At the beginning of this year, I was invited to write an article about women’s rights for a project promoting independent digital media in the Central and East European region funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and coordinated by Notes from Poland.

My article titled “Sexism and violence against women. Will this nightmare in Bulgaria end?” focuses on the discrepancy between the promises of Boyko Borissov’s government to protect women from violence and the reality on the ground. Sexist attitudes, often deemed at the core of violence against women, prevail even at the highest ranks of government. Meanwhile, Bulgarian legislation provides very little protection for victims of such abuses.

If interested in women’s rights, please consider reading:

• “Bulgaria’s Constitutional Troubles with the Istanbul Convention” – an article I wrote for the Verfassungsblog in 2018 which was quoted in numerous prestigious academic journals and the 2019 report on Bulgaria by the Council of Europe Commissioner on Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic, and included in the course materials of the Global Constitutionalism class at Yale Law School.
• “On same-sex marriage and corruption in Bulgaria and Romania” – an article I wrote for New Eastern Europe in which I explain how governments in Eastern Europe often use gender issues to deviate attention from pressing issues such as corruption.