IKV İstanbul EU Information Center organised a panel on the occasion of "International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women" at Wyndham Grand İstanbul Levent Hotel on 1 December 2021. During the panel moderated by IKV Deputy Secretary General M. Gökhan Kilit, who talked about EU’s Gender Equality Strategy and the negative effects the COVID-19 pandemic particularly had on women, leading academics held an in-depth discussion on gender equality and the legal, social and media dimensions of violence against women in the context of both Turkey and the EU.

Speaking at the panel, Dean of Koç University Law School and UNESCO Chair for Gender Equality and Sustainable Development Prof. Bertil Emrah Oder analysed Turkey’s withdrawal from the İstanbul Convention. Indicating that considerable steps had been taken for gender equality in the past 20 years, Prof. Oder stated that while withdrawing from the İstanbul Convention was formally possible, undoing the substantial gains acquired through the Convention was essentially impossible.

Founder of Women in Foreign Policy Initiative and Dean of Okan University Faculty of Business and Administrative Sciences, Prof. Zeynep Alemdar evaluated violence against women from a foreign policy dimension. Underscoring that violence against women influenced states' foreign policies, Prof. Alemdar pointed out that conflicts decreased when women parliamentarians' numbers increased.

IKV Secretary General Assoc. Prof. Çiğdem Nas emphasized that 30% of all women in the world had been subjected to physical or sexual violence, and most of the violence cases came from close partners. Emphasizing that violence against women was a social matter, Assoc. Prof. Nas said that the violence was always the perpetrator's fault and entirely the perpetrator's responsibility.

The last panellist, Head of the Faculty of Communication Sciences, Cinema and Television Department at Anadolu University Prof. Erol Nezih Orhon noted that gender equality was not ensured in movies, TV series, and commercials. Focusing on how the portrayal of women in the media affected them adversely, Prof. Orhon stated that women were depicted as being in a constant need to be loved and liked but not necessarily respected.