Another year arrives on the calendar, the International Day for the Elimination of Gender Violence. And it reaches us in a political and social moment of regression, of returning to old laws, old uses, old customs.
Everything that seemed advanced in rights and freedoms is being catapulted back 30 years, when Spain was freeing itself from the yoke of dictatorship and preparing to walk the path of democracy.
The Popular Party limits citizens' ability to decide on their future, their right to protest, their ability to train and achieve their aspirations. And also, it advises through its satellite organizations how to live life.
"Marry and be submissive," they propose to women. "Allow the man to embody the guide, the rule, the authority. Leave the logic of emancipation and joyfully embrace the role of hospitality and service."
And why not "endure with stoicism and a spirit of sacrifice the blows and insults. Be docile in the face of violence and humbly receive the slaps, the shoves, the aggressions of those who only want your good"?
The message is outrageous. Sadness and impotence arise in the face of the evident tolerance and impunity in the face of the increase in rapes, violence and murders.
It is not a day to celebrate anything. On the contrary, it is an opportunity to reflect on our social responsibility in the face of a terrible reality that many women suffer day after day and that on many occasions takes their lives.
But also, it is an opportunity to demand that our public officials effectively guarantee the protection and safety of women and that they implement measures and mechanisms that serve to safeguard the emotional, physical and sexual integrity of women, at any age and in all areas.
We live in a patriarchal capitalist system, in its neoliberal phase, which needs inequality and violence to survive. A system that manufactures the mechanisms to impoverish, exclude and make invisible the multiplier effect of inequality, which especially affects women.
Thus, the female collective is the one that earns the least in the performance of their work, fills the unemployment lines, suffers a higher rate of job insecurity and performs the most flexible and longest working days.
Being a woman cannot continue to be an experience associated with inequality, discrimination and violence anywhere in the world. The need to increase the sensitivity of men and women to social injustice is the first step on a long road yet to be traveled, where the goal must be to create conditions that favor and ensure the full development of women's potential and capabilities in the world.
To give a literary closure to a reflection that began with a recently published book, three quotes that offer a radically opposite message: "The perfect work of aggression is to get the victim to admire their executioner," Victoria Sau tells us.
Loire Heise elaborates on this issue when she states: "This violence is not accidental, the risk factor is being a woman. The victims are chosen for their gender. The message is one of domination: settle for your place."
And in the same way, we socialist women propose: "Against violence, insubordination."
Alma González
Secretary of Equality
