mr president i am going to start by saying that this was a speech i did not expect to be making until a few moments ago but it is important that we celebrate international women's day and especially this one some one hundred years since this celebration was first proposed
it should be a day yes to celebrate how far women have come but yes also to raise awareness about how much further we still have to travel in terms of equality
mr president you exhorted that there should be more women in this parliament
the achievements are good but they are still not good enough
if i look at parliament in my own country some estimates say it will take us two hundred years to reach parity at the current rate of progress so we are not going fast enough to really achieve proper equality
the other issue that this parliament is working on this week is human trafficking and violence against women
last week i visited an exhibition in my constituency at home with an exhibition of paintings and photographs of women who had been trafficked from a country next to our union moldova into our union
some estimates say that women and indeed men are being trafficked at a rate as high in numbers as was comparable with the whole of the african slave trade in three hundred and fifty years but women are the main victims
if we as a european community cannot do something about this and deal with the women who are the victims of that trade then it would be a poor thing if we do not make progress on this day
the other issue we should concentrate on are the many women's health issues that have to be addressed and which are not given the time and energy that they should be
much has been achieved much can be celebrated but there is very much more to do
