Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan has released a March 8 address, extending felicitations on International Women's Day. “Happy International Women’s Day,” Pashinyan said in a statement published on Saturday, March 8.
“This day brings the joy of spring, on March 8 our country is flooded with flowers and festive mood. The meaning of this day becomes stronger because women constitute the majority of the Armenian population, and therefore the full inclusion of women’s potential is the most important guarantee of our state’s development. Women’s involvement in all areas of public life has been visibly increasing in our country.
This in itself is a positive process, but a deep analysis of this phenomenon brings forward several concerns and challenges. As a result of consistent introduction of some subcultures by boys over the course of several decades, girls have now become more focused on education and work, obtaining competitive advantages, and soon the competitive advantages of women will be more visible.
But the involvement of women’s potential as one of the most important factors of our state’s development will be truly effective if men would also be fully involved and competitive, and the current processes are a signal to us all, including mothers and fathers, in order to pay greater attention to the issues of education and competitiveness of our boys, otherwise it will turn out that once again we are not utilizing our full potential.
The active involvement of women in the public, economic life brings another challenge: they could have less and less “time” for having children, and this is also a problem that must be in the focus of our ruminations. Dear people, dear citizens, March 8 has to be also a day of public solidarity, and it is becoming such.
The culture of gender competition or supremacy is obsolete and inviable. Respect, appreciation, encouragement of creative efforts, education and work has been underscored more and more in the relationships of our women and men, and this is encouraging.
Upon this very foundation shall our public relationships be built. After all, beyond the flowers of March 8 stands our homeland, the state, which has to be as flourished as March 8. I once again felicitate all our grandmothers, mothers, sisters and daughters on March 8.”
