Over the years, we have seen politicians making reckless comments about women and their bodies. With great power comes great responsibility, but not every leader understands this.?
The leader of Poland's ruling party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, stirred uproar when he said that "young women drink as much as men do" and that this was the cause of the country's low birthrate.
On Saturday, the 73-year-old politician and head of Poland's Law and Justice party made these provocative comments.?
"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," Mr. Kaczynski was quoted as saying by The Guardian.?
He added that he did not favor women having children at a young age because "a woman has to mature into a mother." "But, if she hits the bottle until the age of 25 - I'm joking a bit here - then it doesn't bode well for the birthrate," he said.
The leader asserted that the basis for his claim was a doctor's experience who could cure one-third of his male alcoholic patients but could not do so with a woman.?
Opposition politicians and activists have widely criticized Mr. Kaczynski for making this claim, calling him "out of touch" and condemning him for saying "insulting remarks to women."
A women's rights organization in Poland was offended by his words and urged people to protest and criticize his "patriarchal" views. On November 28, the 104th anniversary of women receiving the vote in Poland, the group encouraged people to protest in front of Mr. Kaczynski's home in Warsaw.
"The cretinous words of an old geezer about Polish women that women do not give birth to children because they drink (and not because Poland is hell), this is only a fragment of our reality," the Women's Strike wrote on Monday on Facebook.
The group cites the lack of access to sexual education and in vitro procedures, inflation, and a housing crisis contributing to the nation's low birth rate.
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