How the fight for women’s rights sparked demands for wider societal and political changes
Urszula Krassowska, Managing Director, and Anna Trząsalska, Senior Research Executive, Kantar Public - Poland
The Autumn of 2020 saw Europe in the grip of a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, with its lockdowns, curfews, quarantines and other restrictions impacting millions of citizens. In several countries, various occupational groups went on strike as a social response to the economic activity in many sectors being temporarily frozen. In Poland, however, citizens took to the streets in late October and early November for reasons other than the restrictions to social and economic life.
At this difficult time, the Constitutional Court in Poland announced a judgment prohibiting abortion "for eugenic reasons".
Urszula Krassowska and Anna Trząsalska explore the wider implications of the Women’s Strike movement on the Polish society and political system, as the protests revealed people’s underlying anger against the encroachment of the state and the church into their private lives
Until that moment, abortion in Poland had been regulated by a law described as a “compromise” between its supporters and opponents. The most recent judgment violated this compromise, becoming a direct trigger of public discontent. Crowds of women, high schoolers, university students, mothers and daughters, and men supporting their wives, took to the streets of Polish towns and cities.
The protest was led by women activists from the organisation known as All-Poland Women’s Strike. However, as people gathered in large numbers, it is likely that many of the demonstrators – men as well as women – joined the protests spontaneously.
Within a short time, the protests became ever more widespread, and their scale astonished not only the government and the ruling coalition, but also the opposition and the participants themselves. According to our research conducted between 6th and 11th November, 13% of Poles (approx. 4 million people) took part in the demonstrations at least once. Updates on successive marches and roadblocks were shared spontaneously, via social media and by word of mouth.
However, the All-Poland Women’s Strike appears to be about more than just defending the previous compromise on abortion law. In a matter of days, the list of the organisation’s formal demands was considerably expanded and radicalised. The protesters demanded full reproductive rights, improved education (including sex education), removal of religious teaching from schools, action against paedophilia inside the Catholic Church, as well as the introduction of the Istanbul Convention on combating violence against women, and equal treatment for all Poles.
In effect, the denial of women’s right to choose and to decide how to live their lives, became the central cause of the protests. The previous compromise (by which legal abortion was restricted to a limited number of circumstances such an incurable illness or damage to the foetus, a threat to the mother’s life, or a pregnancy resulting from rape), is supported by 62% of Poles, including half of the supporters of the ruling party.
Poles, and particularly Polish women, expressed their anger at the government, which appeared to be taking advantage of the pandemic to change a law that had long been known to arouse controversy: 65% of Poles are convinced that the changes to the abortion law were deliberately timed to exploit the ‘distraction’ brought by the pandemic 1
While a previous attempt to tighten this law in 2016 had also led to a wave of women’s protests, it did not create the same uproar as in 2020 – which suggests that the abortion law is merely a tinderbox. Our research shows that most Polish men and women have not become more liberal in their views: only 22% of Poles favour abortion “on demand”, while 62% of them support the current form of the law.2 Yet 70% of Poles support the protests.
Thus, support for the protests did not necessarily mean that demonstrators agreed with all the demands put forward by the All-Poland Women’s Strike, but rather that they opposed the unequal treatment of Polish women in general. People attended the protests for a mix of reasons: to support the existing law on abortion, to campaign for freedom of choice, to express their dissatisfaction with the government’s incompetence, and in some cases to tell the authorities in no uncertain terms that they should go away.
The Women’s Strike must be seen in the context of the events which preceded it and ran in parallel. These included the organisation of presidential elections which resulted in the re-election of incumbent Andrzej Duda with a small majority; increased discrimination against LGBTQA+ people, and the dwindling authority of the Catholic Church due to unresolved problems of paedophilia.
All this against the background of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic and social restrictions, the perceived absence of plans to combat the pandemic and the deteriorating situation in the country’s healthcare sector.
As a result, in November 2020, the Polish government (nationalist Law and Justice party aka PiS) received its lowest performance rating since winning the parliamentary elections in 2015, with a net score of 39.
People’s intention to vote for the ruling party also dropped in November, and the main opposition party lost supporters to the advantage of the newly formed political party Poland 2050.
