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What you need to know about Vienna’s ‘Women’s Week’ events

During the week leading up to Women's National Day on the 8th of March, the city of Vienna is organising over 100 events free of charge which promote the independent life of women.

Published: 4 March 2024 14:16 CET
What you need to know about Vienna's 'Women's Week' events
Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

The events during the Women’s Week take place from the 4th to the 8th of March at various locations all over the city, culminating in the final event at Vienna City Hall on International Women’s Day.

The background for Women’s Week takes us back to 2022 when around 15,500 female residents in Vienna participated in the survey ‘Wien, wie sie will‘ (Vienna, as she wants it). The survey focused on the situation of women and girls living in the city, as well as their ideas and wishes for the future.

More space, more time, and more opportunities turned out to be what most women wanted. The results from the study led to the start of various projects around the city, one of them being Women’s Week.

Women’s Week offers a wide range of events, including lectures, workshops, and open discussions, all as part of the City of Vienna’s commitment to promoting equality and supporting women’s rights. The language of the events is German, which offers an excellent opportunity to improve your language skills, even though many discussions also allow for questions to be asked in English.

READ ALSO: Taboo in Austrian society – How women still face barriers accessing abortion

A wide range of different events

With over 100 events available, it is easy for everyone to find something that interests them. On the website of the event, you can scroll through the list for each day and read about the different options. You can find anything from various sports activities and craft workshops to discussions about topics, such as violence against women, and lectures about female health.

Here are some examples of five different interesting events taking place.

Workshop about self-confidence                                                          

This workshop takes place online on the 4th of March from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. You can sign up here. 

During the online session, a psychologist will discuss positive and healthy self-confidence and how you can develop it. The session will cover themes such as what involves good self-esteem, how to develop and nurture it, what harms self-esteem, and what improves it. Participants will also have opportunities to ask questions and participate in discussions.

Lecture and discussion about the European Union, Austria and women’s rights

On the 5th of March from 6 to 8 p.m. at Wipplingerstraße 35, 1010, a selective panel with experts and politicians from the field of women’s rights will dig deep into the challenges and progress of women’s rights in the EU and especially in Austria.

From the event, you will gain the latest insights and also can engage in discussions and ask questions to the experts in the field. At the end of the event, a small buffet is offered. You can sign up for the event here.

READ ALSO: International Women’s Day: Five famous women in Austrian history

Women’s Information Fair on the Topic of Women’s Health

On the 6th of March from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Währinger Straße 43, 1090, the Alsergrund Women’s Information Fair will take place this year, focusing on the topic of women’s health.

Here, you can get to know various institutions inside and outside the district that deal with topics ranging from prevention and mental health to exercise and physical self-determination. You can stroll around the fair and talk to experts in all sorts of health topics and find out what their specific organisations are dealing with.

You can sign up by writing an email to [email protected].

Film Screening  of “Feminism WTF”

On the 7th of March, from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m., in Vienna’s oldest cinema, Breitenseer Lichtspiele, you can watch Katharina Mückstein’s documentary ‘Feminism WTF’.

The film, which won the Diagonale’s Audience Award in 2023, is a documentary about feminism and gender equality. It reflects on present debates and analyses the potential of intersectional feminism to change our future societies deeply.

You can sign up by sending an email to [email protected].

READ ALSO: 8 unmissable events taking place in Austria in March

Final event of the week – Open town hall

Every year on International Women’s Day, the ‘Open Town Hall’ takes place, and this year, it serves as the final event of Women’s Week.

From 4:00 p.m. to 8:15 p.m., you can enjoy various events at the city’s town hall (Rathaus). You can participate in guided tours, discussions, music programs, art installations, handicraft workshops, and panel discussions on topics such as equality, further education, protection against violence, and women’s rights.

Here is a list of all the events on this specific occasion.

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AUSTRIAN HISTORY

Austrian artist turns Hitler manifesto into cookbook

Long reviled as a manifesto of hate, Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" has become the raw ingredient for an art project reconstituting the toxic text into something more savoury: a cookbook.

Published: 25 April 2024 16:42 CEST
Austrian artist turns Hitler manifesto into cookbook

In a cafe in the Nazi leader’s native Austria, an artist is cutting up the book that laid the ideological foundations for Nazism — “My Struggle” — letter by letter and reforming them into recipes.

The sentences are mashed and re-served as instructions for making pizza, asparagus salad, tiramisu and egg dumplings — said to have been Hitler’s favourite dish.

Artist Andreas Joska-Sutanto has been working at it for eight years and has so far finished cutting up about a quarter of the book after almost 900 hours of painstaking work.

“I want to show… that you can turn something negative into something positive by deconstructing and rearranging it,” the 44-year-old graphic designer told AFP in the Viennese cafe, where he can be observed once a week working for a few hours.

– ‘Poisonous words’ –

First published in two tomes in 1925 and 1926, Hitler’s autobiographical “My Struggle” served as a manifesto for National Socialism and the ensuing wave of racial hatred, violence and anti-Semitism that engulfed Europe.

The book entered the public domain in 2016 when its copyright lapsed.

Once it became available, Joska-Sutanto came up with the idea of meticulously cutting out every single letter of the 800-page text — with an estimated total of 1.57 million letters — to rearrange them into cooking recipes.

He glues the pages onto adhesive film before dissecting them.

So far, his cookbook draft has 22 recipes.

The original text “no longer has any weight”, he said, displaying the remains of the gutted copy of the book.

“All the weight in the form of letters is gone.”

He left the Nazi dictator’s portrait in the book untouched, he said, to show that “without his poisonous words”, Hitler was reduced to staring at the void.

‘Irreverent’ artwork 

Reactions to the project have been mostly positive, Joska-Sutanto said, though he once apologised to a spectator who criticised his work as “extremely irreverent”.

At the cafe, owner Michael Westerkam, 33, praised the project — he said the raising of awareness of difficult topics such as a country’s historical past could be achieved “in many ways”.

Experts consulted by AFP were reluctant to speak on the record about the project. One, who asked not to be named, said there was a view that it was a “strange” initiative and of “limited” historical and artistic relevance.

Austria long cast itself as a victim after being annexed by the German Third Reich in 1938. It is only in the past three decades that it has begun to seriously examine its role in the Holocaust.

Joska-Sutanto estimates that it will take him 24 more years to finish his project.

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