Pashinyan's Congratulations on International Women's Day

Dear women, mothers, sisters, daughters, I congratulate all of you on the occasion of International Women's Day, March 8. This was written by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on his Facebook page.

Since the 2018 Velvet Revolution, we have been discussing the enhancement of women's roles and the expansion of their participation in public life in our country. Today, this is a reality. Women have a huge contribution to the governance of our country; they are involved in political and economic life on an unprecedented scale.

Today, women head the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the External Intelligence Service, the Prosecutor's Office, and the Penitentiary Service, a fact that is not only unprecedented in our history but would have been considered impossible in our pre-revolutionary thinking models.

Women are represented in the government more than ever before, in the legislative body more than ever before, in the judicial bodies more than ever before, in local self-government bodies more than ever before, in military service more than ever before, in the police more than ever before, and in economic, political, and public life more than ever before. This is also thanks to our program for 300 schools and 500 kindergartens, which not only provides children with better educational opportunities but also allows their mothers to work.

Moreover, there is a system of benefits granted to mothers for the care of children up to two years old. After the revolution, we increased the amount of benefits and included all mothers as beneficiaries of the program through specific formulas.

Dear people, dear citizens,

Today our country is achieving success in front of all of you, and this is also related to the growing degree of women's involvement in our public, state, and economic life. Women are mainly not influenced by criminal subculture, the corrosive significance of which is not deeply understood among us. It is this destructive influence that hinders our boys from being more education-focused, which is a serious issue in our reality.

On the other hand, I feel joy seeing how focused our girls are on education, which will increase and enhance their competitiveness in work and career.

The delightful aspiration of girls towards education is also linked to a painful fact: some, influenced by the criminal subculture, think that being a woman is inherently a disadvantage, while being a man is inherently an advantage (this mindset stifles boys' educational aspirations).

In these conditions, our girls are starting from unequal terms on one hand, and on the other hand, they have something to prove, and they are proving how talented, how strong, and how determined they are. During this time, they not only maintain and take care of their beauty but also become more and more beautiful because a woman who is confident in her capabilities is beautiful in herself.

Within this context, there is, of course, a problem that needs to provoke strategic reflection. The more women are involved in public, political, and economic life, the less likely they are to have children, and this is the greatest problem for our country.

We must be able to build a country where having at least three children is ordinary for every woman, but also does not mean passive isolation from public and economic life. We are now building such a country. Our kindergarten construction program, which will also continue from 2026 to 2031, will widely make nursery services available throughout the republic.

Dear women, mothers, sisters, daughters, I congratulate all of you on the occasion of International Women's Day. I love all of you, I am proud of all of you, and I bow before all of you.