WITHIN THE PROGRAM OF EVENTS OF "JOIN YAIZA"

"We live in the culture of simulated equality" - Meeting of women campaign Join Yaiza

Meeting with Women reflects on the participation of women in decision-making and access to power, although it records the embarrassing discrimination that current society maintains.

December 3 2017 (18:12 WET)
"We live in the culture of simulated equality" - Meeting of women campaign Join Yaiza
"We live in the culture of simulated equality" - Meeting of women campaign Join Yaiza

Transformation, justice, social movement, respect for diversity and abilities or engine that drives a better world, are words that summarized the feeling of the round table 'Meeting with Women' in a more critical and real vision on the struggle for gender equality from the broad perspective of education, science, communication, art, justice and politics, fields where the eight women who shared reflections, concerns and statistics on Saturday's conference of the Join Yaiza campaign organized in Playa Blanca by the City Council presided over by Gladys Acuña, moderator of the talk, excel.

All exemplify the increase in women's participation in decision-making processes, execution of projects that contribute to well-being and access to power, but they themselves demonstrated with objective data that there is still much work ahead and goals to achieve. In line with this reality, the president of the Parliament of the Canary Islands, Carolina Darias, warned that a sleeping society can lead to the setback of achievements in equality. "Political and social pedagogy must be done to ensure that women are always involved in decision-making." Darias argued that "laws are necessary, but not sufficient, because there are many figures of inequality."

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When talking about greater participation, Gladys Acuña asked the magistrate of the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands and also president of the Association of Women Judges of Spain, Gloria Poyatos, the reasons why she demands a more feminized justice. Her answer was as forceful as it was irrefutable: "we live in the culture of simulated equality."

Poyatos recalled that while women have been joining the labor market more and more every day, "a market that precisely discriminates against them," and it is even expressed as an extraordinary conquest of society, "men have not joined household chores in the same way." The magistrate advocated for the participation of more women at all levels: "there must be more women judges. It is inconceivable that of the 77 magistrates that the Supreme Court has in all its jurisdictions, only 11 are women."

Therefore, the young social educator Marina Marroquí (29 years old), who has already reached more than 30,000 adolescents in Spain with her workshops on early detection of gender violence, stated that "society changes faster than justice, than education, than health and than other aspects that influence us all."

Marina Marroquí, with knowledge of the cause because she was a victim of abuse by her ex-partner when she was just 15 years old, assures that "our judicial system is not prepared to do justice to the enormous social problems that are happening." One in three women in Spain is abused "and you can't imagine how difficult it is to prove to the justice system that they have been. In Spain, it is free to abuse." In a very intimate reflection, she said: "the beatings the next day don't hurt so much, because in the end the most difficult thing is to rebuild your life."

And speaking of science, society still sees a highly qualified woman performing jobs dominated by men as a freak. This is the case of the astrophysicist Antonia Varela, a prominent researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands, who at the Únete Yaiza table assured that "studying is fundamental, but not enough because women have to be the best in the promotion and the best in everything to get a prominent position in the organization chart of a scientific project. Things have changed, but not so much."

Antonia Varela, like Gloria Poyatos, Carolina Darias, Gladys Acuña and the plastic artist Carmela García, also praised the role of women in their capacity as mothers and the efforts to reconcile work with the attention that children deserve and demand. Far from any recognition in the performance of her responsibilities, Poyatos describes the relationship with her children as the greatest professional merit that has led her to develop the emotional intelligence necessary to administer justice.

Carmela García already vindicates with her photographic and audiovisual expression women as a transforming figure in the world. At the table she made a call to reinforce the "wave of union between women", a transcendental topic of debate because sorority, or solidarity between women, is undoubtedly one of the pillars for the eradication of discrimination and violence against women.

The communication with clear, direct and well-founded messages from the speakers has a powerful ally on YouTube with the activists Koala Rabioso and Naty Penadas. Before the round table they projected and analyzed the content of some of their videos and then participated in 'Meeting with Women'.

Koala confesses: "we enter through humor to captivate and then we get into the content", content of feminism and equality that was a great surprise and discovery for both the public and the speakers of the table. Gloria Poyatos even promised to incorporate the audiovisual material of the two youtubers into future interventions on the subject in question. The pedagogical work of Koala and Naty becomes more important considering the thousands of followers they have on social networks.

In the conclusions section, the participants also wanted to summarize with very short phrases their opinion to achieve progress towards a truly egalitarian society. "To be where we should be, to vindicate our diversity, which is equality, that diversity is normality and to make women visible in distinctive roles." And a threat: "indifference to vindicating what is ours can kill us."

Gloria Poyatos highlighted the round table in Playa Blanca as "an unforgettable day, of exchange of ideas, critical visions and above all an enriching day with the experiences of exemplary women promoters of social changes towards equality."

The Únete Yaiza activism campaign continues this week at the IES Yaiza with workshops by Marina Marroquí, president of the Ilicitana Association Against Gender Violence, aimed at students in the 3rd and 4th year of ESO. Marroquí also teaches this Monday 4, in La Aurora de Playa Blanca, a workshop open to neighbors entitled 'Know, detect and escape from gender violence'.

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