The Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, said in Lanzarote that she is "very aware" that the task of her department is to make "the stories and possible worlds" that José Saramago wrote in his works on gender equality can be turned into laws and public policies.
Montero presided this Saturday at the José Saramago library in “A Casa”, in the municipality of Tías, the event, "Literature and equality" which is part of the commemoration of the centenary of the birth of the Nobel Prize for Literature, who resided on the island until his death.
The event consisted of reading fragments of and about the work of the Portuguese writer by seven women, including the president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, María Dolores Corujo; the Government Delegate against Gender Violence, Victoria Rosell; the magistrate Gloria Poyatos; the Minister of Equality of the Government of the Canary Islands, Noemí Santana; the president of the Mararía Association, Nieves Rosa Hernández; the president of the Equality Commission of the Parliament of the Canary Islands, María del Río and the journalist and feminist activist, Amparo Perdomo.
The minister pointed out that the texts extracted from Saramago's works that were read at the event "are the political tasks to which "we dedicate ourselves" from the Ministry of Equality, so she emphasized the works that allude to "women as carriers of bonds, as caregivers of communities, as humble beings stripped of rights by the mere fact of being born women, of being women and who, however, carry on their backs our way of organizing life, our way of organizing the economy, affections and also the pains and sufferings of society as a whole."
The Minister of Equality assured that reflecting in the legal system the rights to which Saramago referred in his works "but that Pilar del Río also defends with her activist feminism and that so many feminist women and men defend" is a way of contributing to improving people's lives.
In this sense, Montero recalled that the achievements of the struggle for equality are achievements for the whole society, because what characterizes feminist people "is that we want for people we don't know at all the same as for the people we love the most and that is that they can be happy and that they can develop their life projects and be who they are in freedom.
"And for that we need rights and therefore we need public policies and public services that allow everyone to be happy and develop their lives without facing fear or discrimination or stigma," added the Minister of Equality.
José Saramago, throughout his work and in his civic militancy, always declared himself in favor of gender equality, was an active citizen against mistreatment and vindicated the essential and necessary role of women for the humanization of society.
Pilar del Río, president of the José Saramago Foundation and widow of the writer, recalled that in her house in Tías they keep in a prominent place the distinction "smallest, but the largest" that Saramago received, which is a white ribbon that symbolizes the award "Men against gender violence".
During the event, a fragment of a television interview was shown in which José Saramago proposed the celebration of a mass demonstration of men in defense of equality and the construction of an egalitarian society.
