Please stand in solidarity with Eurodad and our director Jean Saldanha, by signing-on to this letter calling for the EU to end disrespect towards women in the EU bubble. As you may be aware from Twitter and our previous updates, Jean was subject to shocking and deeply disrespectful behaviour by one of the panellists, Reinhard Bütikofer, at an event we co-organised with Counter Balance during the recent European Development Days.

The incident itself was deeply troubling, given the aggressive behaviour of an MEP toward a civil society leader and the dismissal of a woman of colour. In addition, his comments demonstrated a disregard for civil society’s role as a critical guardian of transparency and accountability. However, the many comments, conversations and reactions afterwards, as well as our own experiences, highlighted the prevalence and systemic nature of such disrespect and discrimination towards women, and particularly women of colour, within the EU bubble.

We feel compelled to call out this example and call on EU institutions and bodies to address this systemic issue, and to prevent such behaviour and redress it when it occurs. Please add your voice to this call by signing-on to this joint letter by 13 July. We will send the letter in mid-July, before the European Parliament breaks for summer.

• The letter is available here
• Sign-on here
• Share resources for preventing and addressing such issues: We hope to include an annex. containing examples of Code of Conduct for events, procedures for addressing discriminatory behaviour and other wrong-doing, policies on diversity and inclusion, resources on unconscious and implicit biases, as well as any other relevant resources. Please share any such resources with olally[at]eurodad.org so we can compile a selection.