The delegate of the Government in Cantabria, Eugenia Gómez de Diego, has today claimed the “pride” of belonging to “a feminist Government” that “integrates the perspective of equality as a center of the political agenda” and has assured that the Executive presided over by Pedro Sánchez will not only continue but will “intensify” during this legislature the policies for equality between men and women.
“There is no advanced democracy or solid economy that can dispense with half of the talent it holds,” said Gómez de Diego at the opening of the Women’s Time Conference, organized by APEMAC, the Cantabrian Nursing Foundation and the Association Creators of Cantabria.
During his speech, Gómez de Diego highlighted that in the last five years the situation of the labor market of women has experienced significant advances. “We have achieved an historic record of women in employment, reaching 10 million, and 82% of them enjoy indefinite contracts, thanks to the positive effects of the labor reform,” he said.
She has also valued the particularly positive effect of measures such as the increase in the Interprofessional Minimum Wage or the increase in pensions on the decrease in the salary gap, which in that same period of time “has been reduced by 25% and is currently the smallest in the historical series”, although the delegate has affirmed that “the figure is still unacceptable”.
Likewise, Gómez de Diego referred to another of the initiatives undertaken by the Government of Spain, the Project of Organic Law of Equal Representation and Balanced Presence of Women and Men, which “is currently in parliamentary procedure”.
As he explained, this project deepens the objective of “ensuring the representation of women in the decision-making spheres of political, economic and civil life”.
“All these initiatives serve to make a country fairer and more egalitarian and, therefore, a better country,” he said.
Fighting hate speech
With all this, the delegate has valued the “commitment of women to be where they deserve” and their “unstoppable advancement” in society, “without more limit than their talent, nor more barrier than their own effort.”
However, he said that “there are still too many women who are relegated to their profession, who endure harassment at work or who fear for their lives in a place that should be safe as a home.”
Thus, on equal pay, he lamented that “year after year, statistics show that women continue to earn less than men, a structural inequality whose causes must be sought in a set of complex and interrelated factors.”
These include direct and indirect discrimination, the undervaluation of women ' s work, occupational segregation marked by stereotypes, the low presence of women in positions of greater responsibility, the unequal allocation of wage supplements or greater partiality and reductions in working hours carried out by women, mainly due to the fact that they have taken on domestic and care work.
“It is only through feminism that societies, systems and ways of life will improve,” said Gómez de Diego, who has called for “the fight against hate speech and machismos that, promoted by the extreme right, can make headway and that not only seek to curb progress, but rather want a return to the starting point, a return to the back.”
Gómez de Diego has thanked the organizing entities for the celebration of these days that are held during this Tuesday and Wednesday in the Chamber of Commerce of Torrelavega and that through different tables and presentations serve to share experiences and launch useful proposals.
The inaugural day was also attended by the president of Cantabria, María José Sáenz de Buruaga; the president of the Parliament, María José González Revuelta; and the mayor of Torrelavega, Javier López Estrada.