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Author: Ida Bakhturidze
The history of March 8 as International Women’s Day dates back to the early 20th century, to the socialist movement and Clara Zetkin. Her idea from the very beginning served the emancipation and equality of women – it was supposed to be a symbolic day when women would celebrate the progress and victories achieved in the struggle for their rights.
However, this blog is neither about celebration nor about a summary of achievements. It is about the rights losses that women in this country face year after year on March 8. The blog shows how the context, content, and form of this day have changed over the past three years in parallel with ongoing political processes, and how this change has translated into a systemic regression of gender equality policies in Georgia.
Although the pace of democratic regression in Georgia has accelerated particularly since 2022, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the prerequisites for the ideological instrumentalization of gender politics were evident even earlier, and signs of this have become increasingly visible in recent years.
At the institutional level, one of the first and most symbolic manifestations of this process was the transformation of the position of Advisor to the Prime Minister in 2021. The previously existing status, “Advisor on Human Rights and Gender Equality Issues”, was abolished upon the appointment of a new advisor to this position, and the term “ gender” was completely removed from it. The change was made without any public discussion or explanation, under the rule of Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili. At the time, this may have been perceived as a technical decision, but from today’s perspective, it is even clearer that it was part of a plan to institutionally weaken gender policy. It is precisely these seemingly “technical” changes that have paved the way for a large-scale attack on the institutional framework for gender equality and women’s rights, which has become an open and irreversible dynamic since 2022.
The next stage of this process appeared at the end of 2022 with the update of the “State Concept of Gender Equality” and confirmed that an ideological change in the country’s gender policy was underway.
The concept of gender equality defines the vision and main directions of the state policy, and the definitions and priorities contained in it apply to other policy documents and legal acts. Therefore, in subsequent years, these changes created an ideological basis for specific political and legal changes, which resulted in a gradual weakening of gender equality mechanisms, including the abolition of gender quotas and the legislative amendments of 2025, which completely removed the concept of “gender” from the legislation.
With the new gender concept, the ideological framework of the ruling party at the institutional level was clearly stated, according to which “a woman is a woman and a man is a man”. As a result, “gender equality” in the concept was narrowed down only to the equality of women and men, while the systemic nature of inequality was completely ignored and the emphasis was shifted to biological differences. The concept directly specifies that “in all provisions, the definition of “gender equality”/“gender equality” includes the equality of women and men”, which practically excludes the consideration of other groups. As a result, the term “gender” was formally retained, although it was emptied of content before it was completely eliminated from the legislation.
The process of adopting the concept also indicates many things. The working version of the document was discussed with civil and international organizations. However, the final text differed significantly from the agreed version. Among them, concepts such as “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” were removed. The updated concept was adopted hastily, in the last days of the year, without public discussion and informing civil society.
It is in this reality that the agenda of the feminist struggle has been transformed and increasingly intertwined with the struggle for the democratic future of the country. The most vivid expression of this has been the celebrations of March 8 in recent years.
For years, March 8 in Georgia was either perceived as a “flower -giving day” left over from Soviet inertia, or it was reduced to a formal event. However, independent feminist groups that emerged in 2011-2012 returned political meaning to this day. A new feminist wave has transformed March 8 into a platform for issues that define women’s daily lives and physical, economic, and social realities: the undervaluation of domestic work and wage inequality, gender-based violence and femicide, limited access to reproductive rights, the weakness of social protection policies, and the systematic exclusion of women from decision-making processes.
Since 2011, March 8 events have been held regularly, with a few exceptions – in 2020 they were not held due to the pandemic, in 2022 due to the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, and in 2024 due to the ongoing political processes in the country. After the forced pause in 2022, March 8, 2023, was celebrated in a completely new reality, where issues of gender equality became increasingly sharply politicized and controversial.
2023 — Feminist Struggle and Protest
2023 was a remarkable year, as the feminist and democratic struggles finally intersected. In 2023, the largest-ever March 8 rally in Georgia’s history was directly linked to the protests against the Russian law. The law’s introduction in February sparked a wave of large-scale protests across the country, and on March 8, the “Women’s Movement” organized a march called “Women Against Total Control”, which spanned 11 cities in Georgia, linking the feminist agenda to the fight against authoritarianism.
