Gardini. And that would be the end of interventions, friends, because I am sure you got a little bit hungry, and we will have lunch afterwards. Please, dear Theodores, the floor is yours.

Mr Theodoros Rousopoulos (Greece, EPP/CD) Thank you, Mariia. First of all, I want to express my gratitude that men are allowed to speak during this session. But of course, you will reply that men were talking for long, for decades. I just want to say that in my country, Greece, the first woman who was elected in the parliament was almost 70 years ago and the first woman who was appointed as a Minister of health care system was almost 70 years ago. And it was my party. That is why I am very proud to say that, which is a right wing party and it is very progressive, in my opinion. Now we have a president of the Republic who is a woman, and we have a lot of women working and producing ideas not only in politics, but in business, etc. If I wanted to provoke you, I would ask if there were a competition which is similar to the men's competition between women. Do women help other women? Do women support other women? Before that, allow me to say a short story from 2015 which is about Iceland. And I found it very interesting. The very well-known, the famous documentarist Michael Moore, the American documentarist, he produced a documentary under the title “Where to Invade Next?” saying the Americans a lot of interesting things about Europe and what do they have to copy if they want to be like Europeans. So, he went to Iceland, and he was talking about the crisis. And during the crisis, as Michael Moore mentioned, all banks were closed, bankrupted, except one bank, which he said was ruled and then the camera turned to these three women: CEO, CFO and the HR department were women. Which is a very exceptional paradigm of what women can do. Yes, I really believe what Vigdís Finnbogadóttir had said that women can change the world and can make it better. Thank you for this initiative. I want to congratulate you all. You do a great job, and I will try to find a woman from my country to propose as a candidate for this Prize. Thank you.

Ms Mariia Mezentseva, Chairperson of the Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination of the Parliamentary Assembly Thank you very much, dear Theodoros. Madame Gardini will be finalising the question time and the panellists will answer because we are a little bit running of time.

Ms Elisabetta Gardini (Italy, EC/DA) Thank you very much. I will be brief. I too should like to thank the panel, would like to thank all the panellists and all the speakers in the discussion so far. A discussion which has been ongoing for a number of years now, but one which is still sorely needed. Now, I am from a city, Padua, close to Venice, and we had the first female graduate anywhere in the world. And so, this really has been a source of pride for us and something that we have sought to replicate. And the way in which she worked, she took her degree in 1678. She was a polyglot. She wanted to study theology, but she was not allowed to. So, she was not able to take a degree in theology but in philosophy, which at the time was the only route available to a woman. Now, the fact of the matter is that we are from all kinds of different countries. We have different histories and backgrounds and different dates of course and milestones when women got the right to vote. Fairly recent in the case of Liechtenstein and in Italy as well, a fairly recent achievement in the wake of the Second World War. But since then, a great deal has been done. But there are a number of contradictions which still reign. In Italy, for example, I do not know whether you have seen this for yourselves or read it in your newspapers, but we have had a very lively debate because a young girl, aged 22 was killed by her ex-boyfriend, same age, both university students. And this is the product, I think, of a different culture, not a culture of parity, but in Italy we are going a little bit deeper into this, people struggling to understand how this could be and why it had happened. Because we have got some research going on which suggests that there is no correlation between women's achievements and a reduction in violence against women. So, I think this is a phenomenon which is still in the shadows and something that we have not investigated sufficiently. We need to shine a light on that because you would have thought that as women achieve equality, there would be a reduction in the levels of violence that women suffer. But that is not true. And in fact, in the most advanced countries, in countries in which the highest levels of equality, in which equality has been a given for the longest time, there seems to be a greater level of aggression and aggressiveness. And it is not simply because women are more willing to report violence against them, because if a woman is killed, well, she cannot denounce a perpetrator. It is too late. So, I think we need to look at what we can do because above and beyond parity or equality, which, I mean, we have still got a way to go. Why is there still this degree of aggressiveness towards women? Why do women still have to put up with this? I mean, this is what colleagues have talked about. We have talked about levels of violence, we have talked about psychologists dealing with this. But what about prevention? I think we need to do more when it comes to prevention. We have got to try and forestall these acts of violence. And so, I wanted to ask panellists whether they think that that is possible, whether the Council of Europe can perhaps delve a little deeper into this phenomenon. I mean, I don't get the feeling that we have looked at this closely enough, you know, in Italy and elsewhere. We ae struggling to understand why these situations

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