In these days of sporting successes we have understood the importance of references. Lamine Yamal or Nico Williams have done more for multicultural and diverse Spain than any well-thought-out treaty or fiery speech in the Chamber. The lack of LGTBI references during his youth is what Jorge Javier Vázquez complained bitterly about in the parliamentary day 'Education in Diversity'in conversation with the socialist deputy and secretary of LGTBI policy in the PSOE Victor Gutierrez.
Women need references too. We need to see women in all those areas of activity that have been forbidden and prohibited to us for centuries. We need to know that we can be astronauts, scientists, creators. And also ministers. The fact that a woman occupies a position of responsibility and power is not only a personal and individual success, it is also a collective success, a triumph for this 51% of the Spanish population that – oh, chance to live!
Women are fighting hard to break the glass ceiling, the invisible barriers that keep us from the centres of power and decision-making. Women – feminism is not the opposite of machismo – are infinitely happy that the Spanish parliament, thanks to the government of President Pedro Sánchez and the hand of Minister Ana Redondo, has approved an agreement! Parity law leading in Europe. We are happy, because unfortunately we still need it. Without it, the boards will be populated by gentlemen with good connections who may be very well prepared and have great capacity. It may or may not be so. No one will question them because they are men..
But no matter how many parity laws we pass, no matter how many times we use the BOE to break glass ceilings, There are titanium walls that are much more difficult to break through.: retrograde mentality. Those who call us “little girls”, even though we are engineers, bank directors or mayors. We are little girls and we do not rule. We do not rule because we are inevitably little girls. Again, the diminutive.
In rhetoric, we speak of an “ad hominem argument” when a personal attack on the speaker is used as a way to refute a claim. In political life, unfortunately, the opponent’s argument is used a lot, where it is not the statement or action that is criticized, but the opponent himself. But women suffer from what is called the “ad feminam argument”: they attack our arguments or our actions not because of themselves, but because they were said or done by us. Because they do not conform to the “appropriate” feminine stereotype, or simply because they are women. Not women in particular, but just women. Textbook sexism. We are no longer Pilar Alegría, Isabel Rodríguez or Diana Morant. We are no longer ministers. We are dogs, little girls. We start again.
For this reason, the ABC commentator should apologize especially to the women he offended. But by extension, to the rest. We are all waiting for it.
And from here a hug to the ministers of the Spanish government. No matter how many Juaristis appear, we feminists will always be more.
Marta Gracia Blanco
Socialist deputy for Zaragoza in the Congress of Deputies