On this day, women with different identities and experiences took turns speaking with a microphone: queers, representatives of ethnic minorities, women living in the regions, women with disabilities, displaced people, single mothers, migrant women and their children. The voices of these women united a common experience – struggle, endurance and non-surrender. The main message was voiced by the March 8 manifesto: “We will not allow the long struggle for our rights to be devalued and the rights we have gained to be taken away!”
During the same period, in parallel with the protests, the parliament approved the National Human Rights Strategy, from which LGBTQIA+ people were completely absent. For comparison, the 2018-2020 Action Plan did not prioritize the rights of the queer community, but it did formally mention and acknowledge their existence. The new strategy also removed them from policy documents. The process of developing this strategy was also non-inclusive. Organizations were given only a few days to review the document, and their recommendations remained unanswered.
The feminist movement, on the one hand, seems to be expanding, politicizing, and becoming a central part of the struggle for democracy. On the other hand, state policies consistently limit the very groups and issues that are the core of this movement. As a result, gender and queer issues have become not only a space for ideological confrontation, but also one of the main instruments of the consolidation of authoritarian power.
2024 — Institutionalization of Democratic Backsliding
The year 2024 marked the peak of democratic backsliding, when the final adoption of Russian law legalized the systematic restriction of civil space. In these circumstances, on March 8, 2024, women were met with even more anti-gender changes, propaganda, and repression.
This dynamic was soon reflected in concrete political decisions, and on April 4, the parliament abolished gender quotas, which had created at least a minimal guarantee of women’s political representation since 2020. With this decision, the progress achieved over the years was effectively destroyed with one stroke. In April, the return of the Russian law, which had failed as a result of public protests the previous year, was announced. In May, the parliament finally adopted the law, as a result of which civil society organizations, including women’s rights activists, were declared “carriers of the interests of a foreign power” and their space for action was further limited.
This trend continued throughout the year and escalated into targeted restrictions on specific groups. In September, the parliament passed a homophobic and censorious, human rights-restricting document in its third reading, called the “Law on Family Values and Protection of Minors,” which institutionalized discrimination against LGBTQ + people. The law is based on hateful and misleading narratives, restricts freedom of expression, and introduces censorship.
The murder of transgender woman Kesaria Abramidze, the day after the law was adopted, once again confirmed that inciting hatred always costs the lives of specific people.
Under such repressive policies, the forms of protest have also transformed. Against the backdrop of the difficult political environment, a separate march was no longer held on March 8, 2024, and the “Women’s Movement” responded only with a single statement to the definition of rape in the law, which human rights activists have been demanding from Parliament for years.
Nevertheless, the resistance did not cease. On the contrary, women remained at the forefront of the protests throughout the year and were present wherever the resistance did not stop. One example of this is the “Women Choose Europe” march organized on April 20, which took place in Tbilisi and several other cities. Its main message was that women will not give up either the democratic space or their rights.
It is precisely for such activism in the ongoing resistance that women themselves have become direct targets of the regime. Coordinated campaigns of discredit, insult, and intimidation have intensified against female activists, using social media platforms, anonymous accounts, and coordinated online attacks as the main tools. In this way, they attempt to discredit women, suppress their voices, and expel them from the public sphere.
This practice is further exacerbated by absence of punishment by law, as the country lacks effective mechanisms to prevent and respond to technology-enabled gender-based violence (TFGBV). Moreover, such campaigns are taking place in a political environment that the government itself creates or deliberately leaves unaddressed.
Technology-enabled violence (TFGBV) is violence committed by one or more individuals, which is fully or partially carried out, facilitated, aggravated or intensified through the use of information and communication technologies or social/digital media, against a person, based on gender.
2025 — Final Dismantling of Gender Politics
Georgia “celebrated” March 8 in 2025 with its first female political prisoner, Mzia Amaghlobeli. The regime crossed a line when repression against women was still considered an “exception”.
The year 2025 also turned out to be the most radical in terms of anti-gender legislative changes. This year, the government completely removed the term “ gender” from the legislation, and in about 17 laws, “gender equality” was replaced by equality “between man and woman”. This change was not just the abolition of the term: the state reduced equality policy to biological sex and refused to recognize the gender motive of violence against women, which leaves many cases of violence beyond the scope of appropriate legal response. Along with the removal of “gender,” the Permanent Council for Gender Equality of the Parliament was also abolished, and the “Temporary Commission on Women and Children’s Issues” created in its place was given a short-term mandate and a significantly limited agenda. These changes were accompanied by a weakening of institutional mechanisms for gender equality at the local level. Gender equality councils in municipalities, which, at least formally, ensured the translation of national priorities at the local level and the implementation of gender action plans, were abolished.
