Last Thursday, the Ombudsman, Soledad Becerril, presented the report of her Office corresponding to 2016 in Congress. A document that, unfortunately, always makes us wonder how much we still have to change as individuals and as a society.
On this occasion, a specific section of the report has been dedicated to violence against women because, although, according to the statistics presented, in 2016 the number of fatalities was the lowest of the last ten years (44 women and one minor), the terrible data of this year (21 women murdered when this article is written) make us think that this reduction in murders has only been a mirage.
In addition, last year was terrifying in terms of violation of our rights, both publicly and privately, with an average of 390 complaints per day for gender violence and 134,462 throughout the year.
I thought, then, it was necessary to focus my intervention on this painful issue about which we must continue to speak, denounce and legislate.
In it, I recalled that there is already a Canary Law for the Prevention and Eradication of Violence Against Women, of 2003, which is earlier and much more advanced than the state law, since it categorizes as violence against women all forms of violence for domination and subordination: trafficking, sexual assault, sexual harassment and workplace harassment based on gender, abuse of girls, genital mutilation, war abuse against women... and not only violence in the domestic and partner environment.
I also defended that each and every one of the agents involved in the fight for the eradication of gender violence must be integrated and brought together: justice, health, professional associations, civil society, the State Security Forces and Corps and the various public administrations.
And we must work, jointly, on something fundamental: prevention. To do this we have to include in the new educational system a specific subject that works on the eradication of gender stereotypes and on the promotion of real equality.
In addition, programs must be launched to prevent gender violence in adolescent relationships, before violence is consolidated in future relationships.
Another fundamental issue for the protection of minors is that shared custody is not granted in cases of gender violence and that the application of PAS (Parental Alienation Syndrome) is eliminated from judicial practice, which the judiciary itself advises against, and the withdrawal of parental authority from the aggressor is applied, firstly, as a precautionary judicial measure with the presentation of the complaint in the Violence Courts, and its definitive withdrawal in cases of a firm conviction sentence.
Many women of my generation, who saw Democracy arrive with enthusiasm and worked to make it a reality, naively believed that the achievements made would culminate, in a few years, with the achievement of real equality.
This conviction was supported - we thought - by many and very clear signs: there were more and more of us in universities, we no longer needed parental or husband's permission to do things as normal as traveling; divorce was legalized... We redoubled our efforts, working inside and outside the home. We tried not to feel guilty for having a career and not being able to be with our children the same hours that our mothers dedicated to us. If we cried about it, it was always at night, because the day was not enough for us, busy demonstrating that not only could we, but we should break down the barriers, the glass ceilings, the prejudices.
We have educated our daughters to be free and independent, we have wanted them to be sure of themselves. We have kept them away from anything that could make them believe they were inferior.
We have proposed that our children do household chores, that they learn values such as equality, respect, solidarity. That they never justify anyone who harasses, abuses or disrespects in public or in private.
But it has not been enough.
The victims of gender violence, in many cases, had children. Children who witnessed both the previous abuses and the terrible end of their mothers. Minors deprived, suddenly, of their childhood. Little ones who will take time to recover, if they do, from the horror lived. That's what machismo is about. Of horror.
It doesn't matter if they are micro-machismos, pills or poisoned darts that are spreading - some more evident, others more subtle - like an oil stain until, from hearing them so much, we hardly notice them.
Michelle Obama described it masterfully in her speech supporting Hillary Clinton's campaign in New Hampshire. "It's that nasty feeling you get when you're walking down the street, minding your own business, and some guy yells vulgarities about your body. Or when that man, at work, gets too close, for too long, and makes you feel uncomfortable in your own skin."
Listening carefully to this vigorous and necessary speech, which months later I still remember, one can only regret her youthful naivety.
And to think that, every day, the women who have a voice and forums where to express ourselves, who work in the sphere of the public, in any of its manifestations, have the inescapable obligation to shout that it is not enough. To denounce that there is a lack of laws, economic resources, protection of victims and their children, training and awareness of judges and officials, expansion of the assumptions of gender violence so that any woman susceptible to suffering abuse, of any kind, is protected. To say that there is a lack of education in egalitarian values. To work so that that dream of equality that we once had gets closer and closer to reality and there is no more violence against women in any of its forms.
Ana María Oramas González-Moro, Deputy of the Canarian Coalition in Congress
