Dear women, mothers, sisters, daughters,

I congratulate you all on International Women’s Day, March 8.

After the people’s non-violent, velvet revolution of 2018, we were talking about increasing the role of women in our country, expanding their participation in public life.

Today, it is a reality. Women play a huge role in the governance of our country. They are involved in political and economic life at a level never seen before.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Prosecutor’s Office, the Penitentiary Service: these departments are headed by women today, something that is not only the first time in our history, but would have been impossible in our pre-revolutionary thinking models.

Today, women are more represented in the government than ever before, in the legislature than ever before, in the judiciary than ever before, in local government than ever before, in military service than ever before, in the police than ever before, in economic, political, and public life than ever before, and this is also thanks to our “300 Schools, 500 Kindergartens” program, which not only gives children the opportunity to receive a better education, but also gives their mothers the opportunity to work.

Added to this is the system of benefits given to mothers for caring for children up to two years old. After the revolution, we increased the amount of the benefit and, with certain formulas, made all mothers beneficiaries of the program.

Dear people, dear citizens,

Today, our country is recording successes before all of your eyes, and this is also connected with the increasing level of women's involvement in our public, state, and economic life. Women are mainly not influenced by the criminal subculture, the destructive impact of which is not deeply realized among us. It is the destructive influence of this phenomenon that prevents our boys from being more educationally inclined, which is a serious problem in our reality. On the other hand, I am happy to see how focused our girls are on education, which increases and will increase their competitiveness in work and career.

This joyful aspiration of girls towards education is also connected with a sad fact: under the influence of the criminal subculture, some people think that being a woman is a disadvantage in itself, and being a man is an advantage in itself (this thinking inhibits boys' educational aspirations).

In these conditions, our girls, on the one hand, are in unequal starting conditions, on the other hand, they have something to prove, and they prove how talented they are, how strong, how strong-willed they are, and during this time they not only preserve and care for their beauty, but also become more and more beautiful, because a woman who is confident in her own strength is beautiful in itself.

In the context of all this, of course, there is a problem that should give rise to strategic reflections. The more a woman is involved in public, political, and economic life, the less inclined she is to have children, and this is a major problem for our country.

We must be able to build a country where having at least three children is normal for every woman, but does not mean passivity, isolation from public, economic life.

We are building such a country now. Our program for the construction of kindergartens, which will continue in 2026–2031, will make the nursery service widely available throughout the republic.

Dear women, mothers, sisters, daughters,

I congratulate you all on International Women's Day. I love you all, I am proud of you all, and I bow before you all.