Beritan Elyakut-Zehra Doğan/JINHA

AMED – Women's movement and Kurdish solidarity activist Selene Verri says women in Europe and the Middle East need to escalate their struggle against patriarchy—not only its most visible crimes, but its underlying mindset.

Selene, who works on a Lyon, France support committee for the Kurdish people and in the women's movement, headed to Turkey recently in support of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP). JINHA spoke with Selene in Diyarbakır about the state of the feminist movement in Europe.

Selene noted that the economic crisis has contributed to a worsening condition for women in Europe as women are treated as a cheap source of labor—particularly migrant women, who face repression both from their families and from racists.At the same time, women face rising religious extremism.In Italy, for example, women have increasing difficulty accessing abortion because as doctors take advantage of a legal provision present since the 1970s that allows them to refuse to perform abortions.

She said that the underlying gender inequality that leads to both men and women adapting themselves to a repressive model of masculinity.

"The system is not good for men, either," she said. "Actually, very few men benefit from this system." While men repress their own personalities to avoid being "feminine," said Selene, women compete with each other for promotionsand television appearances, rather than being in solidarity.

In France, women have remained silent and unorganized in the face of continuing high rates of violence against women even as just across the border in Spain women rose up against domestic violence. Selene said this was an example of the strength of the patriarchal system.

"People see France as a feminist country, butit's not the case," she said. "Women think they're free because they can have a career, but this is not enough."

(fk/cm)