressing the special needs of Roma women and girls. First, there was a lack of awareness and practical implementation of intersectionality in the strategy. Second, there was a strong tendency to blame Roma traditions and culture for the disadvantaged situation of Roma women and girls, which is very much linked to the anti-gypsyism in Hungarian society. Third, the evidence of homophobia, racism, and sexism in the HNSIS and its measure were serious concerns if the state wanted to improve the situation of Roma women and girls. It also set the horizontal objective of “reducing the educational and labor market disadvantages” of Roma and considered the needs of Roma women in most of the priority areas of the EU Framework for Roma Strategies.
In line with the EU Framework for Roma integration, Hungary adopted a national Roma integration strategy in 2011, which was implemented up to 2020. It adopted a second such strategy in 2021 to be implemented from 2022 to 2030.
Sexism and patriarchal oppression, from which women and LGBTQA+ people suffer the most, remains a common problem across Europe. And, as women still suffer from the negative and violent consequences of sexism, the situation of women of color, and particularly Roma women, is even worse and more desperate. Roma women are not only the victims of gendered stereotypes, violence, and oppression caused by sexism, but also of anti-gypsyism. As in most other European countries, in the 21st century, family dynamics have become more liberal, with cohabitation growing in popularity, and the link between fertility and marriage decreasing. Hungary has a sub-replacement fertility rate; the total fertility rate was 1.43 children born/woman in 2015. The maternal mortality rate in Hungary is 21 deaths/100,000 live births .
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Another important issue for women in the early 1990s was the restriction of abortion rights by conservative political parties. The Feminist Network, which emerged in May 1990, has been a leader in carrying on the movement for women’s equality, and the Federation of Young Democrats has been an important political party for female youth and women’s movements. The issue of domestic violence has also come to public attention during the past two decades; an important change was the removal of the marital exemption from the rape law in 1997. Hungary has also ratified the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings in 2013. In December 2020, Hungary’s Family Minister, Katalin Novák, published a video, lecturing women on how to achieve success, advising, among else, not to expect to get an equal pay. Although BSE should be started more than two decades earlier than mammography (20 years vs. 45 years, respectively), most respondents were unaware of this. These results corroborate the findings of the study of Do Thi Thanh Toan et al. from North-Vietnam, in which only 19.3% of the respondents knew when to perform the first BSE .
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Hungary is a good case study for how gender has been taken into account in a national Roma integration strategy in the EU. It has one of the largest Roma populations in the EU, with Roma people having lived in and contributed to the country for centuries. In the past 12 years, Hungary has also become one of the most conservative and anti-Roma countries in Europe—paradoxically as it has expressed the commitment to improving the wellbeing of its Roma population in all fields of life. Beside the increase of anti-gypsyism in the country, anti-gender sentiments have been also appeared more and more frequently in the past decade. This has been reflected in the banning of gender studies and in anti-LGBTQA+ policies and measures, among other developments, since 2010, when the governing Fidesz party started to turn Hungary into an increasingly fascist state. This has happened as the same time as gender equality has become a top priority to the EU.
These women inspire other women to engage in any sectors they may be interested in, whether economic, political, or social. Thanks to their talent and perseverance, Hungary women have achieved some kindlutionary healthcare, education, and scientific research. Preventing and combating various forms of violence against Roma women and girls.
On the other hand, Roma women are overrepresented in the public sector, especially in low-quality jobs where in 2020 they made up 38.7 percent. A communal cleaner’s job pays 85,000 forints per month (about €۲۱۲),۱۵which is not enough to maintain a family or to help Roma woman to get out of the circle of poverty and pursue a better job or education. However, due their lack of education and employment opportunities, they are left mostly with the opportunity of this job or similar ones or nothing.
Hungarian women are beautiful… If you have ever wondered what it would feel like to date one or just want to have a sneak peek of what Hungarian women are like, keep reading.
Even though it paid attention to the measures related to Roma women and girls, its third country report contained almost no reference to them. Moreover, the RCM coalition members included neither Roma women nor LGBTQA+ organizations. The lack of inputs of knowledge from Roma experts and of grassroots experience on these issues were obstacles to producing gender-aware and gender-reflective civil monitoring reports. It should be noted, however, that even Phenjalipe’s strategy lacks some actions for advancing certain groups of Roma women and girls. It does not address the concerns of older women, women living with disabilities, trans women, lesbian women, women living in rural areas, girls in segregated schools and areas, sex workers, and so on. These groups face additional oppression not only in the mainstream Hungarian society but also in the Roma communities.