@EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu I’m a strong supporter of women’s rigths – for women self but also as it helps society as whole. I also think it’s pretty cool that the Commission, Parliament, the ECB and the EIB are all led by women currently (regardless of how I may feel about them as individuals, it is significant). Yet, this statement felt weird. Not wrong, but weird. One reason being that Parliament voted for maternity leave for its female MEPs just a few months ago which felt as an error to me. Not the maternity leave which is obviously great, but rather the exclusion of paternity leave and more generally parental leave. It fails to recognise many family structures and identities but also assumes the primary role of a woman is that of a mother by explicitly acknowledging motherhood but not the parenthood of others. The whole SOTEU also lacked in its acknowledgement of minority groups who are left behind again and again, just tepidly acknowledged or may get a lot of beautiful words but no meaningful action. Groups who remain severely under-represented within the EU bodies. The statement in and of itself is great, obviously. But within the larger context it doesn’t sit quite well for me.