In an early celebration of March 8, Women's Day, thousands of women gathered together this weekend to voice their criticism and demands for a better world for their fellow women.

Women's rights groups have organized two different meetings in Istanbul. In Cağlayan women from socialist parties as well as feminist groups and workers' unions met while another group chose Kadikoy as their venue.

Prominent actress Nur Sürer joined the meeting and addressed the crowd:

"...to the woman worker, exploited at the workplace by capitalism, the housewife exhausted domestic work and oppressed at home by the male dominant ideology; the woman peasant who works all day as a heavy labourer; the Kurdish, Armenian women who witness all sorts of discrimination, based on class, gender and of ethnicity; the women who set on to struggle for liberation and paid the price with torture and sexual violence...".

Women at strike

Women workers who are on strike at the Novamed firm joined the meeting. 160 days and on, the strike continues as women workers demand improvement in working conditions as well as struggle against gender discrimination at work.

Representative of the group, Aysel Gönücü, Derya Tuna and Fatma Özüm summarized their problems and demands:

"We work 8 hours a day, with a 35 minute lunch break and 15 minutes for other needs. It's forbidden to talk while working; if you leave your post, you have to declare a reason. The employer controls leave of pregnancy. No two worker can get pregnant simultaneously..."

Demands

Participants wore mostly purple while Kurdish women dressed in traditional yellow, red and green.

They chanted "higher your unseen voice of labour", "No to slaughtering women, no to war", "against sexual harassment and rape".

Women from the pro-Kurdish Democratic People's Party (DTP) carried banners, recalling the recent claims that ex-guerilla leader Abdullah Ocalan is being poisoned in prison.

They danced to folks songs, even wrote their own ones: "We shouldn't settle for cookery and giving birth/ Let's unite and mold a dough/ It's water from Marks and flour from Lenin".

Women listed their demands as follows:

* End to honor killings.

* End militarist and chauvinist policies.

* End discrimination and harassment of gays.

* Media should end using women body as a sex object.

* Women's quotas should be put in place for elections and in political parties.

* Gender discrimination in schoolbooks should be eliminated.(AÖ/EZO/EÜ)