The results indicated the higher the severity of symptoms related to pain, heaviness, and swelling the lower the quality of life, and that depression severity mediated this relationship. Therefore, symptom management and addressing psychological functioning may play a role in improving quality of life in women with lipedema.

• With 237 seats in the Sejm and 66 in the Senate, it is currently the largest party in the Polish parliament.
• Even then, women say it’s extremely hard to find a doctor who will perform the procedure.
• The government has undermined efforts to combat gender-based violence, including by initiating Poland’s withdrawal from a landmark European convention on violence against women, the Istanbul Convention.
• A women’s rights group in Poland on Monday urged people to demonstrate after the country’s ruling party leader claimed that Poland’s low birthrate is partly caused by young women drinking too much alcohol.
• The ruling came as Covid-19 pandemic restrictions made travel for health care prohibitively difficult and costly.

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. Yet far from happening solely on the streets, this transformation has long been taking place too in less obvious sites—ones the liberal left has failed to acknowledge, leaving scope for illiberal forces to capitalize on them. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in citizens’ volunteer engagement in defense. The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key https://fracturedstate.net/european-women/polish-women/ role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.

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. 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. It is allowed only in cases of rape, which are difficult to document, or when the life of the woman is endangered. In Poland, it is Ordo Iuris — an organization closely connected to the Catholic Church and the country’s ruling politicians — that became the driving force behind attacks on women and LGBTQ+ individuals.

Polish leader blames low birthrate on women using alcohol

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. And it is these on-the-ground sentiments which the illiberal right has effectively tapped.

As Polish Women Flock Towards Volunteer Defense, the Left Remains Inept

Since the Law and Justice party came to power in 2015, Poland’s government has repeatedly moved to further curb sexual and reproductive health and rights, including by supporting a 2016 draft bill for a total abortion ban that parliament rejected following mass public protest. The government also supported a draft bill, introduced by an ultra-conservative group, to essentially criminalize comprehensive sexuality education. These bills are “civic initiatives,” which require public signatures to be considered. That sparked the largest protests in Poland in decades, which were led by Women’s Strike.

In Poland, this changing security environment has brought more people into defense through volunteer channels—among them paramilitary and pro-defense organizations, defense-education programs in schools and universities, and the Territorial Defence Forces. This has not only led to the demise of strategic thinking among younger social democrats but has also made them deeply mistrustful of security-related concerns and activities among their own constituency, routinely seen as unenlightened and potentially ‘uncivil’. This lack of security strategising on the Polish left also explains why gender equality in the realm of volunteer defence has been largely left out of Polish feminism. Unaware of the potential of societal resilience for the re-gendering and civilianising of national security, feminists have abdicated from crafting effective advocacy in this realm.

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. 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.

Furthermore, there is a need for proper knowledge, diagnosis, and treatment of lipedema in Poland. Increased knowledge on the condition will allow for further studies and effective treatment (with additional focus given to self-management). Researchers should investigate the prevalence of the condition, deepening the knowledge of the symptoms, comorbidities , and the course of the disease.

The head of the rightwing Law and Justice party, who has no children, said his information came from a doctor who “managed to cure a third of his male alcoholic patients but no women”. With over $2 million in funds distributed to various educational and cultural organizations around the world, we are busy. On September 2, 1939, Helen Lenard Pieklo and a group of her friends founded the Legion of Young Polish Women (Legion Młodych Polek). These visionary women and those whom they inspired to follow their lead for over 75 years – all volunteers, then and now – have collected and donated over one million dollars to many worthy causes. If, for example, the situation remains such that, until the age of 25, girls, young women, drink the same amount as their peers, there will be no children,” Kaczynski said. Discover POLITICO ProIn-depth reporting, data and actionable intelligence for policy professionals – all in one place.

Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor. Weronika Grzebalska is a sociologist, an assistant professor at the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences and a RethinkCEE fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the US. Her work focuses on militarism, security, right-wing politics and gender politics in central Europe in the neoliberal era. Young women in particular have increasingly been flocking to defence-related activities, such as Rifleman Associations or volunteer-defence programmes in schools. Work With UsIf you are talented and passionate about human rights then Amnesty International wants to hear from you. Your tax deductible gift can help stop human rights violations and save lives around the world.