Young people, who had previously been less active in protests, reacted strongly to government decisions seen as impacting their personal sphere. The Women’s Strike activated them both politically and socially. In addition to slogans directly related to abortion, young protesters called out what they saw as outdated views, and expressed general anti-government sentiment. Slogans written on cardboard banners stated openly, often in explicit language, that it was high time for change.
This was the first time in many years that the younger Polish generation had spoken out on such a scale.
The younger generation also called for the separation of the state from the Church. 26% of people aged 18-24 describe themselves as atheists, compared to just 9% of Polish society overall.3
If we consider the existing connections between the ruling party and the Roman Catholic Church in Poland, this is particularly significant.
These protests may signal the strengthening of the anti-PiS society, especially among young voters. This is reflected in recent electoral preference surveys. Although the ruling party can still count on its faithful electorate of around 30%, willingness to vote PiS is strongly associated with age: amongst the 18-24 year olds, only 2% would vote for PiS; while among people aged 65+, PiS can count on 55% of support.4 Hence the increased political activism of young people is likely to harm the position of the ruling party.
However, there is an obvious generation gap between the youngest and the politicians aged 50+, (sarcastically referred to as “dziaders” a pejorative term describing ‘boomers’ as “grandpa squad” or “mansplaining fogeys”), that could affect more widely the capacity of established political parties to reconnect with young voters.
The strike was different from previous demonstrations, which would typically happen on a one-off basis, and mostly in Warsaw. This time, the demonstrations lasted for several weeks, taking place across the country even in the smallest towns, and reaching the same intensity as in the country’s capital. The Women’s Strike protests even reached localities where the Law and Justice party has had a significant advantage for many years, including in the July 2020 presidential elections.
Most noticeably, the Women’s Strike mobilised young people on an unprecedented scale. This youth rebellion may provide an opportunity for Polish democracy, as well as presenting a serious challenge to the current inequality of women’s rights. As a consequence, should the abortion law not be liberalised, there is a risk that the young generation could become demobilised for many years to come.
Can the All-Poland Women’s Strike evolve from a social movement into a political party, to harness the energy and passion of its supporters, including the youth?
To date, no “women’s party” has ever succeeded in gaining a firm foothold on the Polish political scene. However, voices attacking the unequal treatment of women in different spheres of life have been growing stronger across the country, and some advisory structures are emerging to support the All-Poland Women’s Strike organisation.
In the past, women’s issues were often formulated into demands during the election campaigns of Poland’s centrist and left-wing parties. However, these demands have never been turned into policy, being mostly viewed as a ‘substitute topic’. As a result, the issue of unequal treatment of women has grown into a cause with resonance for millions of Polish women and men (81% of Poles claim that the issue of partially banned abortion is important for them personally).5
This is particularly true of young people, who are more likely to challenge the government’s assertions on public morality, and value freedom without restrictions.
As the All-Polish Women’s Strike has shown, the loudest voices now being heard are from the generations of Poles born after 1989, who do not know a Poland before the current democracy, who profess different values, and who demand that politicians should look at the world from a new perspective.
Perhaps the Women’s Strike will become the spark to reconstruct and refresh Poland’s political life, or at least revitalise the political opposition. The existing generation gap is a challenge for the opposition, as much as for the ruling party. Both parties need to find a common language with the younger generation.
This young generation may have the deciding vote in the next elections. Hence, understanding the needs of the young and the importance of equal treatment for women, is likely to be important regardless of politics.
This paper by Urszula Krassowska and Anna Trząsalska was written at the end of 2020. At the time of publishing PUBLIC (10 February 2021), it is worth noting that while Women’s Strike rallies became less frequent in December, a new wave of protests broke out again on 27 January 2021 when the ruling on Poland’s near total-ban on abortion was published by the Constitutional Tribunal, and came into legal force. Social discontent remains present across Poland, and it will be interesting to see how the performance rating of the Law and Justice party evolves over the coming months. IIn January, our public opinion barometer showed constant predominance of dissatisfaction with government actions, with 65% of Poles saying they were dissatisfied with the actions of their government and 26% satisfied.
1, 2, 3: Kantar Public study for media company Agora, 26-27 Oct. 2020 4. Kantar Public, Political Barometer, 6-12 Nov. 2020 5. Kantar Public study, 28 Oct. 2020
