Next March 8 we will attend a historical milestone in our country.
Different national unions have called a general strike at the state level. But this is not just another strike, it is a pioneering, transversal and international strike that will be replicated in numerous countries around the world.
This strike overflows its traditional concept, as an instrument of struggle used by workers to claim their rights. In this case, the claims go beyond the working class, and the concept of "work" forged without a gender perspective, in a labor market that has historically despised the time dedicated to family care. A job lacking social, economic and curricular value, despite being essential for the economy, society and life itself. A job as hard as it is invisible, sustained on the backs of women around the world, who also lead the poverty statistics. Women who massively joined a hostile labor market, which discriminates against them, precisely, for not stopping caring.
This strike rises to claim the rights of all of them and their role in society, from factories to offices, from Administrations to service companies, domestic workers, young and old, from different regimes and situations, where all types of work have a place, including domestic work and family care.
Discriminations have mutated and have been able to adapt to the new democracies, sustained by gender stereotypes and prejudices, which underpin modern inequalities, varying their virulence depending on the hemisphere from which they are viewed.
The global gender pay gap is currently 23% according to the International Labor Organization and at this rate, it will take us 170 years to close it. The unequal distribution of household chores stands as one of the most important factors of the endemic gender labor inequality.
Women continue to mostly sustain family care, resorting to part-time hiring as a tool for work-life balance, to the detriment of their current income and future pensions. According to data provided by the General Council of the Judiciary in 2016, 84% of the claims related to the exercise of reconciliation rights were filed by women, increasing this percentage to 95.6% in matters of leave for the care of children.
Women own less than 2% of the world's land, despite the fact that 1/3 of the world's peasant economies are sustained by them.
In Europe, 60% of the degrees obtained are female, but only 6% occupy executive management positions in large companies.
The number of women who have died as victims of gender violence since records exist in Spain (2003) is approaching one thousand, and since 2013, a total of 23 minors have died at the hands of their parents, partners or ex-partners of their mothers.
For these and other inequalities that prevail in all social spheres, including justice, from the AMJE we join and show our full support for this feminist strike. Through it we want to claim the REAL EQUALITY of opportunities between sexes, the gender perspective in all areas, especially in the labor market, the social, economic and curricular valuation of the time dedicated to family care, a true participation of women in all social, political, cultural or judicial spheres and especially in international institutions and organizations with the capacity to decide with social impact, because the contribution and female talent enrich and are an essential complement to achieve more plural, fair and equitable decisions that guarantee the representative diversity of the other half of the population.
Association of Women Judges of Spain (AMJE)