A model is taking legal action against the Miss World organization after she was stripped of her title of Miss Ukraine just days after winning once it came to light that she had been married and had a child.
Veronika Didusenko is taking the UK-based Miss World organization to task in court claiming its policy to not allow mothers or previously married women to compete in the pageant is discriminatory and therefore needs to change.
According to Fox5, Didusenko took up the legal battle after her 2018 Miss Ukraine title was revoked and the organization announced she would not be allowed to compete in the Miss World pageant.
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According to the Miss World organization, Didusenko was disqualified because she provided false information when she signed an agreement stating that she had never been married or had children. While she admitted in a statement posted on her Instagram that she did in fact provide false information, her attorney, British human rights lawyer Ravi Naik, noted that the rule itself is against the Equality Act (2010).
“The reason Veronika was not allowed to compete in Miss World is because she was married and had a child. Quite simply, denying her the chance of competing on those bases would seem to breach those protections against discrimination,” Naik’s statement reads in part.
The statement from the pageant explained that the rules are in place because holding the title of Miss World is too demanding of a task for a mother or someone in a relationship.
“The rules under which Miss World operates are constantly under review,” the organization’s statement reads. “The rules are set with the principal aim of finding a Miss World who is free and able to commit, often at short notice, to travel globally in support of the sick and disadvantaged which may be for long periods of time, often to areas devastated by natural disasters.”
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Fox5 reports that Didusenko finds that reasoning insulting. However, she no longer hopes to get her title back and has instead launched the #RightToBeAMother campaign in the hopes of simply getting the Miss World organization to change its rule for future competitors.
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“I don’t want the crown back. I want to get the rules changed for wider society. These rules are a systemic, widespread and international policy that results in discrimination on large scale across many countries,” she wrote on Instagram last month. “This year the 69th Miss World Final returns to London on 14 December 2019. We believe it is the right moment for @MissWorld to introduce the change.”
