Belarus’ Constitution Is Not Suitable For Woman. Why Lukashenko May Be Right

On 29 May, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko visited Minsk Tractor Works, where he spoke about his sympathy towards potential presidential candidates, the press service of the president reported.

While the president admitted that he knows little about the people seeking nomination as presidential candidates for now, he noted that the Constitution of Belarus is not suitable for a woman.

“I often say that Natalya Ivanovna (Kochanova, Chairwoman of the Council of the Republic of Belarus’ National Assembly) won’t win an election either, although she is a tough-minded, ready-made president already.

Our Constitution is not suitable for a woman. Our society is not ready to vote for a woman. Because the Constitution gives strong authority to the president,” the head of state said.

He also recalled the ex-president of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskaite, whom he described as a person who “wasn’t responsible for anything because it is a parliamentary republic over there.”

Belarus is not. I am absolutely convinced a man will be the next president.”

The president’s statement sparked a lot of discussion, business lady Ksenia Fedorova submitted a complaint to the Central Election Commission (CEC). However, feminist Olga Murashko says that the president can actually be right and explains why.

Re-read, re-write the constitution?

I re-read the constitution to “compare benchmarks.” In the text of the constitution, the words “woman” and “man” are mentioned three times — evenly. All articles refer to the citizens of the country – equally. There’s no bias in favour of men.

But let’s carefully read Article 32. I will quote the fourth paragraph entirely:

“Women are provided with equal opportunities with men in education and vocational training, employment and promotion (at work), in the socio-political, cultural and all other spheres of activity, and in the creation of conditions to protect their work and health.”

Read it again, try to say it aloud, if you don’t understand what is wrong here. Everything seems to be normal? No.

“Women are provided with equal opportunities with men” is an almost imperceptible linguistic discrimination in which a man is initially presented as a standard that has certain rights and obligations. And the second gender – women – is given the same thing.

And what if it were written: “Women and men are provided with equal opportunities in education and etc.?” Can you feel the difference now? All humans are equal, but some are more equal than others.

This is the case when even the text of the Constitution, which passes thousands of approvals and expertises, a subtle sign of discrimination has crept in. This is the instance when the president expressed, in my opinion, an inconceivable thing for a civilized country and guessed right.

Our country reports that “Belarusian legislation is gender neutral”. We report to the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights: we are conducting a gender review of legislation, we have developed a national action plan on gender equality.

“A third of the total number of deputies of the House of Representatives and members of the Council of the Republic are women; among civil servants – more than 65%, with more than half holding posts of heads of organizations, their deputies ” and so on.

Other countries should envy us: they are no match to equal Belarus. This is what you should do: just register all school teachers, all kindergarten managers as leaders and their deputies – that’s it, profit!

Your numbers will break all records, and in reality, you consider women equal members of society. Unlike Belarus, which even has a nuance in the Constitution.