At the same time, the government continued its systematic crackdown on civil space. The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and amendments to the Grants Act, passed in April, further expanded the mechanisms of control. FARA’s definitions are so broad that they can encompass any activity that could influence public opinion, and its violation is a criminal offense punishable by up to five years in prison.
It was in this repressive environment that the March 8, 2025 march — “Women Against the Regime” — took place in Tbilisi, Kutaisi, and Batumi. This year’s agenda was not limited to women’s issues; the main message was directly directed against authoritarianism, which was clearly expressed in the manifesto: “A slap to the patriarchy, a slap to the self-proclaimed police, a slap to authoritarianism!”
The year 2025 was also marked by a particularly brutal approach by law enforcement officers towards women participating in peaceful protests. Several activists have reported sexual harassment, humiliation, threats of rape, physical violence and forced undressing during arrest. Elene Khoshtaria, an opposition leader who was arrested in March 2025, also said that she was assaulted and stripped naked by police officers after her arrest. No one has been punished for these acts to this day.
In 2025, the dismantling of gender equality policies and democratic regression finally emerged as a unified, interconnected process.
2026 — Consolidation of Repressive Reality
On March 8, 2026, there was no feminist march, no single-man manifesto and demonstration in the form that had been held for years. On this day, women stood in front of Rustavi Women’s Penitentiary No. 5 in solidarity with 5 female political prisoners. Mzia Amaghlobeli, Tamar Lortkipanidze, Nana Sanderi, Anastasia Zinovkina and Elene Khoshtaria are in prison for expressing their opinions. Politician Elene Khoshtaria, a mother of four, was sentenced to 1.5 years in prison on March 27 — the birthday of her minor twins. Along with female political prisoners, the prison has also become an experience for many other women — over the past year, more than 70 women have been administratively detained for participating in protests and expressing their positions.
The dismantling of gender policy continues at the legislative level. For example, the withdrawal from the international treaty, the Istanbul Convention, which is one of the main legal frameworks for combating violence against women, is being considered. Officially withdrawing from the Convention means that the state not only refuses to fulfill its international obligations to combat domestic and sexual violence against women, but also calls into question the recognition of violence as a systemic problem. In addition, withdrawal from the Convention will directly affect the quality and standards of services available to women victims of violence and will exclude the country from international monitoring mechanisms. As a result, women will find themselves alone in the face of the state and the perpetrator (both nationally and internationally ).
These processes are taking place against the backdrop of alarming statistics of violence: every second woman in Georgia experiences at least one form of violence in her lifetime, and every fourth woman speaks of having experienced sexual harassment. According to the Human Rights Department of the Prosecutor’s Office, more than 240 cases of femicide were recorded in Georgia from 2014 to 2024. In this context, even discussions on withdrawing from the Convention create a real risk that the state’s response to violence will be further weakened and that perpetrators will perceive such steps as an encouraging signal to them. At the same time, additional amendments to the Law on Grants further restrict, among other things, the activities of women’s rights organizations, expand the scope of their criminal liability, and soon they will no longer be able to help women.
The reality of 2026 is a clear illustration of how quickly and radically the feminist agenda has changed in Georgia: March 8 at the Women’s Prison, female political prisoners, and a systematically dismantled equality policy show that “gender” in the country has become an ideological tool of authoritarianism, one of the main targets of which is women. In this process, women have simultaneously become both one of the strongest pillars of democratic resistance and a social group that can no longer speak out on specific rights issues — not because they have become less important, but because the very spaces where these issues could be discussed are narrowing every day.
Finally, in recent years, March 8 has truly become less a day for voicing feminist demands or, a day of celebration, and more an arena for the struggle to save the country’s democracy. However, year after year, this day reminds us not only of the loss for women, but also of the power of their resistance – the endurance, consistency and strength that they demonstrate in this unequal struggle. It is this experience that has shaped women into one of the most resilient and accountable forces of protest, who continue to fight even when the danger is physical and the risk of deprivation of liberty is real.