Speaker: Assita KANKO (Belgium — Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie)
Political group: European Conservatives and Reformists Group
Date: 2022-09-13
Debate: This is Europe - Debate with the Prime Minister of Finland, Sanna Marin (debate)

  Assita Kanko,  on behalf of the ECR Group. – Madam President, Prime Minister, dear colleagues, perhaps we should tell this secret to everyone: politicians are normal people. They use the bathroom like everyone else. They get sad or scared when something happens. They make love – even when they are not French; this is how they too make kids. We are just normal people, not robots. 
 
But some people pretend not to know this, especially when it is about women. ‘Who runs the world?’ you would ask. It’s not girls; not yet. There is still a long, long way to go and the price is high because they have no right to make mistakes or simply to live as a young woman in their private life. They are over—scrutinised and pushed to transform into something between a man and a woman, just because you want to serve. 
Some women give up. At times I also considered giving up. But every time you give up you abandon a future where girls and boys can be truly equal and you abandon the possibility to shape that world. You contribute to shape a world where sexism and patronizing remain the norm. Things like: ‘your skirt is too short’; ‘your décolleté is too deep – or not enough’; ‘your smile is too bright’; ‘smile’ or ‘no, don’t smile’; ‘be a woman ... but not too much’; ‘what kind of mother are you, actually?’; ‘oh, you have an opinion?!’; ‘perhaps you should be less ambitious?’; or ‘there is only a chair for two men – why don’t you take the sofa when you are in Ankara?’.
‘It’s not a place to be as a politician when people are laughing at you ... it was getting really dangerous for her career’ said a former senior politician on the BBC about this young lady here because she is Prime Minister and also likes to dance.
 
This is Europe – not Afghanistan – a place where men and women are equal in theory, but in reality equality is not yet accomplished. The truth is, and it has also been my experience, that in Europe too, too many women are still not equal to men in politics. You feel it in meeting rooms. You notice it during debates. 
 
If you complain they say you are too ‘sensitive’ and you should toughen up – change a little bit who you are, as if being ‘you’ was not enough. 
As a younger politician, when I was running the first time, I was told by some men to ditch the campaign pictures where I was smiling and wearing a dress and show a more serious face, switch to suits. I struggled in front of my closet whereas I should have been dealing with files instead and smiling as much as I wanted because I like doing that and that is just light coming from the inside. 
 
But one size fit all? Maybe you want to dress like Merkel and Clinton? Or perhaps you want to be like Georgia Meloni or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes? Maybe their style is what you fancy? Whether you agree with their views or not, these are fierce women who have kept going even when their positions were made impossible or too difficult.
 
Like some of them I love dresses and nice shoes. Does this make me a bad politician?  I also love books and dancing bare feet among my voters in Flanders while sharing a beer. Or spending a night in my office over files I care about. What else should make me a politician?
This is Europe, the place where women should be able to lead a country into NATO and have fun too. You do not need to become someone else. Being human should be more than enough. We need you to keep your head up. Show younger girls that politics is also a place for them – a place where they can be themselves and work on serious topics like energy, climate, security and so on. 
You are not alone. By trying to destabilize you they have made you an icon that I too admire.