"My demand as a woman is that my difference be taken into account so that I'm not forced to adapt to a male model" – Simone Veil (1975)
This 17 July we celebrate that, 44 years ago, Simone Veil, a French magistrate, politician, and Holocaust survivor, made history when she became the first elected President of the European Parliament as well as the first female president of the institution. Two years later, she would win the Charlemagne Prize, an award that honours a person’s contribution to European unity, for committing her life to fight for a unified Europe.
Simone Veil also demonstrated the importance of women’s presence in politics as she was a strong advocate for women’s rights. For instance, soon after her appointment as France’s Minister of Health in 1974, she fought to legalise abortion in her country. Thanks to Veil’s hard work, one year later, in 1975, a legal abortion law was passed in France.It would later become widely known as ‘la loi Veil’ (Veil’s law).
After 14 years working in the European Parliament, Simone Veil returned to French politics in 1981. Even since her death in 2017, she has remained an important feminist figure as she serves as a reminder to women all around the world of how crucial it is to have women in positions of power in order to construct a fair and equal society.
If you want to learn more about this topic while also improving your interpreting skills, you should check out the following speeches:
- IT: Parità di genere in politica
- EN: Women in politics
- FR: La représentation des femmes expertes dans les médias
- DE: Teilhabe von Frauen an Führungspositionen
We also encourage you to visit the Social Issues section and the Gender section of the Speech Repository.