JINHA

EDIRNE – This International Women's Day saw the first ever International Roma Women's Day Symposium, where Roma women shared their projects and discussed their challenges at Trakya University.

Roma women explained their soap production project, designed to provide employment and social support at the Yıldırım Women's Initiative Center and Association.

"Roma women couldn't leave their homes," said FatmaUlusoy, the head of Yıldırım. "There was a need not just for a way to earn money, but a place to socialize."

"My mother worked as a cleaning lady for years. Now she doesn't even have insurance," said Dilek Çilek, a 22-year-old member of the association. "I don't want this kind of work. I want work with insurance, that's reliable, that has a future."

Nejdet Mustafa, Macedonia's Roma minister, and JulietaMemedova, of Bulgaria's Integro Association, also attended.

Hacer Foggo, the Turkey observer for the European Roma Rights Centre, said that Roma women were doubly discriminated against in Turkey: because they are Roma and because they are women.She noted that in the 2000s, there were no Roma associations, let alone an opportunity for a Roma woman to stand at a lectern.

"For there to be a Roma women's association in Edirne is very inspiring. Now the only occupations available to Roma women don't have to beselling scrap, cleaning and selling flowers," said Hacer. "Roma women's only option needs to be university, not marrying at an early age."

Özlem Anadom, one of only 600 Roma woman university graduates in Turkey, where there are five million Roma, called attention to the widespread violence against women and remembered women lost to femicide.

"We are here, with all our difference," said Özlem. "I'm a human, I'm a woman, I'm a gypsy—and I'm here, with my dreams."

(şg/cm)