At the gates of a new 8M, the news of the week is the chauvinist rudeness that Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, has suffered for the second time since she assumed said mandate. It happened in Brussels, during the reception for the 40 African leaders at the sixth European Union-African Union summit, when Ugandan Foreign Minister Jeje Odongo denied him the formal greeting.
This type of sexist incident that not only breaks protocol but the most basic good manners, is the second time that it has happened to von der Leyen as president of the European Commission. The first took place last year, during a visit to Turkey, when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sat next to him in the Presidency Charles Michel (President of the Council of Europe) and relegated von der Leyen to a side couch.
What happened then aroused so much criticism that it received the name “sofagate”. Although these were not only for the Turkish president but he shared them with Charles Michel due to his lack of reaction on the matter. Already then, the one who is also a member of the German conservative CDU party, she declared about it “not finding any justification in the Treaties”, so she only had to conclude “that it happened by the mere fact of being a woman”.
In a very similar sequence of events, Jeje Odongo has now effusively greeted the President of the Council of Europe and the President of France, but walks past the President of the Commission without even looking at her. Macron notices and He urges him to greet his partner but Michel remains silent, which has once again earned him strong criticism.
Everything indicates that it was a deliberate gesture by the Ugandan minister, who also published a photo on Twitter in which erased the german and neither mentioned nor appeared in the photo. A photo that was deleted after the controversy.
Many have seen in what happened a reflection of the consequences of the female underrepresentation in leadership positions and decision making. In total, only 8.8% of the participants in the summit had a woman’s name. With regard to Europe, of the 27 leaders of State and Government, the Prime Ministers of Sweden, Estonia, Denmark and Finland attended. Besides Ursula. While on the African side, of the 40 participants, there was only one woman: Samia Ululu Hassan, president of Tanzania.
Photos | gtres